And that totally sounds like a Beastie Boys song. Alas it is not. It is just a tale of our Sunday, which was a really good one.
Snow had been falling for a couple days and we’ve been eying the Catalinas, eager to get up there. Let me be clear–I hate being cold and wet, I hate snow, I don’t ski, so it’s none of that. We just wanted the kids to see the snow! Because, whoa! Snow! In Tucson!
The Mt. Lemmon highway is still closed, so Shipherd suggested we go to Oracle, which sounded more appealing anyway–lowkey, didn’t have to head east across town. So after a 40 minute drive, we were in SNOW.
Lincoln discovered several interesting things: Snow is cold. You can eat snow. When you pee in the snow it makes a hole. In general it was a really great day.
Then the Sunday NYT had a great essay by Sandra Tsing Loh. I love her. I love everything she writes. If we believed in plural marriage, and if it were legal, we might propose to her only to have immediate access to drafts of her essays. But that would leave all three of us in need of an actual wife. So never mind. Sandra, will you just come visit? We’ll totally take you out to Casa Vicente for a fabulous dinner. Please?
Okay, let’s assume that probably won’t happen, so we won’t be sharing tapas with her anytime soon. But the article she has in the recent New York Times is fabulous and, as usual, thought-provoking. All the negotiating I thought I wouldn’t do, not even in my head, not even if I made a million dollars a year or if I were unemployed. But I do, I have those thoughts. We’re doing well as a family–we’re figuring it out. I’m innately prone to feeling guilt and resentment, and of course I find myself quite frequently bouncing between the two. (Hi, Melissa C!!) We work well together; we are both doing our best to provide for our family, provide for each other, address our own creative and social needs. But it is complicated; it is complicated. This is a theme, I realize.
How did you feel about the article? Did it leave you longing for a fancy amber-colored cocktail served by a doting spouse?
4 responses so far ↓
1 Rachel // Jan 25, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Yeah, I’m still stuck on the drink.
2 shipherd // Jan 26, 2010 at 7:26 am
I like the whole loss of domain-of-expertise idea because there is no longer a gender division of labor, where she says “… the work I do at home is no longer a gift, but the labor of a mediocre colleague whose performance could be better.” Hilarious and acute. And, while I may derive many small satisfactions from my domestic duties as a daddy, I can certainly tap into the mommy-runs-the-house fantasy because for the most part it is endless rote busywork.
3 Julie // Jan 27, 2010 at 2:08 pm
I know–the “labor of mediocre colleague” line made me laugh out loud…
We do tend to follow some traditional gender division of labor split in our house mainly because Shipherd is handy with tools and I am more likely to clean things.
The kid-caring part doesn’t feel like rote busywork to me–at least not most of the time–but the goddamned laundry and dishes. I am so sick of the dishes. And the tupperware.
Our tupperware spilleth over, in perpetuity.
4 Ilana // Jan 29, 2010 at 11:25 am
I’m with you on the laundry and dishes. There are evenings when I plan meals on how few dishes are used (these are the cereal-for-dinner nights: spoon and bowl, can’t get better than that).
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