Housewife in training
5:13 pm | 4 | Blog | El Perro, Hitched
Last night, in a desperate display of nesting, a frantic attempt to cope with all the stress that is about to descend upon me, what with the planning of a wedding and the packing of every last one of our possessions and the moving to a foreign country and the love of my life leaving for the afore-mentioned foreign country for six whole weeks, I decided I needed to clean the house.
When C came home from work last night I was standing in the downstairs bathroom, wearing an old tank top and a pair of his boxer shorts, yellow rubber gloves on my sponge-wielding hands and my arms elbow deep in the toilet no one but the dog uses. To drink out of, that is. And the wonderful man immediately commented on how hot I looked.
In approximately two months, I will quit my job to become C’s kept woman. He’s going to whisk me away to South Korea, where I’ll surely spend my days being gawked at by locals while I try to memorize the Korean phrase for “Yes I’m blonde and totally Anglo and, like, almost six feet tall AND American, but I’m no sideshow, y’all!”
Since C is getting off on the whole “provider” thing, I feel like it should be my duty to try to act a little more womanly, which means doing things like Taking Care of The Homestead! And Learning How to Cook Dinner! You know, since he’ll be working all day long and I’ll be doing nothing but essentially living off his money.
I’m absolutely positive that in the two years C has owned his house he has not swept the floor, not even once. I have seen him clean the toilet before, but only when he knew we were going to have guests.
And in the two months since he let Gus and me move in, Gus has shed enough dog hair to practically carpet the entire house. The floor didn’t even feel cold anymore, which is pretty gross considering every square inch of flooring in our house is stained concrete. I can’t believe that dog is not bald yet.
When he was still a bachelor, C bought the greatest bachelor gadget ever created, and that gadget is The Roomba. It is an electronic toy! That cleans your house for you! My soon-to-be husband is a total yuppie! Last night we pulled so much hair out of the Roomba that I could have used it to weave a king-size bedspread.
One time early in our relationship, I was at his house one afternoon and he decided he needed to run the Roomba. I’ve never seen a vacuum with so much personality. The two of us sat on the couch for hours watching the little electronic butler clean the living room floor.
The Roomba can’t navigate the stairs, though, and the staircase is Gus’ most favorite place to hang out, because when I am upstairs and C is downstairs he can act like the nosy little dog that he is and keep his buggly eyes on both of us. Up and down, up and down. Maybe Female Human is doing something fascinating upstairs, but wait Male Human is playing his guitar downstairs and I think it might be helpful to him if I go downstairs and press my cold wet nose against his calf while he tries to play the guitar but Female Human is upstairs in the kitchen and I smell food and if I whine just long enough she’ll give me a piece of cheese or a slice of banana and whisper to me “Don’t tell Daddy, okay?”
Last night I swept each of the stairs, one by one, to get all the Gus hair up. Sweeping is one of Gus’ favorite games, one of the very few times when he barks. I guess through his eyes the broom looks like some sort of bristly little animal dancing back and forth, begging to be chased, because the broom puts Gus in attack mode. He’ll hop back and forth, buck like a little bronco, lean down in pouncing position with his stubbed little tail nub in the air and bark bark bark.
When I am finally able to sweep some of the dust and dog hair and dirt into a pile, suddenly Gus changes his plan and decides, Wait! This furry little creature isn’t moving! I can pounce on it with much less effort and energy! And then he proceeds to run right over the neat little pile I’ve made, stirring up all the dust and fuzz and stuff, so I have to resweep that area all over again. So over the dim of the Roomba and the radio and the barking, there is also me yelling in my serious stern exasperated Serious voice, “Gus! NUH UH UH!”
All this sweeping and dusting and Roomba-ing had every single member of our household sneezing last night. Sneezing in the bathroom, sneezing in the dog room, sneezing in the kitchen. And just when I had swept the last pile of dust into a neat stack to be put into the dust pan, that damn little dog had to go and stick his nosy, cold, wet snout right into the pile, sniffing at it frantically to see if it wanted to be chased.
Uh-oh.
South Korea.
Are you taking the dog with you?
Know what Koreans call dogs?
“Stew”.
OF COURSE we’re taking the dog. In Korea, dog is a delicacy. It’s very expensive and very hard to get, so it’s not like just anyone eats it.
By the way, congratulations on being the eleventy billionth person to make that joke to me.
My dad lives in Seoul and has a dog and it’s fine… people don’t have that many dogs and streets are a bit crowded for walks, but it’ll be fine. Where in S. Korea are you going?
Okpo, a town on Goeje Island, which is off the coast of Pusan, which is on the exact opposite side of the island from Seoul.