Yeah, well he's a very lineal-thinking kind of guy--so I feel like I sometimes have to put the dots up on the board for him to play connect-the-dots.
I forgot to mention that there was some tension a few times this weekend.
1. The sink clogged up so a bunch of dishes piled up in the kitchen (it's S16's job to do the kitchen, but I have to really keep on him about it). We got some draino, and S16 started doing the dishwasher loads, but it was slow going. The next morning, I heard Wolfie down in the kitchen banging things around. I got up to get coffee and saw that he was cleaning the kitchen in a pi$$ed-off way (sortof like the way I clean when I have a bad case of PMS).
He was ranting about how there was so much gunk on the counters and it didn't look like the kitchen had been cleaned in a month and that the place was a breeding ground for botchulism, bacteria, fungus, mice and rats.
I got very uncomfortable about his rant because: 1. He was exaggerating - it was only 3 days accumulation and only because the dishwasher couldn't be used. 2. He expects the place to look like the pictures in the Pottery Barn catalog, but we live with 3 teenagers. 3. In the past, instead of getting up and cleaning something if it was bothering him, he'd just look disgusted and leave. This time, he was actually cleaning, but was all po'd about it. 4. I am (truth be told) intimidated by his anger/temper.
Anyway...I reminded him for the 100th time that it won't be all that long before the kids are off on their own. The house will be clean then, but we'll miss the kids.
When S16 got up, I told him, "You'd better work on the kitchen, cuz your dad is having a cow about how messy it is".
S16 says, "I just deep-cleaned 3 days ago, but the sink clogged up so I couldn't do the dishes".
"See", I tell Wolfie, "only 3 days--not a month".
I think part of the uncomfortable feeling I had was that I know all of this is normal family stuff, but it's all part of the kinds of things that Wolfie cited as reasons to want to have his own place for awhile.
A big part of me wanted to go off on him about how I have felt all of these years about working full time (even more hours per week than him) then spend all of my free-time scrubbing & decluttering the house and riding herd on the kids so HE would feel more at ease!
I didn't go off on him. We've already had numerous talks about how he needs to help more around the house and relax a bit about the whole subject. At least he WAS cleaning...even if it was PMS cleaning, right?
