Since we had our daughter my husband and I have had an arrangement where he works full time 40 hours/week Monday to Friday and I work part time shift work so we don't need a babysitter. Naturally I do the bulk of the housework, grocery shopping, medical appointments (booking, reminding etc) and other necessary household tasks because I have more free time.
Our circumstances changed when we moved to the island. My husband had to take a lower paying job (still 40 hours/week Tuesday - Saturday) and the cost of living has increased (thanks Mr. Trudeau!) so I'm working nearly full time shift work.
Despite the fact that I make more $/hour than he does I'm still the one expected to take time off work to deal with our daughter's medical appointments and take her to extra curricular activities. Fortunately my boss is understanding and the nature of my job (home care aide) means I don't need to work regular "bankers hours". He works in maintenance at a hotel and could potentially work shift work if needed.
The last couple of weeks have been hectic at work. We have new, high needs clients and a couple of clients are palliative and require 24 hour care. As I'm trained as a nurse I'm top of the list for the palliative clients as they require more involved care and there aren't many of us care aides in the organization who have the necessary extra training and medical knowledge so I've been working major hours, most of it shift work (getting home at midnight, leaving for work at 6 am sort of thing).
What has started to really bug me is that I'm 100% of the time expected to adjust my schedule to pick up/drop off our daughter at school. I can't work day shifts on week days because her school doesn't start til 9:00 and the shifts start at 7:00 (don't even get me started on the pathetic state of daycare in our area I honestly have no idea how single parents manage) so I end up working the evening shifts.
My husband refuses to work an evening shift because it's "unsociable hours" and he "can't get anything accomplished because there's no time before getting up and leaving for work" etc etc. At the hotel the evening shift ends at 8:00 pm sometimes as late as 9:00 pm. Did I mention I get home at midnight? Later if my client requires last minute care or evening report takes longer.
On top of the paid labour force aspect of things is the house and home. I still do all the grocery shopping. I prepare the list, buy the groceries, divvy up the meat into portions and freeze it, put the groceries away and so on and so forth. I clean out the rabbit cage and the rat cage, I feed the dogs, cats, rabbits and rats and make sure they have fresh water. When I'm home I make our daughter help but when she's home with dad he just leaves her to play on the ipad and doesn't make her do anything.
He's been complaining for a week now about cat hair in the bathroom sink and globs of toothpaste on the bathroom counter. "Aren't you going to clean that?" So I left it partly because I'm so exhausted I can barely think straight and partly because he's a grown man and is perfectly capable of taking a wet facecloth and wiping out the sink. Today (I'm working an evening shift again) I took 2 minutes in the bathroom to wet a facecloth, wipe the counter (the globs of toothpaste are his btw), clean the soap dispenser (I'm not sure how he manages to make the soap drip down the side of the dispenser), clean the cat hair and human facial hair out of the sink, put his icky, hair covered razor back in the cabinet, put his toothbrush back in the holder and put the cap back on his toothpaste (I use Sensodyne, he uses Colgate), put the wet facecloth in the laundry hamper and go about my day.
Then I went into the kitchen and emptied the dishwasher (he was home all day yesterday while I was at work), refilled the dishwasher with the dirty dishes scattered around the house (including a dinner plate, knife and fork on the floor in the living room), wiped the counter then sat down to write this rant.
I consider him to be one of the "good guys". He vacuums and rage tidies (by the time it comes to his day off the house has become a mess again so he rage tidies the house - I haven't had a day off in 16 days fwiw), he looks after our daughter by putting her to bed at night and he makes her lunch on Mondays and drives her to and from school, he cooks supper (frozen pizza, frozen lasagna or frozen meals that I've pre cooked, packaged and put in the freezer) on days when I'm working and cooks the pork chops/bacon what not on days when I'm home.
I had my daughter scheduled to go to Sylvan learning centre for math help on Monday evenings in Nanaimo and everything was fine, I'd drop her off and do the shopping or read a book while she was doing her work. Then I picked up a new, regular client on Monday evenings so it fell to him to take her. This particular client was only a 2 hour shift so I would get home about 10 minutes before they were due to be home. 3 weeks in a row I came home to find him watching TV on the couch and our daughter on the ipad playing Roblox. He had forgotten to take her. We still had to pay for those missed lessons because they were no shows. So I changed her time to Thursdays which is my usual day shift day so I could take her myself. She hasn't missed a lesson since but it's yet another thing that I have to do because he's too freaking lazy/stupid whatever to do.
On his days off he likes to drink coffee. Does he drink a cup of coffee then rinse out the cup and reuse it? No. Of course not. He drinks a cup of coffee, leaves the empty (actually he always leaves about 1/2 inch in the bottom of the cup) cup where he happens to be when he finishes (I once found a cup wedged into the crotch of our tree in the garden). He drinks 4-5 cups of coffee a day and guess who has to collect all the cups and put them in the dishwasher?
I swear the fact that heterosexual women exist at all is all the proof you need that sexuality is not a choice. Living with a man is like living with a belligerent, lazy, messy child who triples your work load. Not only do I have to do the regular tasks to ensure a smooth running household I also have to make up for his inability to do anything even remotely useful.
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