when there is no breakfast in bed without crumbs :-D
Its kind of embarrassing, but I dont really like to do anything for free.
I´m not talking about money, I am a good kid, raised with anti-establishment consciousness by baby-boomer/hippie parents in quasi-socialist post war Germany.
But when I go out of my own personal way for someone (instead of distributing government funds lol,) I expect them to reciprocate.
With one exception:
when "someone" is clearly unable to do something similar for me as I have done for them.
Let´s say a bee, and I have just saved her from drowning, I will be perfectly satisfied to bask in the glory of my kindness, and rely on the universe to compensate me at some point, while I watch the bee take off into the sunset.
Anybody else however, I keep a close eye on wether they will make it up to me in a fair measure.
Even when it is my dog.
I know of course that he is not capable of opening a tin of ravioli and warm it up for me.
And thats fine.
As long as I am convinced that he is doing what he can.
But beware doggie if one day you forget to wag your tail, jump up and down like a kangooroo on crack and give me the RECOGNITION I deserve when I open a tin for you lol.
On the other hand, I also dont like to admit just how calculating I am.
Therefore I have no choice but to pretend being generous, which means keeping up an appearance of nonchalance while lurking to make sure that my investment pays back.
A while ago, I met this guy whom I like.
He is living in another city, so usually he stays for a couple of days at a time when he comes to see me.
This arrangement has its charms but it also comes with some challenges.
I don´t generally like doing things together 24 hours, but then, I also dont want to waste what little time we have got.
I can pursue my solitary excentricty after he is gone, right ;-)
Or simply BREATHE.
As well as catch up on my sleep, and tidy the place back up.
Its not like my guy has no housetraining.
Its usually him who snatches up the dishes after a meal, but then there are all those other tasks in a household.
The ones that don´t have a SPECIFIC time and place.
And since I am not starting to wash the curtains while he is there, I m not really expecting him to do that either.
On his last visit, however, I discovered that there is at least one job where our concepts differ profoundly: does this task need to be performed immediately, or can it be left to the big spring clean?
It was the third evening.
The days before which we had spent running about town, going to exhibitions and avantgarde performances, and the previous two nights we had spent doing the usual.
I was in that state somewhere in the middle between washed out and eager for more.
Before going out again on the third night, loverboy said, would it be allright for him to have a shave?
I was a little puzzled. Why would he ASK. He also hadn´t asked me if he was allowed to use the toilet after his second visit or so lol.
But I didnt want to look stupid, so I did my best to guess the possible motive and replied:
" Of course dollface, although you look irresistably dangerous with that stubble, but I am sure you will look equally awesome when you are all neat as a pin like a mother-in-laws dream lol..."
And so he did.
When he came back.
The same delightfully beautiful guy, only better, because he looked different.
There was just one problem:
Because English is not my first language, you see, which means I run out of clever things to say.
So how could I tell him how much the sight of him pleased me, without sounding repetitive?
Hm... I guess I can still use my mouth allright... not to produce words, but lets see what happens if I press it against HIS mouth, his chin, smear kisses onto his neck...
slide down that beautiful chest, the smooth skin on his belly, find his dick and close my lips around it... and finally produce sound again as he is returning the favor.
When we look at the clock its half past time to leave. So much for ME dressing up, but at least I will need a quick dash to the bathroom to comb my hair or something when:
URGH!
What is this!
The sink looks like someone slaughtered a porcupine in there!
Although I am not sure if there ARE blond porcupines actually, but you get the idea.
So that is why he ASKED, aparently in his world, a sink is only ever cleaned once every other month, and he was concerned that I am gonna have to live with the mess for quite some time lol.
The truth is, I clean my sink virtually every day.
I am not talking of treating it with some water repelling ointment, of disinfecting or blowdrying it with my hair dryer lol.
I am talking of a quick rinse to remove the visible dirt, because to me, a clean sink is a such a soothing sight.
Having grown up in a hippie household, for most of my childhood, I didnt even know that sinks CAN be cleaned lol.
And I guess being able to have an unblemished looking one somehow visualizes the relief of no longer having to suffer the fallout of other people´s chaos in my LIFE either.
But what am I gonna do with this mess here now?
Can´t very well clean it up for HIM, or else I will feel like a housemaid.
Not the kinky type, the miserable one.
But I also can´t call him and ask that he do it because in spite of the superficial happy-go-lucky attitude in my family, truth is I was raised without any concept of adressing issues in a friendly and respectful manner.
The only conflict-solving strategy my parents have taught me is how to brush things under the carpet, and explode when the pile gets too big.
Be so horribly aggressive about it that the other party is going to cry, then ask for forgiveness and look for some spot together where there is space left under the carpet so that the whole cycle can start again.
Theoretically, there is an easy solution, now that I am a big girl, just stop with this nonsense and start practising.
How to raise an issue when it is still small, so that it might be possible to solve it without drama.
Try out how a sense of humour might alter the tone and come to think of it inform the other party that I am an absolute beginner so will they please not take it personal when I make a rookies mistake.
In practice, I have not yet come a very long way on this learning curve.
Kindergarten perhaps?
So if I give it my best shot, I might just manage not to explode.
I will probably come across like a governess instead.
Not the kinky type.
The miserable one.
And this really isn´t what I have had in mind for our last evening...
One week later.
I am in my bathroom again, spending 15 seconds to remove the specks of dust that have gathered on the sink since yesterday.
And while I go through this routine, a big grin emerges on my face.
Allright, allright, it was not exactly CORRECT to clean the sink myself after all.
But then, what are 73 seconds of cleaning if they pave the way for such a charming night...
What if one day he is done with the job that keeps him in the other city and wants to move to mine though?
I am not sure if I want him to move in with ME, but for sure I would love it if he lived in the same city. Only appartments here are hard to come by, so the realistic scenario would be that I offer him to live with me at least for a while.
And then, 73 seconds can accumulate.
I could probably also get HIM to do some things that I dont enjoy very much. The other day I took my bicycle to the shop because I couldnt get myself to go through my toolbox for the one tiny screw that I needed...
Besides, it´s not like he wouldn´t be doing any housework. But still. He will do things in a stupid way, and then I have even more work, besides the bike repair shop didn´t charge me for the screw, I just left a tip in favor of the coffee fund.
Not counting that deep down I know that I am not capable of honest accounting.
Obviously I will multiply my own time and effort by a factor of about 1.3
Whereas I will multiply HIS time and effort by the factor 0.6
Because I am a human being :-D
And let´s face it, we are a self centered species.
When I was in university, we had a chore wheel to make sure everybody did their part in keeping the house nice and tidy.
In our flatshare.
The schedule had been fashioned by the graphics design flatmate and hung in the kitchen.
I always made sure to do no more than 95 % of the work that I was supposed to do.
Although I felt guilty because if I was able to trade 95 % of my work against 100 % of someone elses, than I was effectively making a profit, but what could I do, I am a girl. And therefore I have to make SURE that it´s not me who gets taken advantage of in terms of housework, because that would not be progressive.
Unfortunately the other flatmates also were girls.
So on one day I did my 95 % and then the next girl did 95% of THAT and then the next girl...
until our place looked even worse than the parental home I had sworn to myself I would escape.
Still, it was a good time. Unlike secondary school, I was finally able to STUDY what I found worthwhile.
Like that economics class, ok we were reading Marx of course but our teacher wasn´t living in the past, so we were allowed to discuss how come socialism wasn´t able to motivate people as much as such a magnificent idea would deserve.
Incentive! that´s it!
We need to turn the problem around, stop talking about who has failed this or that, and give attention and reward to each other whenever somebody did something right instead.
Like we could have some sort of credit points for every household task, and then we can compete with each other who gathers the most credit points until, let´s say, saturday afternoon.
Only we will need to do a lot of documentation, and I am prone to loosing my notes which are scattered about on various snippets of paper. Which is particularly bad because when there is two of us in the house we will have to be especially well organized if we don´t want to drown in all our clutter, so creating MORE clutter is not such a good idea...
I know! What we need is an APP lol.
And the cool thing is, the App can also learn and help us to sort out the more fundamental questions.
Like are 30 minutes of vacuuming the same as 30 minutes of cooking?
What if I pick up loverboy´s parcel while I am walking the dog?
Speaking on the clock it is a 5 minute detour but I also have to walk a different way so I will be walking in the street for an extra 10 minutes instead of walking in the park.
My dog is a wonderful companion and great fun to walk with in the park, where he can run around unleashed, but in the street, I have to make sure he doesn´t run across and walking him ON the leash is a nightmare...
What if HE takes my dog when he goes for a round of jogging?
He will have aproximately 7 minutes of living hell on the way to and from the park, but THEN! the dog will keep him motivated, raise his reputation with fellow joggers and open up flirt opportunities here and there, because he is awfully cute. Both of them :-D
This means of course that we need to discuss wether he GETS credit points for taking the dog along or does he have to give some to me, but somehow I have the feeling that could be rather fun, and if saturday afternoon, sitting in our cheerfully tidy kitchen, the App concludes that "loverboy has a score of 123 credits as opposed to Grandmouse´ 97, therefore Grandmouse owes loverboy 1 hour and 24 minutes in which she will do whatever he wants", why, I couldn´t possibly find anything wrong with that :-D
This is a couch potatoe.
Nowadays it is sometimes misinterpreted as the mascot of lazy slobs, but in ancient Mesopotamia the couch potato was the goddess of a well run household, in which lovers or flatmates can relax without stress or anxiety, because all empty pizza cartons have been properly disposed of :D
I m giving away this couch potatoe to one of you dear readers.
Who is the lucky one will be decided by ordeal, ähm... lucky draw, on Sunday, 13th of October 2019, 5 pm Berlin time, in a live stream on my facebook page www.facebook.com/grandmouseflausch/
To enter, please like or comment any post linking to NEXT weeks' blog post (because I am updating this from the future lol) either on facebook or instagram. I am very curious what you think of my idea, do you think such an App could make a difference or is it all just no use because housework sucks, no matter how many clever plans we try to come up with?
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