Ash-Matic Does Domestic Discord

Uh oh. I’m in trouble.

Miss-Matic has guests. And when Miss-Matic has guests, the laws of chaos seem to inexplicably change.

Normally, when I walk into a someone’s home and see an unwashed mug, the roof of that home does not sag and collapse and kill all the occupants.

Usually, when I’m sitting on a friend’s sofa and spot a crumb on the floor, a madman does not leap through the window in a cloud of glistening glass shards, and slaughter everyone in the room in particularly bloody and brutal ways.

And never, in my personal experience, upon spotting a coffee ring on a horizontal surface – which is usually a good thing, a sign that the surface is sufficiently robust should I wish to rest a warm beverage on it – have I caused the eruption of a solar flare of such magnitude that it boils the oceans and sterilises the planet down to bedrock.

You would not believe Miss-Matic hasn’t experienced these things if you had ever witnessed her expecting guests.

We all know that chores are one of life’s many, many ways of letting you know that you are its bitch. You can procrastinate about them, put them off longer and longer – and that’s exactly what I do – but sooner or later you have to bend over and take the washing-up brush, or get on your knees and shine something, or some other thinly-veiled reference to getting fucked.

But even when I do submit and do the chores, they inevitably get me in just as much trouble as if I hadn’t bothered.

The day before her guests were due, Miss-Matic left me with a few chores to do. One was related to clothes – watering them, talking to them, or something – so they dried properly. The other was to vacuum the floor.

So, fearing her wrath, I did my chores.

I didn’t procrastinate after the first couple of hours of procrastination – I just got straight on with the vacuuming. I pushed the big noisy Dyson all around the flat, this way and that, allowing it to do its fancy cyclonic separation of dust and everything else, and pausing only to persuade it that it didn’t like eating socks.

I pushed it into every room I’ve so far managed to find in the flat, and even imagined I was pushing it into more exotic rooms filled with dragon-treasure or lusty harems of household-appliance fetishists, and by the time I was done I was exhausted.

I dragged the vacuum cleaner back to its spot in the spare room, and inspected my handywork. A warm glow of pride came over me. I knew I had done a good day’s work, and imagined that only people who build orphanages might experience such satisfaction with their daily efforts.

And so, to reward myself, I made a mug of tea, and didn’t do any of my mounting load of assignments until Miss-Matic got home.

Miss-Matic walked in the door. There was the usual jumping-up and licking of faces, and then she looked around and said, ‘Have you done the floors?’

Yeah,‘ I said proudly. ‘See how clean they look! Take me now!

What’s that?‘ Miss-matic asked, pointing to a dusty spot on the floor.

Uh,‘ I replied. ‘That wasn’t there before.

And look at that! All around the door frame!

But… But I did that bit!

And look at all this!

Look at what?

THIS!

Uh….

‘I might as well have done it myself!

Um…

As if I don’t have anything else to do when I get home!

‘Er…

Half a job! You always do half a job!

Uh…

and so on.

I swear, I did the fucking vacuuming. I have no idea what happened. Was it my eyes? Are my eyes broken? I didn’t see any dust or crumbs, or leaves or old newspapers, or burned-out cars or whatever else her hawk-like eyes might have seen. Maybe she DOES have amazing eyes. Maybe she was just looking at the kind of hard-to-kill bacteria that even napalm has trouble killing.

All I know is that I hate chores, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that they hate me back.

 

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30 Responses

  1. cestlavie22 says:

    Lol!!! I know EXACTLY how you feel. When I lived with my parents my mom was the exact same way. Luckily I had my dad who knew her craziness in this area and I could laugh it off with him!

  2. lily says:

    Ash-Matic, if you don’t have a billion followers by the end of the year, I will personally chew my left leg off and post it on youtube!

  3. sporkgasm says:

    I laughed out loud at the satisfaction of building orphanages part. I am an insanely clean person so in order to not want to kill my boyfriend for doing a half-assed job, I simply don’t ask him to clean anything. The two times he has done the dishes, I had to rewash them and it just annoyed me. So now I do all the cleaning, and I’m okay with that.

    • Ash-Matic says:

      Marry me!

      I mean, uh, that’s nice.

    • sporkgasm says:

      Oh, he has to make up for it in other ways. Believe you me! Too tired at sexy time? Too bad, I do all the cleaning!

      Don’t want to drive when we go out to eat? Too bad, I do all the cleaning!

      I think you get the picture. Haha

    • HeatherL says:

      Spork – I think it is a man thing because my husband can’t seem to do any chores properly either so I too just don’t ask anymore. I do it all myself and feel good knowing that they are done to my standards!

  4. Kait says:

    Oh I am certain they WERE clean when you were done. However, the light probably changed round by the time Mis-Matic arrived home. And in that new light – dirt which was not there in the other light – was now visible. Damn dust only comes out at certain light levels. Perhaps she does not appreciate this fact. They only way to beat it would be do vacuum continually and lord knows that is not feasible. Ergo, accept the bad-light dust.

  5. Leauxra says:

    It’s a matter of goals. She wants a spotless house…think getting your car detailed so that it’s cleaner than new. You just want to get the job done and have some sex (which is also a perfectly respectable goal).

    My boyfriend once mentioned that if you do a crappy enough job often enough, people will stop asking you do do things. Of course, he TOLD me this, so now I tell him, “practice makes perfect…”

  6. At least you vacuumed all the rooms. My husband will vacuum 1/2 of the living room and leave the vacuum sitting in the middle of the room, and he expects me to get all excited about his accomplishment.

    • Ash-Matic says:

      Foolish man. At least I put it away afterwards. Mind you, then Miss-Matic had to go and get it to vacuum it her own satisfaction, and I could have saved her the effort by leaving it out. Maybe your husband is wise after all…

  7. Addman says:

    I can only sympathise, my friend. It’s saddening that doing chores does not always end in fellatio. It’s like she just doesn’t understand how fellatable I really am.

  8. Misty says:

    I think it’s a matter of perspective . . . she cares that the house is spotless so she will see any imperfection. You only care that she not yell at you for not doing what she asked, so you do what she asked. But you aren’t examining your work for perfection, just doneness. I think she either needs to lower her standards or you need to step up your game. OR, you need to devise a sexy time game involving the vacuum. Win-win for both of you!!

  9. Ellen Lloyd says:

    Hahahahaha! I have a terrible vacuum cleaner, so I feel your pain. The darn thing refuses to pick up lint, hair, threads, or anything even remotely stringy… >:(

  10. It seems like there’s always more dust or dirt, not matter how many times you go over something with a vacuum cleaner. It must be a conspiracy.

  11. adot says:

    I’ve given up on my roommates cleaning to my standards, dont worry, your wife will end up doing the same eventually. I do all the cleaning for 6 girls alone, we don’t have a Dyson though, we have some space junk that was likely used as a shield in WW1 or something…

  12. Light a match, collect on insurance… done. No need to worry about the chores and you can hire a maid for the next house 🙂 haha

  13. Jeremy Bates says:

    Your better half sounds a lot like someone I know. I’d ‘do’ chores and, like you, be overly proud of my accomplishments…until the inspector got back to my place of eternal slavery.

    A rasp, military sounding voice would berate me thus, “You call this cleaning?!” His white-gloved hand would reach where I couldn’t with a fire ladder and wipe dust onto his precious, cotton glove.

    Me: “Well, I…uh,… I…”

    Him: “I could have done a better job cleaning with a toothbrush and a blindfold.”

    Me: “Okay, then, do it, Heloise.”

    SFX: Bip! Boom! Bam! Slap!

  14. DWei says:

    I think you should let her do the floors next time. And then be as picky as possible and find all the spots that she misses.

    I highly doubt she’s as discerning as she makes herself out to be.

  15. LOL. Things always manage to get back on the floors after I do them to. I often wonder ‘whats the point’? It’s just gonna get dirty again. Blah. That said, I do go a little cleaning crazy when we’re having guests too.

  16. HeatherL says:

    I’m going to go out on a limb here and claim that women are crazy about things getting done the “right” way. As a woman I can say that, it’s okay. Men on the other hand, don’t see the need to get it right, they just want to get it done.

    My husband doesn’t clean the way I want him to so I eventually just stopped asking. Occasionally, he volunteers and I let him knowing that I’ll have to go back later and fix whatever he helped me with. That being said, if I need something done on the car he is all over it! The trade off works well for us.

  17. The Beans says:

    Sounds like Miss-Matic is turning into my mother…

    And have you gone around to doing the dishes, or not yet? 😛

    -Barb the French Bean

  18. My wife is the same way. I can spend hours cleaning and each time it’s not even thank you, it’s, “Why did you even bother? I’m just going to have to do this all over again.”

    It’s like women can see this molecular level of dirt that no man can see, because it looks clean to me, dammit!

  19. Ash-Matic says:

    Thanks for all the comments, folks. Seems like there are two type of people in this world – people who do what I do, and people who don’t like what I do and end up doing it themselves!

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