SEPTEMBER 4 - Super Me, and Poor Poor Men (A Rerun)

Me today: At work, I washed a window (the note from my boss said to wash it inside, outside, from top to bottom - which I thought was a rather strange way of putting it), restocked yarn, swept corners, vacuumed the floor, took a summer display out of above window and put everything on the shelves/pegs where they belonged, watered the plants, took out a huge box of cardboard, two bags of garbage and a recycling bin of paper, went to the bank for change, showed people how to knit these gd ruffle scarves, worked the till,and did the deposit. After work I slapped some dinner together for me and him, cleaned the litter box, took out garbage and recycling, did dishes, got the coffee pot ready for tomorrow morning's brew, and mopped the laundry room floor.

I'm sure he had a busy day at work too. But after he got home, all he had to do was drive to the sky train station to pick me up, eat dinner, and lie down for a pre-bedtime nap.

And that made me think of something I wrote a couple of years ago, something that a lot of you have already read. But I'm going to copy it here anyway, because I bet there are some of you who haven't read it.

POOR, POOR MEN

(from Tamar's Day Off, 11/09/10)

So , I wake up this morning, and as I sip my hour-old coffee (I set the coffee pot so the coffee's fresh and hot and aromatic when my husband, a 'today' man, rolls his butt out of bed), I log into Yahoo! and this is what I read:

Why men think they have it harder today

New survey reveals why men today think they're worse off than those of previous generations

Yeah, right. Today's man has such a rough life. I'm wondering are they comparing it to cavemen days, when, dressed in rough buffalo skins and maybe sporting pretty peacock feathers in their hair, they had to actually go poke these same buffaloes to death with pointy sticks, then drag them home without the benefit of big noisy vroom vroom four-wheel bikes, then off course, after they dumped the bloody carcasses off at the doorstep, sit crosslegged in front of the bonfire ooging and arghing over the hunt, carefully guarding their privates from the occasional flanker floating from the flames? (I know, I know...bloody long sentence there, put up with it.)

Or maybe it's the cowboys they are comparing themselves to. Long hot days driving cattle across the plains, sun pouring from the heavens and rendering their Axe antiperspirant useless, camping on the stony riverside and trying to sleep with sharp rocks in the middle of their backs and occasionally getting caught in a flash flood and waking up miles downstream, thinking they had wet themselves before realizing the river had indeed wet them, then having to get up, dry off with the help of a few leaves and insect-infected mosses, and climb over stabby bushes and snake pits and bear dens to their herd, all set for another boring day of the same old, same old.

Or maybe even more recent times, when a fisherman would get up before dawn, and row out to the fishing grounds with his nets and jigger and a cup of weak tea in his belly, come home soaking wet with cold ocean spray frozen on his whiskers, and before breakfast, clean and gut his catch, then spend the rest of the day loitering around mending his boat, his nets, cutting his firewood, hauling it out of the forest on a wheelbarrow (if he was lucky enough to have one), tending his potato garden, slaughtering a pig for supper, and reading the Bible to his kids before sending them to bed with a clout in the ear.

Meanwhile, the women, instead of rising at seven and eating high fibre cereal from a pretty rose-painted bowl before heading out to work, would, at their respective times:

- skin that bloody buffalo, make buffalo soup, buffalo stew, roast buffalo, buffalo pot pie, buffalo pancakes,,,etc etc, sew the bloody buffalo skin into little man skirts and shoes, but not man underpants as one of the few enjoyments she got was seeing her man jump and holler when one of those flankers from the bonfire found its way to his joystick

-stay home at the ranch, beat marauding Indians (sorry, I don't mean to be politically incorrect, but c'mon, now, we've all seen these Clint Eastwood and John Wayne movies) and Fuller Brush salesmen over the heads with cast iron frying pans and rolling pins (their husbands having taken all the rifles on the roundup), weed the fields, aerate the lawn, sew the curtains, take care of the kids  (at least ten, each one of them nine months younger than the one before), bake the bread, do the laundry, figure out how to set up wireless Internet, and then decide what to do in her spare time

- get her husband his first breakfast, his second breakfast, his mid morning lunch, his lunch, his three o'clock lunch, his supper and his bedtime lunch, fry fish, boil fish, dry fish, bottle fish, stew fish - and dig up a few spuds to go with same fish, plus everything the cowboys' wives did, except of course, the Indian part

So there you go, you poor fellers. Of course you have it tough. Go polish something - your Italian shoes, your Dodge Ram truck, your designer sunglasses. Drink something - your Starbucks lowfatfrozendoublecaramelfrappucini, your imported beer, your chamomile tea sweetened with stevia. Watch something - Victoria's Secret ads, hockey/football/softball (whatever's in season), the Detroit news channel.

Just quit bitchin' to us women - we're too busy doing everything we used to, plus half of what you used to - when you were REAL men!

Suck it up, buttercup.