My friends Kathy and Bob Brown thought this story pretty funny and worthy of telling here on my blog; and while I do find it ridiculous that I have to stoop to a new manly moral low in order to get out of housework, perhaps it's worth sharing. Unfortunately, I will ruin things for a lot of guys, but I would encourage them to be creative in their approach to what I like to call "mucha casa laborious en absentia," or "out of much housework, none."
As many are aware, and as my poor wife has been painstakingly reminded time-after-time, I enjoy tooling around in the yard and in my garden. Not because I enjoy sweating like a fat kid standing in line at a donut shop; on the contrary, I toil in the yard so I don't have to help clean house (see also: garage cleaning, car washing and driveway sweeping).
Recently I noticed a bevy of dandelions and those prickly dandelion wannabe things growing in my yard. Brought on by a relatively windy spring and a lot of drought, weeds and crabgrass have run rampant this year. While many have seen this as an indication that the world is about to end, I saw this as an opportunity to be seized, molded and shaped for my personal benefit. In our garage we have these silly weeding tools that are forked on the business end and have wooden handles on the other. The idea is to dig under the weed, thereby grabbing the unwanted plant by the roots and removing it from the soil so that it doesn't have the opportunity to return.
My wife had announced early in the morning her desire to begin cleaning hardwood floors, vacuuming upstairs and de-bugging bathrooms. I took this as my cue to find something else to do and to keep me out of her crosshairs--she loves putting me to work doing things I hate!
I promptly remembered the dandelions and prickly dandelion wannabe things in the yard and quickly grabbed a pair of gloves and the silly gardening tool. I told my wife that these ugly weeds had to be removed immediately or we would run the risk of having them overtake our yard! She agreed and understandably told me to attack the yard with much fervor--and I did!
"Hey," he began, "I have some weed killer in my garage if you want to use it. You keep digging these things up and it'll take you forever."
My head snapped around and my eyes darted back and forth in hopes my wife hadn't overhead his comment.
"Dave, keep it down, man. If Cathy hears you say that I'll have to go in the house and help her clean. I have weed killer in the garage too, but she doesn't know that! I'm perfectly happy out here doing this, but if she thinks I can spray some stuff on these dandelions and get back in the house, where do you think I'll wind up being?"
Dave began to laugh but I stared him down with my most intense, serious face.
"Oh," he stammered, "you aren't kidding are ya?"
"No, I ain't kidding at all," I replied. "Now go away before she sees you over here. She already knows you're smart and I don't need her thinking you're telling me an easier way of doing this."
Dave walked back to his house and left me to my yard work. By days end the yard looked like a north Korean minefield with divots everywhere. I had dug up almost thirty pounds of weeds and most importantly, Cathy was finished with the housework.
Viva mucha casa laborious en absentia!
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