Yesterday, Mr. A and I revisited what is becoming very familiar ground: we had an argument about cleaning the house. From what I can remember, it started a little something like this:
Me: “Since you made us get rid of the cleaning people, how many times have you cleaned the house?”
Mr. A: “I clean up the kitchen ever night after dinner!”
Me: “That is your normal job. How often have you done any additional cleaning?”
Mr. A: “? Additional cleaning?!? What’s that?”
Yeah, so when Mr. A campaigned to take this job (I was not enthusiastic because of the pay cut), he played the ‘I will work less’ card. And it is looking like it is true that he works a bit less at this job.
Don’t get me wrong, I am glad he works less, but the other side of that coin is he isn’t doing any additional work around here. At the same time, we fired the housecleaner, so I am doing a big chunk more cleaning.
The argument went around and around. Finally, we decided that we will take turns cleaning every other week. Since he hasn’t cleaned the house from top to bottom in the last 6 years, I nominated Mr. A to go first.
So, yesterday Mr. A cleaned. He started at 12:30 and didn’t get done until 8:30. Seriously, it took him 8 hours to clean the house. He did a good job, but it isn’t EIGHT HOURS clean.
After it was over, Mr. A tried to re-negotiate our deal. He kept saying, “Maybe I should just always be responsible for the bathrooms. I am good at cleaning them! I am not so good at the rest of the cleaning!”
I really think he was trying to play the incompetence card so I would free him from cleaning the rest of the house. I am an old hand at feigning incompence to get out of work, so I recognized that ploy right away. I pointed out that house cleaning is generally considered unskilled labor. He made it through Stan*ford law school, so I think if he puts his mind to it, he can LEARN to be more efficient and learn to do all the housecleaning tasks better and more efficiently.
After he cleaned, we had a debriefing and Mr. A acknowledged that the job of cleaning the house sucks, he didn’t realize how much it sucks and how much work it involved, and in the future he will chip in more.
I asked him if he understood now, why I was so annoyed with him and what the real problem was. (I was looking for his lack of assistance as the answer.)
His response:
“Yeah, I don’t make enough money right now. If I made more money, we would be able to pay people to do this work and we wouldn’t have to argue about it. We could also buy a new house so you would have a project to work on, instead of working on improving ME!”
Huh. I suspect, he might be correct. While money isn’t the source of our marital happiness, it certainly did grease the wheels a little.
________________________________________________
On a totally unrelated note and after much delay, here is the recipe a few people wanted:
Mr. A’s Famous Noodles:
This recipe was originally from Mr. A’s sister, but I think he changed it a little. I have my own adjustments that I will add my own notes to the recipe too. Also, sorry, we don’t have exact measurements, so you will just have to try to taste as you go.
Ingredients:
Fresh Chinese Wheat noodles (*not dried*, found in the refrigerator section of the chinese grocery.)
Ginger (we used the jarred crushed kind to save time)
Garlic (Sometimes we also used jarred diced garlic)
Sesame Oil
1 lb ground pork (can be lean ground pork)
4 scallions diced
half a bunch of cilantro, chopped
Oyster sauce
Black soy sauce (regular will work if you don’t want to buy black)
Instructions:
Boil the noodles per the package instructions.
Put a dollop of sesame oil in the wok/pan. Don’t heat it too hot because it will scorch. Saute about 1- 1.5 tablespoons of garlic and ginger in it. (My note: You aren’t supposed to cook sesame oil like that. I would use regular cooking oil for sauteing and then add the sesame at the end to taste. Mr. A does it this way though.)
Add in about 1/2 the scallions.
Mix in the ground pork and cook.
In a coffee mug, mix 3 parts oyster sauce to 1 part soy sauce. Exactly how much will depend on how big your noodle packet is. We use enough to fill about 3/4 of a mug. We like it saucy.
Add the cooked noodles to the pork mixture. Start mixing in the sauce until you get as much sauce as you like. Then throw in the rest of the scallions and the chopped cilantro.
Serve and enjoy. This makes a BIG portion.
