Epigraph

“I hate housework. You make the beds, you wash the dishes,
and six months later you have to start all over again.”--Joan Rivers

She Said: Debi, mother

My daughter Elizabeth doesn’t appreciate how hard previous generations of women in our family worked.

Great-Grandma Beulah, at age eight, rose before the sun to bake bread for her family of thirteen and all the hired hands. Grandma Ione, at age ten, cleaned their farmhouse by herself every week and scrubbed floors on her hands and knees.

Me? When I was in grade school I had to keep my room clean by regularly stashing its clutter behind boxes in the attic, thus proving that each generation of American women works harder than the one before.

Yet Elizabeth views household chores as a violation of the Diva Convention which established that no teenage daughter must do anything she’s not in the mood for.

“Maturity means you do your job, whether or not you feel like it,” I told her. (That’s a direct quote from the Sleeva Convention which established that mothers are required to teach their daughters how to roll up their sleeves and apply elbow grease.)

“But Mo-om, I have plans today!”

“Then stop whining and start cleaning.”

“But the bathrooms are disgusting!”

“If you’d clean them more often it wouldn’t be such a big deal.”

“But I’m not the one who messed them up!”

“If you say ‘but’ one more time, I’m gonna give yours a good whack. Now do your job so we can all go on with our lives.”

At this point, Elizabeth stomps off to start scrubbing with her patented “Little Miss Shortcut” method. She claims that the smell of cleaning products makes her sick. Right. Sick of cleaning. Her shortcut is to use a watered-down substitute that doesn’t remove soap scum from the tile or get the toothpaste splatters off the mirror.

That’s not clean in my book.

Come to think of it, that didn’t qualify as clean in my mother’s book either when she taught me how to scrub a bathroom within an inch of its life. But I’m reformed. Year by year I’ve lowered my household hygiene standard like a limbo stick until it’s so low only a Barbie convertible could clear it. And yet when I point out to Elizabeth that the trash is still full or the soap dish is still gloppy or the tub is still icky, she gives me her “you’re a bossy tyrant” glare. It doesn’t phase me. Give her fifteen years or so and she’ll be calling me to say, “My daughter doesn’t clean correctly and then accuses me of being bossy!”

Just like I did to my mom.

*          *          *

She Said: Elizabeth, daughter

Goggles and face mask? Check.

Yellow rubber gloves that leave a smelly white residue on my hands? Check.

Power sander for soap scum? Check.

When Mom wrote her first book, I started doing most of the housework. Unfortunately that included the bathrooms. I must have gone through 500 rolls of paper towels since then, but according to Mom it should’ve been 5,000 because the bathroom is never clean enough. I believe that once, once, after her white-gloved inspection she offered her hand in congratulations. She wants the bathrooms cleaned very specifically with lots of bleach and elbow grease because otherwise “it is not actually clean.”

The cleaning fumes make me light-headed. They also leave me smelling like a chemical pot-luck. My choice of orange cleaner works better and has a pleasant scent.

There’s another reason for hating bathroom duty: We have elves. Messy, mischievous elves that like to destroy all my hard work.

Picture this: I am dressed in Cinderella-like cleaning clothes, kneeling on the floor with my bucket and my scrub brush. I push myself up from the glistening floor and dab perspiration from my brow. My sigh is a mixture of exhaustion and satisfaction.

Then the elves come to prance around my sparkling bathroom and wreak mayhem.

First there is the toothpaste elf. In his dental hygiene wake are trails of gooey minty-ness. In the sink, on the counter, and how he gets it on the toilet is beyond me.

Second is the wet towel elf. After creating quarts of condensation to streak the mirror and moisten the walls, he leaves sopping wet towels on the floor and counter.

Finally there is the hair elf. She dances about the bathroom singing lame ‘70s songs as she blow dries and styles her hair. Strands litter the once sparkling linoleum like flaws in a diamond. As she twirls about, she scolds, “I told you to clean the bathroom, Elizabeth, but you didn’t do a thorough job. Look at all the toothpaste globs, wet towels, and hair you missed.”

“You….you…you people are the ones who leave messes! It was wondrously clean just moments ago! All this hair is yours!”

“No it’s not. My hair is not that long and it’s not that color.”

Even after I get the DNA results back from the lab showing a perfect match, Mom (I mean, the hair elf) still refuses to acknowledge the indisputable evidence that I am the victim here.

*          *          *

How Would You Deactivate the Bossy Button?

a. Buy a Haz-Mat suit to make a statement.

b. Sprinkle moth balls under Debi’s bed to exact odiferous revenge (moowahahaha!)

c. Leave the elves to fend for themselves.

Debi Says...

Dear Reader,
Have you noticed a trend in the advice my friends give me? Besides their demands to discuss my problems over cheesecake, they tend to side with my daughter! Sort of reminds me of Proverbs 27:6 which says (in my paraphrase), “Authentic friends give you the painful truth with one hand, followed by a sincere hug with both arms.” Here’s what they said this time:

God says...

“Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing....” (1 Peter  3:8-9a, NIV).

Help me say...

“God, I hate these pointless and stressful ruts of conversation my daughter and I get into sometimes! Without your help, we’re doomed to disharmony. Too often we want to chastise the other but have compassion for ourselves, when it should be the other way around. Please calm our minds and keep our hearts soft toward one another. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

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