Have you seen those books in the bookstore called Porn for Women? Inside this book are some images that women truly find sexy…(hunky) men in aprons vacuuming, cleaning windows, scrubbing toilets, agreeing to see a chick flick- all the things I can’t get my husband to do in real life. Except one. Vacuum. Let  me tell you a story about the first time we talked about housecleaning. It was the first months of our marriage and I came home from work (I was still in the Army then) and my (new) husband proudly announced:

 I swept the floors for you!

Me: Do what now?

Him: I swept the floors for you.

Me: You swept the floors for whom?

Him (starting to catch on that this conversation was going horribly wrong): uh….you?

Me: No. You swept the floors because YOU LIVE IN THIS HOUSE and I AM NOT YOUR DAMN MAID.

I don’t think he meant anything by the comment, and to his credit he has always done 50% (or more) of the chores around here. The only time I vacuum is when he is deployed or TDY, and, even then, not as often as he would do it were he home. Nonetheless when he is home, the agreement has always been, if I don’t like the way he does it, then I am welcome to do it myself. An offer I usually decline ever so graciously. But there are some chores, that no matter how easy a machine makes it, I will not do. I will spend my last dollar paying someone ELSE to do it for me. My hubby, bless his cheap ass soul, won’t pay this money, and seeing that I won’t do it, does it himself. A great example of this is rug cleaning. Am I not a supporter of the great American worker if I pay someone else to do it? And if those fine America workers don’t do it, don’t the terrorists win? So you see, by paying someone else to do it, I am really supporting the global war on terror. Hubby disagrees with this fine American notion and so every so often I get my own version of Porn for Women:

Yes, that is my husband in his Mom Jeans, on the floor with the rug cleaner. Why is he on his hands and knees? Because he has to guide the cleaner just right so it will get all the dirt up. Uh huh. Sure. Whatever you call it, it’s the sexiest picture I ever saw.