that extra child.

i'm currently reading please excuse my daughter by julie klam. i wouldn't really recommend the book. i've thought about not finishing it several times. it's just ok, but when i came across this little section and laughed out loud, i had to share.

discussing her and her boyfriend's roles in their home, she explains:

    though he and i were working the same hours at the same place, i took over the running of the apartment... paul made money better than i did, but i kept our apartment better... one night i asked paul to put the wash in, and he came back upstairs with too many quarters.

    "what happened?" i inquired.

    "it all fit into one washer," he said proudly.

    i walked otto and called jancee to "share." she'd lived with men before.

    "i have a complaint," i said.

    "oh, good. what is it?" ....

    i told her about paul's "help." "nothing in the middle of the washer could oscillate!" i said.

    "oh please, they're all like that," she said... "i call it 'toddler helping.' because they make a big show of doing it and you have to give them tons of praise and then do it over when they walk out of the room. just like a toddler. you know how you're baking something and a toddler drags a chair over and climbs onto it and you think, 'oh no, oh please go watch a video.'"

    "it's true!" i said. "and now i won't ask him to do it again."

    she responded, "i'm sure he'll be real brokenhearted."

    "that's their plan, you know," she continued. "do it badly and then you won't ask again."

sorry, men. don't mean to bash you here, but this all rang too true with me and was stated in a rather hilarious analogy! of course, i'm sure if they did these things all the time, they'd figure out how to do it perfectly like we do over time. ;)

Comments

[Jay]

This made me laugh too. I can't really defend our species along these lines.

[Evie]

This is just like an Everybody Loves Raymond episode. It was hilarious!