How men think

Is something that bemuses me on an almost daily basis.

First I have to say that I think myself very lucky with Mr. C. He cooks well and often, he isn’t averse to housework though needs a little prompting and he enjoys and takes his turn in looking after Baby C.
However he is a man and his way of thinking is sometimes a little strange to me and this extends to his view on housework.

According to some study somewhere it is still the woman in mixed couples that does the majority of the housework, even if both partners are in full time work. This shows just how far we have to go yet before fellas understand it isn’t all women’s work. Or it shows how far women have to go to get over the “oh for goodness sake just give the mop to me” and “if you want the laundry doing properly, do it yourself” reactions.

For myself I try to get over these using two strategies. The first is to appreciate that Mr. C is doing something and even if it isn’t how I would do it then the world won’t stop turning and the floor will be clean enough. The other is for jobs that I am fussy over – that would be the laundry – I do it all myself so that I don’t get annoyed with him doing it his way. I did try to give him a Madame C laundry masterclass, but the effects didn’t last and he clearly thought I was embracing my inner control freak a little too much. So now I do the laundry and everyone is happy.

I have wondered off the point but what I was trying to tell you about was an incident with the Mr. C, the broom and the kitchen floor.
Mr. C cleaned and mopped the floor and a couple of days later I said it needed doing again and he looked down, freaked out at the sight of a bit of onion peel and said; “but I just did it the other day and it was clean” or something to that effect.
I answered along the lines of; “yes, but it has got dirty and needs cleaning again”

Now here is the curious thing, why does Mr. C believe that once a job is done it should stay done regardless of the march of time? He has this attitude with Baby C’s nappies. If she is grizzly he might ask me when I changed her nappy or if she is clean. I usually reply that she was clean when I changed her but might have done a poo since then.

I am not always sure if some of Mr. C’s odd views come out odder because he isn’t using his first language but I am pretty sure this isn’t one of those times. In the end the only way I could explain why I found the view silly and slightly frustrating was to use a diving metaphor. It would be the same as Mr. C complaining that a full cylinder didn’t stay full after and got used for diving. So now when Mr. C starts along these lines I can just say to him; “but this cylinder was full when I filled it!”