Not Quite a Piece of Cake

My hat's off to all of the women in the world who have chosen the toughest career anyone can have, being a homemaker (or domestic engineer if you prefer). How do I know this? I was a homemaker for a number of years. That's right, I was a "Mr. Mom."

It started when I went back to college to finish my degree. After some discussion, the former Mrs. Bagley and I felt that the best way to accomplish this task was a role reversal, she'd go back to working full time, and I'd take care of the house and kids while carrying a full load at school. At the time, I remember thinking that it would be a piece of cake. Riiiight! Was I in for a big surprise.

One of the first things I quickly learned was, when it comes to house chores, my ex-wife could accomplish in an hour what it took me three hours to do. Plus, house chores got me into a lot of trouble.

While in a hurry one day, I decided it would be quicker to throw all the dirty clothes into our tired old washing machine at once . . . colors and whites. Needless to say, ex-wifey wasn't at all enthusiastic about her hot pink and passionate blue underwear and blouses.

Now, the load of wash was immense. So, naturally, I figured that meant I should put in a large amount of soap--I quickly learned the meaning of the word concentrated which was printed all over the bottle of detergent.

It didn't take long and the old washer began acting like a rabid animal. It foamed at the mouth. It bounced, rumbled and shook, until it seemed the whole house would collapse.

At first, while checking for the source of the ruckus, I shot out of the laundry room, fearing I was about to be eaten by some diseased creature. I'm telling you, it was like a B-grade science fiction movie. But, when I realized it was only the washer, I remembered what a lady at a laundromat once told me about how fabric softener kills soap suds. I waded through the sea of foam to the washing machine, reached up and grabbed the fabric softener from a shelf, and poured some into the machine. With the detergent problem solved, all that was left to do was to jump on top of the machine to hold down its bouncing and just ride out the cycle like some bull rider in a rodeo. By the time it was all over I had a feelling a-kin to what the All Around Champion of the NFR (National Finals Rodeo) must feel when he wins the silver buckle.

A few months later, I was loading the dishwasher on a Sunday morning. Since I hadn't washed the dishes the night before, I figured I 'd better get that done first off.

After loading the dishwasher, I reached down into the cupboard under the sink, looking for the detergent. What I found was a bottle of liquid dish soap. "Hmmm," I thought, "Wifey must have bought some of that liquid dishwasher soap instead of the granular kind we normally use." WRONG! Oh, it was liquid soap all right--the kind used for washing dishes in the sink!

Well, I went into the bathroom to shave. My former wife woke up at about the same time and decided to shower. So, she went to shut off the dishwasher so she'd have enough hot water when, from the kitchen I heard, "O--h Do--ug, come he--re."

At first, I thought maybe the washing machine had been rabid after all and had bitten the dishwasher, giving it hydrophobia. Foam was oozing out from around the cracks of the dishwasher door and spilled out over the kitchen floor.

Getting all the suds out of the dishwasher, as well as off of the dishes and silverware inside of it, was not an easy task. We had to take the silverware tray out of the machine and rinse it and its contents in the kitchen sink. Since the dish tray was too big for the sink, we had to take it and put it in the bathtub to shower off the soap. We then ran the empty dishwasher on the rinse cycle...twice. Then we turned the control knob to the function which empties the dirty water from the dishwasher into the sewer and ran that cycle...twice.

A week later, I thought I'd surprise former wife by getting some badly needed mopping done. I still don't understand why she was so upset with me. I mean, I thought the streaks on the walls which the mop had left behind sort of added character to the place.