The Old Girl Chronicles

Maybe there’s a few miles left in her yet. I retired a few years ago, bad health and too much effort ploughed into my time on the line just wore me down. The wife, like the battery, just keeps on keeping on... Thank God.

Her part-time job keeps bread on the table as well as those few luxuries we’ve become fondly attached to, stuff like soup to dip the bread in really rounds out a day. Learning to manage on a tight budget wasn’t easy but we got on with what we had to do. Turning off a light when you leave a room is basic stuff, saving those little stubs of soap until you have six or seven to squeeze together making one big lump is an acquired habit. Being the househusband I learned to search high and low for money saving ideals early in the retirement, I even searched the women’s magazines, when I could do so in the supermarket without having to pay for them, now the wife doesn’t know I do that so don’t tell her, you see, I make fun of her when she does it. All those househusband duties are second nature to me now, I just do my work with minimal complaining.

Tonight I was thinking about things from her point of view, you know, an open mind, without the man’s attitude toward “women’s work”, that kind of thing. You might be wondering what brought on this contemplative interruption to my life, I’ll tell you. Last week she asked me to put an advertisement in the paper.

We had been quietly discussing the polarizing filter for my camera which I’d managed to purchase with the few cents a week I somehow saved from the housekeeping money. That was when she said with strong determination and grim lips, “Write this down! Work wanted...“House Cleaning”.

You could have knocked me down with a feather, she was going to sell me, farm me out as a servant, make money from my labour...hang on, it suddenly occurred to me that something like this was already going on. Here I was at home taking care of things there, while she was out earning a wage, part time it might be but working for other people and being paid for it is still work of sorts. I thought a moment, then I thought for another moment, and so on, then I looked at her and said:

“Alright, you’ve been saying that I’m always bothering you when you’re reading, that I’m in the way, Okay, I wouldn’t mind going out and doing some light housework for people, I just don't have the time."

My forced smile was wide but suddenly became real when she replied “Not for you stupid, for me.” Those words hurt me, literally, I had been polishing her bowling ball at the time and dropped it in shock, my right foot, mostly the big toe.

I picked up the ball as she tried to control her laughter, luckily I was sitting at the time and didn’t have to bend far to reach it, my back was still in pain from the days vacuuming. She explained... the way she put it, was that time wore heavily on her shoulders, not one to sit and read her historical novels all day and having me to do the dishes and cooking, she sought something else to occupy her restless soul. It was impossible for me to argue against such profound logic, I had to agree that her idea was for the best. The advertisement was placed, $30 for the three lines including her mobile phone number, that would have been enough to buy the lens hood I needed for the camera.  With fingers crossed I hoped the ad would work.

You know, I’ve never thought of my wife as a salesperson, sure she’d sold men’s shoes many years ago in a department store, quite successfully as well, I’ve always put that success down to the fact that mini-skirts were in fashion then. I didn’t worry about the customers looking at her legs, but those two guys she worked with though. Anyway, her first call arrived very soon, she sold the benefit not the product, just like a professional marketer, I was proud of her.

Off she went the next morning to meet her first customer.  The lady showed her each room explaining the little details which, in her opinion needed special attention. Things like the corner where the dog curls up to sleep every afternoon, it needs extra vacuuming as does the cats favourite cushion on the couch where the sun shines the longest on cold days. Both cat and dog were long hairs of course. As the wife put it “The fun started when she showed me the first bedroom.”

My wife entered first and looked around, noting the ornaments which seemed to be everywhere in the house, the wife calls that decor “Nouveau Dust” I think it’s called clutter. She smiled at the ceramic chicken on the bed, thinking a strange place for a strange ornament much less a ceramic one, and with a dog in the house. The lady walked in saying how the en-suite bathroom was hardly used since here older son had moved out and taken his worm farm with him.

As they were leaving the room, the wife was surprised to hear the lady call out “Chook Chook, out you go”, she was even more surprised when the ornament jumped down from the bed and the lady nonchalantly exclaimed “Ah good, two eggs today.”

Isn’t it funny how you don’t really hear what a person’s saying when they’re rolling around on the floor laughing so hard they can’t breathe. The wife finally got out the part about the eggs, just before she had to run to the toilet, I’m not sure she made it in time.

JAWhite                                        Return to Main Page
May 2010 

Image of Beautiful young lady (sigh): Scott Snyder

Image of Chicken: Mikdesign

Image of the wife's Bowling ball: JAWhite