My 2010 Wifely Review

So how did I do as a housewife this year? Damn good if I must say so myself. I mean, I'll admit, I may be a little biased. But, for it being my first year doing this job, I think I did pretty well. Mind you, it hasn't been a full year. My husband may give a more honest opinion, but hey, he doesn't really blog.

Here's an honest critique:

Being married isn't what I expected. Working from home isn't what I expected. They've both exceeded my expectations. From the married couples I've seen, to the books I've read and the couples I've seen on TV, I really wasn't sure what to expect. Some people refer to Biblical principles (or the principles of whatever holy book they prefer) for marriage guidelines. There are just too many wives, concubines, unexplainable pregnancies and vagina substitutions for me to sift through. There are, however, some hot marriage/relationship/love one-liners in the Bible though.

What I've ended up doing is taking bits and pieces of what I know, think I know, heard, see and have seen. I try to take what I think will work best in any situation-good or less than ideal. Being malleable has proven to work wonders in marriage and work. Gold is malleable, and it is quite precious. Rigid things break. Think about it.

There is one person that has been a true asset to me, giving me years of wisdom to combat my years of inexperience-my grandma. Shout out to Mom Mom! (smile)

I'm a housewife, not a bum.

What makes a housewife? A wife that stays at home while her husband works. What does a housewife do all day? I think that depends on the individual person. When I tell people that I work from home, I swear they equate that as being unemployed. They look at me with what I call the "slanty face." You know the slanty face when you see it. It's a sad attempt at an understanding smile with a recognizable covering of disbelief. 

I've seen that look enough times to know that what it means. It means the person doesn't really think I do anything. Try to see if you can guess where the slanty face would go in this example (but typical) conversation:

Person: Where do you work?

Me: I work from home.

Person: Oh, so what do you do all day?

In case you couldn't guess, the slanty face goes after the "oh." This usually strikes up a curse that I have to fight to keep inside. There are lots of better responses-"What kind of work does that involve?" "What does that entail?" "What types of things do you do?"

It's the "oh" that gets me. I swear it's a shortened version of "Oh, you bum." All I'm saying is let's not make assumptions, and more importantly, don't underestimate my hustle.

Love as a battlefield-is it really?

Now, you know I love T.V. I can pull a life lesson from any show I watch. I was listening to one of those music choice channels, the ones that play music but no videos, and I kept hearing song after song about battles, struggles, and wars with love. For some reason, it got on my nerves. Plus, the songs repeat after a while. Overkill!  I turned on the T.V., thinking that I could escape from the depression-inducing music, and started watching "How I  Met Your Mother" (season 5/ episode 7 "The Rough Patch" if you care). At some point in the episode Barney says, "You know what they say about relationships. Every waking moment's a battle." 


Are you kidding me?! My train of thought seemed forced in one direction at this point. Is it true? Is love really that Hellish? I know from experience that love can be awesome, blinding, premature, hurtful and overwhelming. A battle though? 

I don't expect every day of married life to be full of sunshine, ponies, and pansies. However, I don't expect to have to build a defense strategy to get through it either. I am well aware that these folk said "love" and "relationship" and not marriage. But if marriage isn't the biggest testament of a loving relationship, I don't know what is! Now if I think back to my pre-marriage/ pre-housewife days, my worst love experiences had less to do with love and more to do with a heap of other emotions gone awry. Do I think love is a battlefield? No; but I could very well be wrong. I think love is always good. I think the particular situation, people involved and extenuating circumstance can project an aura of badness upon it. Maybe the real battlefield is all of the obstacles you have to get through in order to get to love-real love.

I can admit, he's a better cook.

My husband has been cooking up a storm lately, and dinner has been awesome. He comes at dinner with a whole entire plan. His preparation routine is vicious. He makes brews it over in his mind, makes phone calls...it's intense! Me? I think about dinner, let it go, search the 'net for ideas, and call my grandma. What's the difference between his tactics and mine? He has one meal in mind and follows through. Me on the other hand, I pick a meat, pick what I like from the advice, and hope it works out for the best.

This past week, I made a breaded chicken breast. Ingredients: cheese, garlic powder, bread crumbs I made from leftover buttery biscuits, and a bunch of other seasonings. It turned out pretty good. My husband made steak(w/ onions and peppers of course) w/ roux, broccoli and rice. I'd never even heard of roux before, but I won't ever forget it now!

So, why do I think my husband is a better cook? Well, because he's more methodical with his cooking. I'm more helter skelter. Yumminess tends to occur at any rate, so hey.

Chicken cooking in the oven

Finished chicken dinner

Steak in the making

Finished Steak dinner

If I were a T.V. wife

I like shows that are centered around families-not to be confused with family shows. So I was watching reruns of one of my favorite shows-That 70's show. As I watched Kitty try to solve everyones' problems with food,I came to a realization: Hey, I tend to do that. I started wondering if I were like any other T.V. wife. Have you ever done that? I don't think I am fully like one particular wife, but I do think that I have a characteristic or two from a few different ones.

Here are the ones I came up with for me and why:

Kitty (That 70's show) - for how she deals with food (not her alcoholism)

Roseanne (Roseanne) - for her constant sarcasm & willingness to do whatever she needs to do for her family...& and maybe even for her odd relationship with her mother (lol)

Carrie Heffernan (The King of Queens) - for her overall awesomeness and her stick-to-itiveness when overcoming any obstacles she and her husband face

That's just my opinion. My husband may have a different one, but I'll have to ask him.The longer I'm married, maybe the list will change. We'll see.

Sporting my new last name

I became legitimate a couple weeks ago when I got my new social security card.(They have dates on them now. Did you know?)

I took my husband's last name. It was a big decision. Taking my husband's name wasn't the big decision. I knew I was going to do that. I didn't know what to do with my last name.

When I was in college (round 1), I took several gender/ feminist courses. At one point I even thought about making that a focal point of my studies. However, I was honest with myself. I was a little too wishy-washy. While I loved the idea of women's empowerment and all that comes with it, I was secretly coveting a traditional happily-ever-after.

All of the feminist theories I'd studied came flooding back at the exact moment the woman on the opposite side of my desk asked if I wanted to keep my last name and make it my middle name. At the time, my last name was my mother's maiden name. Keeping it would maintain the matriarchal thread. Sounds awesome, right? On the other hand, getting rid of my middle name would mean shedding a name that my mother actually chose for me. If you look at it like that, your last name is pretty much thrown upon you. So, is it really all that important?

I decided to keep my middle name and shed the last name that I'd sported for over a quarter of my life. What was the deciding factor? I love my middle name. That's pretty much it.Isn't the right to choose a pivotal component of women's rights? I chose.

How do I feel? I wasn't sure how I was going to feel at first. I feel like a new person. I feel like I can reinvent myself since I have a new name. It's exciting. All at once I feel independent and brand new while closer to my husband.

Case of the unsexy: Snoring

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I love the show "Reba." I started watching it a few years ago, and I catch it every now and then still. I snore. I've always known that I snore. What I didn't know was the extent of my snoring. Ah, the things you learn when married. My poor, poor husband. I woke up one morning, fresh-faced and chipper. He, unfortunately, looked disheveled and haggard.

It was at that moment that I realized I snore with a sound which I equate to a chainsaw wielding lumberjack being gargled by a grizzly bear. How unsexy is that? I was so distraught that I Googled products to reduce snoring. Of course there were mixed reviews for inexpensive and expensive products alike. So, aside from trying to fall asleep after him, I guess my sexy will be limited to the daytime.

Wife vs. Linen...Let the ironing begin!

I'll cut to the chase. I lose the linen battle. It's not a small loss. It's one of those painful defeats you like to watch between your fingers. Yeah, it's just that bad.

My husband is always on the move, so I try to do little things to help him out like iron his work clothes. If I was any good at ironing, this wouldn't be that big of a deal. I give it a good try, so he never complains. I even looked up how to iron men's dress shirts on e-how. Those guys really do let you know how to do just about anything.

At any rate, I've greatly improved at ironing dress shirts. My most recent foe: linen pants. Yes, they look dashing. But, how do you really iron these? They laugh in the face of steam. Unfortunately, e-how tells me how to iron pants in general (not linen pants). After several website fails, I stumbled upon an AskMen.com post about linen.

So, you're apparently supposed to iron linen when it's damp. There's something my intuition never would have told me. And it should be ironed not once, but twice (once on each side). Yet again, that's just not something I would've known. Let's make a rule that retailers shouldn't be able to sell linen if they're not going to tell you how to care for it. It just may increase linen sales if you're not angrily ironing the linen garment that you purchased. Who would buy lots of linen garments if they're ferociously frustrated by them?

Are there any other linen tips or tricks? Who am I kidding? I'll take any ironing tips.

Busted crock pot vs. busted logic

I’m not a cook. I can put a few things together, but I don’t have a substantial bag of tricks to pull from. If a recipe involves more than baking meat at 350 degrees or cooking vegetables on the stove top, I’m pretty much lost. I’m not an adventurous eater, so I’m not an adventurous cook by default. As with most newbie cooks, chicken is my usual default. I probably bake chicken more than your average person should.

Remember that scene from Little Miss Sunshine where the grandfather goes on a tirade about eating chicken for dinner AGAIN? Well, that’s pretty much how my husband was feeling. (Oh, and if you do click on the link, there is cursing in it--you've been warned.) He, bless his heart, wasn’t as dramatic as that. But, he did ask that I at least fry the chicken if we absolutely had to have it.

I’ve gotten better about eating large masses of fried foods since being married (since my husband typically prefers his food baked), so I was skeptical about having fried chicken for dinner. I don’t do this often, but I made two different things. I decided to fry his and bake mine.

After cleaning and frying the chicken, I put half the pack in our crock pot. It’s super hot here and I wasn’t about to turn on the oven. I returned to the crock pot 5 minutes later, and it still wasn’t hot. Was it because it was on low? I turned it up. Ten minutes later, still nothing. Maybe the socket is acting up. I moved it around.

I went back to surfing the net and realized I still didn’t smell any chicken aromas yet. Seriously; it’s a slow cooker, but come on! I yanked out the plug and shook it in frustration. That’s when I realized I’d been plugging up the toaster oven all along.