Wednesday 17 November 2010

The men in my life lack basic shopping

skills and commonsense of the household kind. Now, please do not misunderstand me I love the male I live with very much indeed. My father is both a gentle man and a gentleman. He was brought up in a generation when men did not do housework. It is unlikely that, as a child, he ever swept a floor, vacuumed a carpet or dusted. He probably wiped the dishes and made his bed.
His mother did not believe in completely useless males or lazy males either. She was brought up on a farm and the men worked as hard as the women. Her husband worked hard too. My father has worked equally hard over the years.
But, he cannot cook or wash and iron or do the basic indoor household cleaning and maintenance. He has no idea about shopping. If he does do any food shopping he has to know precisely what to buy and where to find it. "It is x-brand and you will find it in y-aisle on the bottom shelf" I tell him. I look at specials. I do mental calculations as to which will be the most economical. There are some "supermarket brand" items I buy and others I do not buy. I look to see where things come from and at the relative nutritional value etc. It takes less time than it would seem because I have been doing this for a very long time.
But the pegs are a different story. I still hang washing on an outside line - unlike the neighbour with two small children. (She flings it all in a tumble dryer as far as I can tell. There is never any washing on her line but their clothes appear to be clean enough. ) I have two lots of pegs - wooden pegs for most things and plastic pegs for the more delicate items. Or rather, I had two lots of pegs.
This morning I went to hang the first of two loads of washing on the line and discovered that most of the plastic pegs had disappeared. It took me a moment to realise what had happened. My pegs had been "borrowed". They are being used to keep the netting on the fruit trees. Right.
Nothing was said. They just disappeared. My father asked the very nice and obliging man who helps for two hours once a fortnight to net the trees again. The last time, the time before, the time before the two of them "borrowed" the plastic pegs. I never see them again. By the end of a summer in the hot Australian sun they are of little use to anyone. I suggest it would make more sense to use wooden pegs. They agree. They continue to use the plastic pegs.
I have suggested they get their own supply of pegs. Yes, they will do that they both tell me - and they continue to "borrow" the pegs. "You can get some more" they tell me.
Right. It is clear they do not know where to find pegs in the supermarket. Being male it seems they are also incapable of asking.

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