Compromise and Win.

Compromise: A settlement in which each side give up some demands or makes concessions.



So I do most of the cooking in the Horseface household. I like to cook, or what passes for cooking, so this is not a problem for me. It may be a problem for SuperK but I'm usually thinking about myself. I'm a lot more interested in what my problems are than what hers are. If it's a problem for her I assume that she'll tell me. But she won't tell me, probably, because I'd just ignore it anyway. She holds her nose and swallows quickly.

We have a great relationship, as you can see.

At some point the decision was made, probably by me, that the non-cooker would clean up the kitchen. This is not a big job because I'm the original Anal Retentive Chef. I clean as I go. I'm very efficient as I make fairly tasteless meals. I'm very, very German. I like to be in control of everything, including SuperK and the kitchen environment.

SuperK is not neurotically organized like I am. She cleans the kitchen but it doesn't fall at the top of her list of important things to do, which it shouldn't because it's not an important thing to do. Maybe that night, maybe the next morning, whatever. I clean on auto pilot. We'll be chatting in the kitchen while she makes some lunch and she'll say: "Where's my spoon?" I've snatched the still clean spoon off the counter a nanosecond after it lands and dropped it in the dishwasher, all the while unaware of what I'm doing.

"Can you at least give me a chance to use it?" she asks, exasperated.

I tried all kinds of techniques to get her to clean the kitchen on my timetable. I can only assume that this makes everything worse. When someone tries to control me I push back. Sometimes I simply ask her to clean the kitchen RIGHT NOW, but this seems a little pushy. Sometimes I clean the kitchen myself in a very obviously annoyed passive aggressive manner, banging dishes around and such. Sometimes I leave the dishes pile up so that they irritate me continuously until I clean them. I always crack before she does. I should have just cleaned up immediately and saved myself the additional irritation but this would deprive me of the satisfaction of controlling someone else.

Eventually I started to clean the kitchen myself. It takes like two minutes a day. I have to admit that I don't even know where the laundry room is in our house. I haven't touched the laundry in 20 years. SuperK gets very little credit for doing this chore which I hate to do.

I bet it takes longer to do the laundry than it takes to clean the kitchen.