My Helpful Helpmate Wields A Double-Edged Sword

Yesterday was busy with last-minute preparations for our Thanksgiving dinner, held on Saturday this year for the convenience of Genius. Most of the food was put together during my 7-hour prep session on Friday, so it only needed cooking or plating. The turkey breast went into the oven at 8:30. I was shooting for a sit-down time of 1:00. Farmer H had transported dishes over to The Original Frig in his BARn as I finished them and called him. Not enough room in FRIG II on Friday, what with that turkey breast chillin' on the bottom shelf awaiting baking on Saturday.

Farmer H volunteered to help me on Saturday morning. Just what every woman needs, right? A man in her kitchen while she's whipping up a holiday dinner. Let the record show that Farmer H had been working on his freight container garage with HOS on Friday. They were putting on something to do with the roof. Farmer H had offered to pay HOS for his labor, at $10 per hour, and they worked 8 hours. I had mentioned on one of the food transport trips that I was working pretty hard, too, but no one was paying ME for my efforts. That food doesn't cook itself, you know. Nor eat itself either, a feat accomplished in 15 minutes by Farmer H and Genius. Anyhoo...I must have shamed Farmer H into offering his assistance on Saturday.

I'm not complaining about having help. I am grateful for any efforts to lessen my workload. But as we all know, ladies...men approach a household task differently than we do.

First I set Farmer H to work cleaning the boys' bathroom. He's pretty good at that. Mission accomplished. Next was dusting the living room, mainly the end tables, and the piano, where my collection of ponies reside. Somewhere, Farmer H found a shop towel and grabbed the Pledge from the laundry room. I heard keys tinkling and pounding. I figured the piano bench would be suitable for Genius's Friend's butt, and not leave a telltale dust ring on his pants. Genius can pick out a tune, but Friend is an accomplished player, and sometimes passes the waiting time by tickling the ivories.

Up to my elbows in the 7-layer salad, I noticed that Farmer H was suspiciously quiet. I walked around the cutting block to peep into the living room area, and saw Farmer H laying on his side by the banisters that protect us from toppling into the basement where the stairs go down. He was dusting each of those detailed banisters (20-30 of them in all) separately. I thanked him for his efforts, but suggested that the end tables might be a more realistic target for his Pledged shop towel, since I didn't figure that Genius or Friend would be doing a white glove test on the banisters.

I delegated Farmer H the task of sweeping the kitchen floor next. I was sitting at the table peeling and dicing eggs for the salad, so I figured that he could do that with minimal interruption of my duties. He gave the room a once-over with the broom, then asked if he could go play outside do something else for a while if I was done with him. I told him that I planned to get in the shower around 11:30, and that he could use that time to do a spot mop of a couple of areas of the kitchen floor, most notably the recessed toe-kick area under the edge of the lower cabinets. And also the area under the cutting block. He agreed.

Well. I had noticed a scrap of envelope paper on the floor, about the size of a dime, as I headed off to the shower. I figured Farmer H would refine his sweeping technique, and catch that when he finished up the kitchen floor. You know what happened, right?

While working on the salad and turkey, I had been wearing my Crocs around the kitchen. Not my old red almost-flattened-on-the-heel Crocs, but my navy blue less-broken-in Crocs. When I returned after my shower, I was barefoot.

YUCK!

The floor was gritty, and crumby kinds of things stuck to my soles. They were as unhappy as the back of a princess who slept on a pea all night. It looked like Farmer H had just swished the broom along under the edge of the cabinets and cutting block, stirring up a Tasmanian Devil dust tornado, and then called it quits. Any previous (dubious) sweeping efforts negated by this last-ditch effort. When interrogated asked about the new grit, Farmer H replied, "I swept the floor, HM." That little envelope paper scrap was still there, too.

The kitchen would probably have been better off without Farmer H's sweeping. Thank the Gummi Mary, neither Genius nor Friend walked around the kitchen barefoot.