Internalized sexism and cleaning.

Image: Soap on a tub. Useless, guilt-inducing soap.

Y'all know that I am not averse to attributing things to THE SEXISM/PATRIARCHY/KYRIARCHY IF I'M FEELING ALL INTERSECTIONAL. And normally, if I'm feeling guilty about something that LADIES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, I attribute it to good old internalization.

But right now I am feeling guilty about my messy-ass home as my boyfriend tidies, and that has nothing to do with internalized anything, except maybe laziness. It's nothing to do with "why can't the MAN clean up once in a while?" It's more of a "why can't RMJ pick up after herself like a competent adult once in a while?"

My boyfriend is presently bustling around like a busy fucking bee, picking shit up and asking me where the shit I've left around the house goes (to which I shrug and say "I don't know, I'm writing."). He's doing his damn part. He wants to end this mess. He wants to walk on clean floors and he wants it now, and for some mysterious reason, he expects that I'm going to eventually help.

This pattern, of me being a lazy jackass while some lovely Virgo cleans shit up around me, is long-standing. It dates back to childhood, when my mother would ask me to do some simple task like sort the recycling while she cooked dinner and mopped and set the table and loaded the dishwasher. Being lazy and entitled, I would sigh and moan and do whatever it was I did to procrastinate before I dicked about on the Internet, pretty much until the milk bottles and Kix boxes and multitudes of Diet Pepsi, known in our home as "DP" (haaaaaaaaaaaa) fell out the container.

I mean, I have a legitimate reason (note: I don't feel like it is basically my reason) to not help my partner out. I'm not just being a lazy partner (note: I am actually kind of lazy, no lie). See, he put on Metallica, and cleaning to Metallica gives me a goddamn headache. I want to clean to Lady Gaga.

I know I bitch a lot about cleaning. Clearly I hate it. Clearly nothing is going to make me like that shit. Cleaning sucks. I rarely get satisfaction from it (because, well, I rarely do a good job at it). But Lady Gaga helps! It's nice to be able to shake one's booty to distract one's self from the fucking pile of dishes in front of one.

Ugh, and there is Pokerface. Time to go do some fucking dishes.

Dirty dishes, everywhere.

I hate doing dishes. Especially without a dishwasher.

I've been down for a week, and between my work-generated dishes and the dishes I'm supposed to do because my boyfriend cooked last week, I'm basically a step below Liz Lemon taking her fork out of the dishwasher. I wish I had a dishwasher.

When I was a kid, my least favorite chore was taking dishes out of the dishwasher. I was generally pretty obnoxiously lazy in general but particularly with regard to housework. I was supposed to empty the dishwasher after dinner, and I would usually put it off for hours after forks were down.

Ugh. Youth. I had it so easy and I didn't even know.

The pile-up of dishes means that one load is a fucking production. I have to soak the dishes (because they're disgusting), then empty the water and clean off the food particles. Ew and ew. Then I fill with hot soapy water and wait some more, go do something else for a while. Then I have to either put up the clean dishes or move the dirty dishes to another part of the kitchen, which, when my kitchen is in the state it's in, is also an ordeal. Then I have to rinse them, which is not a big deal.

At this point, I say to myself, "Look at what you've accomplished. You are done with cleaning for the night."

Then I go and make and eat dinner, generating at least another two loads. My life, it's so hard.

In short, fuck dishwashing. My least favorite part of any day.