Moving things out

No martial arts for Graham today.  There has been a lot of crap piling up around our rec room and mud room for months. I often look at it and think "why doesn't Mary get this shit out of here?" The fact is, by so doing, I am really ignoring the hard facts of sedimented gender roles in our household: it is 99% a male function to carry things out of the house. It just is. Trash, compost, stuff headed to the thrift store, even bags when we head out on family trips. It is mostly the job of me and, to the extent I can draw him into it, Graham.

Mary does much of the carrying things in, specifically groceries, and to a lesser extent mail.

If I let this bother me, and am just letting myself get foolishly sucked into a mental and psychic battle that does me no good at all.

So my Subaru is now jam-packed with stuff and I just need to figure out which lucky thrift store will be the winner. Mary saw a nice little informal jacket for me at the Goodwill on Weaverdairy just the other day. Why she didn't snap it up, I can't tell you. I must coach her to trust her instincts more.