Emancipation Fail
Dec. 8th, 2011 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzI'm an emancipated girl. I want equal rights. I want to wear jeans and be allowed to vote and I want men to have as many days off when they become a daddy as women who become a mommy. I want equal pay for equal effort and I want to be able to put a freaking drill into NoKey's drill hammer dammit!
The thing with being the spouse of a perfectionist is that slowly but surely the perfectionist wins out on everything. I can cook a pretty decent meal, but NoKey can cook something that will have you lick your plates (I don't hold with him insulting my cooking though, because I am a pretty decent cook and he bloody well better enjoy the dinner I've made for him). I can set up a tent and make camp, but NoKey will always want to crank up the tension just to be safe (even in July, our tent is set to survive a freaking hurricane).
You can imagine this is nice, and you can probably also imagine it will get on my nerves at times.
Slowly I'm unlearning my skills and I'm unwilling to do something if someone else is just going to take over and do it better once I'm done with it. Why should I pitch a tent if my spouse is just going to check every last thing about it once I'm done with it? If he wants to be sure the tent is going to survive the 2012 apocalypse, he can pitch the tent. This is also why NoKey was still pitching tents and setting lines while everyone else was already crafting and socialising on the Drachenfest: it's never good enough until he's made sure it's perfect.
But of course NoKey can't do everything and especially after the move we're stuck with a lack of time and an abundance of chores. We need shelves, so holes need to be drilled. This is how I found myself trying to get a drill into NoKey's drill hammer and failing. I know everything about drilling a hole. Marking where it should be, checking to see if it's at a right angle, drilling at 90° and vacuuming after you're done.
Except for setting the drill. I've rotated the head this way. I've rotated it that way. I've held on to one half, while rotating the other and vice versa. I've taken the booklet out of the case and found a million terms that probably are like candy to men, but it might as well be taiwanese for all the sense I'm making out of it. In the end, I slammed everything back into the box and cleaned the hell out of the upstairs toilet. Aha! That'll teach you!
The thing with being the spouse of a perfectionist is that slowly but surely the perfectionist wins out on everything. I can cook a pretty decent meal, but NoKey can cook something that will have you lick your plates (I don't hold with him insulting my cooking though, because I am a pretty decent cook and he bloody well better enjoy the dinner I've made for him). I can set up a tent and make camp, but NoKey will always want to crank up the tension just to be safe (even in July, our tent is set to survive a freaking hurricane).
You can imagine this is nice, and you can probably also imagine it will get on my nerves at times.
Slowly I'm unlearning my skills and I'm unwilling to do something if someone else is just going to take over and do it better once I'm done with it. Why should I pitch a tent if my spouse is just going to check every last thing about it once I'm done with it? If he wants to be sure the tent is going to survive the 2012 apocalypse, he can pitch the tent. This is also why NoKey was still pitching tents and setting lines while everyone else was already crafting and socialising on the Drachenfest: it's never good enough until he's made sure it's perfect.
But of course NoKey can't do everything and especially after the move we're stuck with a lack of time and an abundance of chores. We need shelves, so holes need to be drilled. This is how I found myself trying to get a drill into NoKey's drill hammer and failing. I know everything about drilling a hole. Marking where it should be, checking to see if it's at a right angle, drilling at 90° and vacuuming after you're done.
Except for setting the drill. I've rotated the head this way. I've rotated it that way. I've held on to one half, while rotating the other and vice versa. I've taken the booklet out of the case and found a million terms that probably are like candy to men, but it might as well be taiwanese for all the sense I'm making out of it. In the end, I slammed everything back into the box and cleaned the hell out of the upstairs toilet. Aha! That'll teach you!
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 11:03 am (UTC)Ik kan best veel, en ik wil ook best veel, maar ik doe alles altijd slordig en inperfect.
Miriam is een echte perfectionist.
Ik maak de badkamer in een half uur schoon, Miriam doet er twee uur over. Maar dan is ie wel veeel schoner.
Soms maak ik iets schoon, en merk ik dat Miriam het daarna nog een keer doet, omdat ze het niet schoon genoeg vind.
Ik wil graag een geëmancipeerde man zijn, en mijn aandeel in het huishouden doen, maar ik heb echt geen zin om dingen te doen die daarna nog een keer gedaan worden. Dan kan ik het net zo goed niet doen. Maar eigenlijk vind ik dat ook geen optie.
Ik heb gelukkig voor elkaar gekregen dat ik iedere avond de afwas mag doen, en minstens één keer per week de badkamer en de WC schoon maak. Af en toe maakt Miriam dan ook de WC nog schoon, en dat is prima, dan wordt ie een paar keer per week schoon gemaakt.
En Miriam moet maar accepteren dat het niet altijd naar haar normen is.
Af en toe, als het echt niet schoon genoeg is, dan mag Miriam er wat van zeggen, en dan doe ik het nog een keer.
Maar meestal accepteert ze dat ik mij best doe en dat ik het naar eigen normen goed genoeg doe.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 11:37 am (UTC)About the drill - there is a type of drill chuck common for hammer drills where the drill bit snaps into the chuck. Drill bits for these don't have smooth, straight shafts, but are shaped to keep them in place. To snap these drill bits in, you usually pull back the chuck and then slide in the bit.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 06:01 pm (UTC)Ben daarom wel heel blij met vrienden die het wel kunnen en me dus mee helpen. Waarbij ik altijd zeg dat ik het zelf wil doen, maar dat ze wel moeten helpen anders sta ik na drie uur nog te klungelen..