There has been something going on here for quite a while that I am just now only able to write about.
It's so painful, so distressing, that I'm still not sure I'm ready to share, but, I need to begin the process of healing.
Stephen has been cheating on me.
Her name is Ellie.
She is much younger than I am, born in 1985.
Slimmer, less confrontational, she just pretty much lets him do whatever he wants without any complaint.
The worst part, the hardest part is I know her. I've known her since 1985. She was at my grandmother's house, she's been in this house, she's even stayed the night.
The only time she and Stephen haven't been able to be together is when she has been "getting work done."
The dogs love to play with her. The kids are less inclined to like her, but, they have been known to put their differences on the backburner to engage with her.
She and I were really close until Stephen came along. After that, our relationship deteriorated rapidly.
And now I know why.
Finally, this afternoon, when I got out of the shower and he was engaging with her, I knew I had to step in and say something.
Because enough is enough.
Its me or Ellie.
He said he refused to part with either of us, as he sees both of us as necessary in his life.
I said I am just not the sharing type.
Here's a picture of her, in case you see them together and feel the need to step in and say something on my behalf.
Ellie the Electrolux.
(PS: Stephen read and okayed this prior to posting, so don't panic!)
You can see how come I'm upset, right?
He grabs her as soon as we walk in the door.
And I know he's been having intimate time with her while I'm at work.
Many a night, as in midnight, I've been awaked by Ellie's not-so-dulcet tones.
As soon as I'm in the shower, he grabs her.
Maybe I wouldn't be so upset if he grabbed me once in a while with the same intensity and passion. . .
Upon hearing that my husband loves to clean, many people, especially women, tell me I am a very lucky women.
Or ask if they could borrow him for a few days.
Or invite him over for a little in-house cleaning.
Most men have tool belts.
Stephen has a cleaning belt, complete with compartments for his dry cloths, wet cloths, brushes, rubber gloves, furniture polish, Windex, vacuum bags, and poop bags in case Goblet has made a deposit in the basement.
He even vacuums and scrubs the basement floor.
Other men like watching sports, or action films.
Stephen loves How Clean is Your House??? with Kim and Aggie.
My response to women who think I have won the housecleaning lottery is to reply, "Be careful what you wish for!"
It is a well known fact that I despise cleaning.
But, I would do it.
Because I had to.
When Stephen and I first got together, I had a hard time allowing him to clean.
One day, while I was doing the dishes, he met Ellie the Electrolux.
In fact this was probably the beginning of what has become a long term love affair.
While he was plugging in the vacuum, I stopped washing the dishes and said to him,
"I can do that, you know."
And he replied,
"Well, so can I."
And he did.
As time went on, and we got to know one another better, thus dispensing with some of the niceities, he added to his list of household chores.
Graduating from vacuuming to dusting, to Windexing everything in sight, to cutting the grass, managing the recycling and garbage. . .
One specific incident, however, turned the tides.
I was getting ready to vacuum the livingroom when he came in and said,
"I don't know why you're doing this when we both know I can do it better."
And thus ended my reign as Domestic Diva of our humble abode.
I didn't put up much of a fuss, believe me.
Stephen, I suspect, has come to rue the day he spoke those words.
In fact, I know he has.
Because I have heard about over and over again.
Just because Stephen has taken over the role of Domestic Diva and loves housekeeping does not mean he doesn't have his moments.
It has taken a long time for him to understand that asking teenagers to do something, and them doing it right after you ask is not something that happens with a frequency he would like.
They always do what they have been asked.
But they don't always do it right away.
Just because the kids KNOW that their laundry needs to be done, or their rooms need to be clean doesn't mean they feel the need to complete said tasks.
The middle point: close their doors. And they do. And peace, even just a little, reigns.
Because their rooms are their rooms, and so long as they don't hold our dishes hostage under their beds or on their dressers, and they don't harbour towels as fugitives, we try to respect their privacy and stay out.
Unfortunately, the same standards don't apply to me.
More particularly, to my side of the bedroom.
I have willingly sucuumbed to the knowledge that Stephen is a much better housekeeper than me.
The price for acknowledging his superior swabbing skills was letting him reign as supreme ruler of most of the house.
Including most of our bedroom.
Because the impeccable neatness he has established in all of the house, save the kid's bedrooms has also been established in our bedroom.
Except for one small corner of room, known as "Dawne's Corner."
On my side of the bed, a space large enough to contain a nightstand and bookcase leaning against the wall is all that is left of my personal domain.
And I have to fight to keep the diva of deterge out of there all the time.
"Don't you think you should clean off your nightstand?"
"Perhaps it would be a good time to think about taking some of those piles of books to the Owl's Nest?"
"Maybe you could think about putting some of your earrings away?"
These are questions and queries, demands and directives, coercions and commands I hear on a routine basis.
My response:
"This is the last corner of my kingdom. You have the entire house to obsess over and you are not getting my last bastion of beleagurement into your hot little hands!!"
Meaning leave my shit alone.
You should have heard me when he suggested that cleaning my office might be a good idea.
In his defence, Stephen has come by his cleaning obsession honestly.
A little known fact about Stephen is that he despised going to school.
Not the learning part, in fact, he enjoyed, and still does, learning.
What he didn't like was being told when to sit, what to study, when to go out for recess, when to eat lunch, when to go home.
By the time he was in high school, his parents had enough. They had been fighting with him for years, even threatening him with a Christian Brothers boarding school in Ottawa.
He was so audacious that he would actually get a drive to school with his mother, who worked at the school he attended, and as soon as they had said their "good-byes" and "have a good day" and he knew his mother was safely ensconced in the building, he would immediately return home.
Finally, accepting that they weren't going to be able to force him to attend school, his parents gave up.
But, he had to be doing something during the day. Not going to school was one thing; lazing around the house all day while his parents were at work and his sister, Mary Ann, was willingly attending school, was something else altogether.
This is how he was introduced to cleaning.
His grandmother, or Baba in Ukranian, knew how to clean. Upon immigrating to Canada, while living in Winnipeg, she cleaned for Rabbis.
After moving to Montreal, she cleaned for a wealthy Jewish family, who lived in Outremont.
And she would often go to Stephen's parent's house during the day, while every one else was gone, and clean.
And make pergoies.
I wish I had a Baba who came over, cleaned and made perogies while I was at work.
But I do have Stephen.
Who cleans.
But doesn't make perogies.
Before his parents accepted that Stephen was just not going to attend school no matter how much they yelled, cajoled, threatened, while they were still hauling out the big gun, Stephen's high school English teaching Aunt Irene, before they just gave in and gave up, Stephen would still escape from school, even if his grandmother was in the house.
He would hide in his parent's summer trailer and spend his day reading Thoreau's Walden.
He was SUCH a rebel.
Thus he learned to clean, through instruction from his Baba.
And she taught him very, very well.
Leading to the cleaning obsessed man I love and adore, want to throttle in equal parts.
Opposites attract. . .Stephen and I may be actual living proof of the veracity of this statement.
Or we're just really, really tolerant of each other's idiosyncracies.
Whatever it is, most of the time it works.
Title Lyric: Cleaning Windows by Van Morrison
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