Are Husbands Any Help?

What are most women complaining about? I think their number one complaint is their husbands and the lack of help they get from them. Whether or not a woman works outside the home, like her husband, when they both get home the woman actually has so much more to do. Her husband can come home, check the mail, grab the newspaper and sit on the couch until dinner is done. After dinner he will more than likely watch television until bedtime. Nice work if you can get it.

Now, let’s examine a woman’s routine from the time she or her husband comes home from work. She has so many things to do that I barely know where to start. She will have to make sure the kids did their homework or get it started. Then, as she takes out what she has to prepare for dinner, she listens to phone messages and returns calls. She gets dinner started, sets the table, runs to the laundry room and throws a load in the washer, checks on the kids homework, makes sure nothing on the stove is burning and then gets into some comfortable clothes. Picks up the clothes her husband and kids left on the floor, comes back to the kitchen and does any breakfast dishes, stirs some pots, answers homework questions and runs to put the clothes in the dryer. Meanwhile, dinner is done and served! Here comes the hard working husband to take his seat at the head of the table, while she cuts meat for the kids, pours the drinks, takes out the multivitamins, and piles the dirty pots in the sink. Now it’s her turn to sit. If she is lucky, her food is still warm.

While her husband takes out the garbage, she clears the table, packs up any leftovers, washes the dishes, cleans off the counters and table and makes sure the homework is done, school notices are signed, next day lunches are made.

While her husband turns on the television and takes a seat, she goes down and brings up the laundry to fold, makes sure the kids take their baths, brush their teeth and get ready for bed, and straightens up what everyone else left laying around the house. She reads the kids bedtime stories, gets them a glass of water, tucks them in and kisses them good night. She goes to join her husband, who has fallen asleep watching TV. Wakes him up for bed, only to hear him say, “Boy I’m tired, I had a rough day.”

And so it goes. Husbands will always be our number one complaint. They have to be told or asked to do something. Apparently, they don’t realize that dinner has to be made every night and maybe they could give it a try. They don’t see dirty clothes piling up and attempt to do a load of laundry while we are cooking. They don’t hear us helping the children with homework night after night and take over for us. They can’t appreciate our multitasking abilities because they only know how to do one thing at a time, and depending what it is, they don’t always do it very well. They must think we enjoy being on the go the whole night and getting up the next day to do it all over again.

Yet, after their exhausting night of reading the paper and watching television and napping, they wonder why it is that we are not interested in getting something started in the bedroom? It’s really a mystery to them. They are just so totally clueless.

Maybe one day Hallmark will create a card women can give their husbands that really expresses their frustration with their lack of help? Maybe it should go something like this:

How can you help me? Let me count the ways.
You can make dinner, or get take out one night,
Maybe tuck the kids in and turn out their light,
You can transfer the laundry from washer to dryer,
Just a few simple tasks would light my desire.
Washing the dishes might not pop into your head,
But it would go a long way to heating up things in bed.
And a simple “thank you, for all that you do”
Sure as hell would go a long way too!