Household Chores

In our home, Lily and I share the load of doing chores pretty well - she takes Nick to school in the morning, I pick him up in the afternoon; she washes and cut vegetables, slices meat after dinner, I cook dinner next day; she does laundry, I vacuum-clean the house ....

Household chore, however, can be an area of frustration from time to time.

Though a casual fan of NFL and NBA, I spend chunks of time on weekends during high season to watch NFL/NBA games while Lily does laundry, cooks meals.....she usually give me pass on these occasions but does complain a bit.

One Saturday a few years back, I turned on TV to watch a college football after lunch. After a while, I heard the signal "ding"  from dryer indicating the completion of the drying cycle and then saw Lily was folding clothes. So I turned off TV and walked to her. She was a bit surprised and smiled at me: "not watching the game anymore?" "I will watch it later" I told her. I joined her folding clothes and towels, and we chatted along the way. We were done in about ten minutes and she gave a me a kiss and said "go watch your game" - I turned on TV again, the second half of the game just started. I did not miss much of the game. Doing chores during watching games is a "one stone two birds" type of good deal. It makes me to stretch a bit, not sitting on the couch for too long - good for my health; I helped with chores, relieved Lily from some work -  make both of us pleased.

Since then, I usually do some chores - like washing dishes, washing vegetables or cleaning kitchen, while watching games or watching evening news, especially during commercials, half times. Our rearrangement of our living room  make it easier for me to do some kitchen work while watching TV.

During the NFL playoff game between 49ers and Saints, I volunteered to cut pork. I watched the whole exciting game uninterrupted while cutting 3 ponds of pork into thin slices, stop cutting momentarily only when the game got too exciting. This volunteering work made Lily really happy because I rarely cut pork. An added benefit was that the pork was much tender in dinners that week due to my super thin slices.

During Super Bowl, I was juggling between watching the game and supervising Nick for the duration of first three quarters of the game. What I did was to leave the TV on, work with Nick a bit and then went for a peek of the game. Fortunately it did not distract him much - all he asked was the score, and I got many of the excitements of the game, missed some frustrating time - like the couple times that Giants fumbled . The best of this was that I got watch the most exciting last 5 minutes of the game in its entirety and Giants beat Patriots.

I also make the boys to do some chores - like making their own beds, pickup after themselves, and vacuum cleaning their own rooms. Lily occasionally ask Nick to help with cooking so that he will not read novels for extended period time or play computer games for too long.

Sharing household chores makes life easier for everyone.