Half an hour in a woman's life.

I'm sure you girls have heard it before from men: "What do you do all day at home while I'm out earning a living to keep you in comfort?" Ken gets annoyed when I don't come running immediately he wants help with something, or wants to show me something. So today when this happened while I was doing the usual late afternoon stuff, I mentally listed everything I was doing. Here is the result:

At 4.30, Ken asked me to come and look at something on his computer. He made himself a cup of tea, and asked if I wanted one. I said “I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee”. He made his tea and disappeared. I looked at the clock and figured if we were going to eat before 9 pm, I’d better get tea started. But before that, I had to bring the washing in from the line, as the night air was making it damp.
Put the sheets in the dryer, draped the rest of the washing over the clothes horse in the lounge room.

Started taking the ingredients for dinner from the fridge and pantry.

Lamb fillet hadn’t thawed out, so put that in the microwave.

Discovered the bottle of olive oil was nearly empty. Got stepladder from laundry to retrieve new bottle of oil from back of top shelf in pantry. Put everything back, put ladder away.

Sliced onion and chopped garlic, put in pan with oil.

Put peelings into small kitchen compost bin which was full, so took that outside to empty into garden compost bin.

Took lamb from microwave and cut up. Mopped up meat juices from floor where it had spilled from plate when carrying it to benchtop.

Chopped up cat’s meat to feed cat, who was sniffing the floor where I’d wiped up meat juice.

Blended spices and added them to pan with onion, then added lamb.

Discovered I had no vegetable stock powder, but remembered some in freezer.
Retrieved that and thawed out in microwave. Added to pan with meat. Covered and left to cook for half an hour.

Tidied up kitchen bench, stacked dishes ready to wash.

Made myself a cup of coffee and sat down to rest until it was time to add vegetables to the stew.



Showed this list to Ken who said “Well, what about the things you didn’t do? You left all the doors open, and I went around and drew all the curtains.”
“What doors did I leave open?” “The door to the ensuite”. Oh right. I’d been in there to get a coat hanger, and apparently hadn’t pulled the door shut behind me. Gee whiz. We girls make life hell for our men, don’t we?