I am a product of the Boy Scouts of America. From the time I was eleven and living in France until I was thirty, married with a newborn daughter, I was involved in the Scouting program. If it were not for the Scouts, I would more then likely be waiting for my parole hearing about now. The Scouts was my refuge from a home life of not so much neglect, but the product of unprotected sex. When the Troop went camping, there was always a duty roster for each patrol. This roster started the week before the camp out to the last day of the event.When we were in the woods, the roster was posted on the tree closest to the center of the patrol area. The chores were the same for each meal. An example of my duty roster is listed below.
Firewood – Bert. Fire tender – Bert. Cook – Bert. Cleanup – Bert
I am a pretty good cook. When the Queen was with me, who ever cooked the other cleaned up. Meredith loved it when I cooked because when I was finished with a pot or pan, I always washed it. So when we were finished eating the only thing she had to do was rinse off the dinner dishes and load the dishwasher. Something she would do even if she had cooked. There is a lot of truth to the urban legend “Men are not capable of properly loading a dishwasher.”
The part that keeps the hole in my heart is every time I go to work in the kitchen, the dish drain has a has one plate, one bowl, one fork, one spoon, one kitchen knife and two travel coffee mugs. I have a stool in the kitchen so I take my meals at the counter. When we dated, we spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Meredith told me years after we got married, one of the reasons she liked to stand in the kitchen with me was I was always dropping something and would take a damp rag to clean up my spill. Unknown to me at the time, she would move a little bit to give me room to clean up my mess so the next spill would be in a different spot. She figured this way she would get a clean floor over a short period of time.
No music today. The pity parties are getting shorter. They hurt more, but do not last as long.