Won't be long before the underwear are flying

Well, now we know how long it takes to get bored with being a househusband.
Two and a half days.
That’s how long I’ve been retired, and how long I’ve been tending to the duties I always envisioned would be handled by a supermodel with a penchant for scrubbing and a nice touch with sauces.
Two and a half days, I confidently report, is enough.
I’m not a stranger to the job. I’ve done a third of our cooking forever. Terri hates laundry and I hate washing dishes, so we accommodate each other there. Most other tasks, we either alternate or work in what probably looks like companionable silence, though a better phrase might be “sullen acquiescence.”
Our problem is with . . . well, cleaning. We just don’t--what’s the phrase I want?—we don’t do it.
Our retirement plan, insofar as we had one, was that I’d work two or three more years, Terri would finish out her book contract (you’ll want to check that out, by the way, www.phantomstallion.com; someone you know would love a few hundred copies for Christmas), then we’d ease into our sunset years together.
As things turned out, my sunset years arrived by corporate fiat in the same week her contract for eight more books arrived via FedEx. That made my decision easier, but she had issues with staying home to work while I toured Europe, or for that matter went to McDonalds.
“You’re not going alone,” she said flatly.
“So I can take a date, then?”
We haven’t stayed married for 34 years by being rigid, though. We worked out a compromise: She’d bring home the bacon, and I’d do everything else.
It embarrasses me to admit how complacent I was about that. Like many males, I figured I’d bring the efficiency and organization of the workplace to bear on the problems of the household. Couple of hours a day, cut to 45 minutes after I got the hang of it, and I’d be rolling in gravy.
I forgot that the reason I became a columnist instead of getting a real job is that it requires neither organization nor efficiency. For 25 years, I’ve sat down three times a week, typed the first 500 words that popped into my head and knocked off. Terri, meanwhile, taught a generation of high school kids, raised two children to unindicted adulthood and, in her spare time, created worlds in her head that people are willing to pay to enter.
The first day, I walked the dog, went into town for coffee and cooked a great dinner, a recipe I’d been wanting to try. Not a bad two hours’ work. Somehow, though, it consumed 10 hours.
I learn from my mistakes, though: On Day 2, I tackled an upstairs room that’s accumulated a few stray items over the years . . . OK, a few feet of stray items. One kid moved out, one moved in, and when she left again, an avalanche of thong underwear, tank tops and shoes spread across the floor. I sorted, boxed, muttered, stacked, hauled a load to the Salvation Army and one to the dump. Then, as I drove home at what felt like about 1 p.m. but was actually 4:30, my cell phone rang.
“I’m on my way,” Terri said. “What’s for dinner?”
”It’s a surprise.” It’s a frozen pizza, but I didn’t know that at the time.

Today was Day 3. Spurred by patches of visible floor, I went outside for a lawn rake and used it to gather the remaining clothing into a pile (I’m not making this up. A rake works great for moving small items around on a carpet). I bundled them into two trash bags and stacked them by the door, freeing 120 square feet of floor space.
“All right,” I thought. “That’s a solid day’s work.” It was 10:30 a.m.
I knocked off anyway. Tomorrow, though, I’ll get organized. Then watch the thongs fly.