It's a man's job

Hey there!

Before I get to this post, I wanted to say that I started a post about a week ago. The post was going to be about how busy I was and list all the things that had been keeping me busy. However, I soon found myself too busy to finish the post, and at this point I don't see much point in posting about why I was so busy a week ago.

Anyway, the thing they kept me busy this weekend was digging out from the first big snowstorm of the season ( Admittedly, there was also a snow blower involved, but there are a lot of places where you need to use a shovel, especially if you are as anal as me about making sure your driveway, sidewalk, steps, and area in front of the driveway and mailbox ( The city snowplows always seem to block your driveway by pushing huge amounts of snow from the street in front of your house ) are 100% clear of all of even the tiniest bit of snow and ice. Also, my snow blower is not self-propelled or anything ( so there is a lot of pushing involved ), and it is not powerful enough to throw snow from the middle of my double-wide driveway to the snow banks on either side of the driveway, so I've got to go over lots of areas more than once . Plus, to get a head start on all the snow ( The storm started slowly at about noon on Saturday, got heavier as the day went on, and continued until dawn on Sunday ), I did a lot of work at about midnight before I went to bed and did a lot of it by hand so I wouldn't piss of the neighbors too much. ). As I was doing all this work, I got to thinking about what still passes as "a man's job" these days.

Modern western society has certainly come a long way in the last 50 years when it comes to how couples share the responsibilities for domestic chores. While it's true that most women still wind up doing most of the domestic chores, ...

( Full disclosure: I'm a bit more of a Felix Unger than my wife ( if you don't know who Felix Unger and Oscar Madison are, check this link for The Odd Couple ), so I'm pretty much the only person who ever cleans the bathrooms or does any kind of floor-cleaning or vacuuming. I also do most of the dish washing and I love caring for my kids ( Well, I didn't love the changing poopy diapers part, but I did this as much as my wife did. We had rule that whoever first smelt the poop had to clean it. Of course this system relied on the honor system quite a bit, but I can report that I never shirked my responsibility after detecting the poopy odor. ). However, I HATE shopping of any kind, and I'm pretty useless in the kitchen, so Ruth basically does all the grocery shopping and has cooked thousands of more meals than me over the last 13.5 years )

... there are certain jobs that are still reserved for men. mostly because most men don't want to give them up. I think shoveling snow is a good example of this. I guess it would be easier to have our wives chip in with the snow shoveling, but most men would feel a bit emasculated to have their wives help them with hard physical labor. I can't tell you how many pieces of furniture I've moved by myself while telling my wife to "stand back - I don't want you to get hurt". Perhaps this is silly, immature and sexist, but that's the way it is - at least for me. Sometime a man just wants to feel like his "manliness" is useful. I dunno - my nearly 40-year-old bones certainly are sore today, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Oh, I don't tell me "Why don't you just hire some teenage kid to do the work?". You don't want me to get started about how middle-aged guys feel about being usurped by younger guys when it comes to physical labor.

Rich