The Cook and the Cleaner

I am my father-in-law.  And yes, I'm okay with that.  My husband is his mother.  And by these comparison, what I'm talking about is meal time.  My husband loves to cook.  He enjoys making a lovely dinner and the rest of us—our children and anyone else in town that we can wrangle into eating dinner with us—enjoys eating his dinners.

He cooks and does a relatively good job of cleaning as he cooks.  And by that I mean that every dish and plate in the kitchen isn't covered in cooking mess by the time he serves dinner to the rest of us.  Still, dishes, pots and pans, utensils and other items remain to be cleaned once the meal is over.   And that's where I come in.

I noticed some years ago that my father-in-law didn't go into the kitchen during the preparation process, but that after the meal was finished he seemed to spend a lot of time cleaning up all the dishes and cooking items from the meal and its preparation.   I always thought this was a nice division of labor.  He didn't have to worry about what was made or how much was needed.  He just cleaned and put everything away, a job that's mostly the same no matter what the meal is.

I've discovered that in our household, I have that role.  My husband doesn't want my help in the cooking—that's his job.  He doesn't want me to mess with his recipe or give him advice, he just wants me out of the way so he can make a meal.   Afterwards, I just want the house cleaned and reset to the pre-meal state of tidyness. 

It works out very nicely.  I am happy to have the role in our family that my father-in-law has and I am most certain that my husband loves his role as well.

The Big Boy Update:  Where is the other Captain America?  My son doesn't really get adult movies yet (heck, he's only three) but he seemed to like the Captain America movie that was on that daddy was watching.  He was particularly interested in how many Captain Americas there were though and I'm not sure he believed us when we told him there was only one.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Up chuck.  She threw up last night.  We're not sure why, because she didn't seem ill before bed and today she seems fine, but last night we changed her sheets three times within a two hour period.