“Men partaking in simple domestic tasks will turn women on.” I heard this on Live with Kelly and Mark with lots of banter between the married couple. Naturally, I had to comment on this with my wife.
“You know, I do most of the cooking.”
She smiled but didn’t comment.
“I’m not hearing anything. Seems like you should really be turned on.”
“I guess you do cook more than I do.”
“And?” I ask.
Yes, dear,” she says. “You really turn me on.”
I’m not feeling it. “Seems like you should be really, really turned on. I mean, how many husbands cook more than their wife.”
She just laughs.
I not only cook more dinners, I make my own bread. And granola. Guess who bakes the Christmas cookies? I also make Zucchini bread with walnuts and raisins. If there’s soup to be made from a Costco chicken, I’m the one to do it.
I think I cook more out of a feeling of survival. Starving is not one of the things I want to experience. Sure, I baked cookies when I was a kid with help from my mom. But mostly, I wanted to eat cookies.
My first wife gave up on cooking. She went on a no-cook, nuts-and-berries diet. Everything had to be raw. I like nuts and berries but not for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I had to do the shopping because it wasn’t likely she was going to buy meat and potatoes or anything that needed to be cooked. Plus, I had to feed my daughter, who also was not inclined to starve to death.
I was a bachelor for quite a while and didn’t get married until I was 29. I had to cook. I started cooking with an electric skillet in the dorms. It’s amazing what you can do with an electric skillet—bake a cake, make spaghetti and meatballs, cook a chicken. Using it as a burner, you can cook rice in a pan.
Cooking was no big deal. Shopping for food was always fun. Looking for deals, getting fresh fruit, or great sourdough bread didn’t seem like much of a chore. Mostly, I wanted to eat what I wanted to eat. And cooking it myself meant I couldn’t complain if anything was not flavored properly or burnt—which for me never happened. So, I could complain or just cook it myself. The choice was easy.
Maybe the cooking-survival thing carried over to the second marriage. My wife is a good cook. But she tends not to think about what we will have for dinner until the last moment. And I don’t want to starve.
Now, I realize there may be other benefits to doing household chores—a turnedon wife. Okay, I’m not very good about vacuuming. I hate making the bed. My office is a mess. I don’t wash clothes. I often track in dirt or leaves into the house sometimes forgetting and brushing myself off AFTER I enter the house. Nobody is perfect, right?
I do help keep the kitchen clean, however. And I think I’m a pretty good cook. Seems to me that food should be the main priority when it comes to tasks that should count. You know, tasks that turn your wife on.
Besides, I don’t want to get too carried away with this task business. There is a delicate balance here. I don’t want a wife so turned-on that she doesn’t do some of the household chores. Or worse, expects me to do it. No, no. I think if she was turned on two or three times a week that would be just perfect.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to think about what to cook for dinner.
Contact Don Urbanus at risingsun@caltel.com.
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