I have almost finished.
I am almost Advent calendared out.
I am on the final ones.
I can hardly tell you how wonderful that is.
I was not expecting to get as far as I have because I did not get started until very late, indeed, I have been so late all round that I am only just starting to write to you, and it is almost eleven o’clock. This might be somewhat abbreviated as a result.
The entire lateness was the dogs’ fault. Once again, their poo problems have resurfaced, and instead of asking to go out, they have both sloped off into quiet corners of the house and relieved themselves there. The problem arose when Mark did not find one until he pushed the hoover through it this morning.
They do not even have the excuse of having upset stomachs. Their rears are no longer any more dire than usual.
There were no bounds to Mark’s fury, and both the dogs were slung out into the yard where they spent the next couple of hours quaking in the shed.
We left them in the shed whilst Mark cleaned the carpet and I cleaned out the hoover. Until you have been obliged to scrub dog poo out of the twirling attachments of a hoover, you do not know what it is to hate a dog. I did not feel the smallest inclination to sympathy with their forlorn exiled state, I can promise you.
The result is that both of them have been banished from the upstairs of the house. They are forbidden to leave the kitchen, and they are only allowed to stay there because they can hardly look after poopies in the shed.
Mark was only hoovering in any case because I had been cross with him. He has been living on oil rigs for most of this year, and this morning he painstakingly explained to me that he would not mind doing housework if only I would ask him nicely, and then be grateful and appreciative afterwards.
I imagine most lady readers, especially those who like me, also have a full-time job, will instantly be able to see why I was shouting, although Mark could not, and, for that matter, still can’t.
It is an insoluble problem. I wondered if I ought to tell him that I would also do housework as long as he appreciated me for it. Oh goodness, darling, you hoovered the stairs, how clever you are, thank you very much, but frankly it wouldn’t make any difference and would only be irritating. I do not think I would like hoovering one little bit more even if I were to get a gold star and a smily face sticker for every single stair.
He compounded his difficulties by explaining that he could not see or know what needed doing by himself, and that it was different for me because I am a woman.
He almost finished up in the shed with the dogs.
The result of all of this has been that we have had a Clean Sheets Day where we have not hoovered, because the hoover is still sitting in a hundred pieces drying over the fire downstairs. Mark says that he has dusted, and I have not checked, but perhaps I should if it is true and he is suffering from housework-blindness.
I am going to go and try and reassemble the hoover when I have written to you, and with any luck I will manage to get everywhere looking a bit improved by the time he comes home from work. He has gone off to sit on the taxi rank where nobody is cross with him and where it does not smell of dog poo and disinfectant, and where he can nurse his disappointment that nobody is ever going to be grateful to him for sweeping the hearth or polishing the taps.
I am sure he will come to live with it in the end.
Just like all the rest of us.
