The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Bind this.

I spent the morning and better part of the afternoon doing the following: scrubbed and polished all surfaces in the downstairs area, vacuumed, baked an apple pie, prepped two chickens for roasting, peeled and sliced potatoes, ditto carrots, five loads of laundry, made the beds, dressed the child, did child's hair and scrubbed toilets. It took me about three hours from shower time to now to actually get myself dressed, coiffed and make-up'd. My parents are coming, my mother has tickets to Il Divo. I know.

So, when I hurriedly ran upstairs to make sure there are no odd socks strewn across the hallway, or that there aren't any other obvious disruptions, I went into his office to see why he's so quiet.

"Something wrong? You mad at me?", I asked sweetly.

"Yes."

"Oh! What did I do?", I managed to not sound annoyed and did not huff at the end of the question.

"The binder."

The binder, you see, is one of his flight manuals. It's old and basically obsolete at this point, and the other day I asked if I could use it for my computer class notes. He had told me, previously, that I could use one of his many binders so I selected the one which was the smallest, meaning that it would be less work to replace. When he saw which one I'd picked, he suddenly got non-commital, eventually going downstairs to find a completely battered looking one which had nothing to do with flight or any other of his interests. After he handed it to me, he instructed me to take the other one to basement. I said that I had no intention of going to the basement at that time, I had other things to do, at which point he huffed and took it himself. Instead of taking it to the basement, he left it on the kitchen counter, where it has remained for two days. I basically ignored it, but intended to take it back down today when I went to pick up the last load of laundry. Of course, he found this to be insulting, for some reason, and in a fit he picked it up and threw it in the garbage.

"You're seriously mad about that?" I asked, incredulous.

"It doesn't matter."

"It does if it's upsetting you."

"It's fine."

I wanted to mention all of the things he's left lying around the house, how he never thanks me for the work I do around here because either he doesn't notice or he didn't think it needed to be done in the first place. I wanted to yell at him for being such an almighty prick and for behaving like a petulant schoolgirl (combination prick and schoolgirl, a tough thing to do), but I know it will accomplish nothing. This, and my parents are due any moment.

And, I had good news to tell him, too. I hate that he pissed on my fire.