A Fairy Tale for 2007

So mr. delagar and I belong to this writing group, that meets once a week in my shabby living room.

This means that, once a week, the shabby living room, and all attendant rooms, must be (more or less) cleaned up, since, even if we do live like wild monkeys, my bourgeois upbringing wants me to hide that fact.

Tonight's meeting, though, has been cancelled, since all the members have commitments elsewhere, which the kid found out last night, after we had cleaned up the house.

She flung herself on the living room floor in dismay. "Do you mean I cleaned up for nothing!!!"

"No, it wasn't for nothing," I said, lying patently. "It was because the house was in chaos. Now it's not. We don't just clean up because people are coming over, you know."

She gave me a look of open disgust.

"We clean up other times," I insisted.

"What's the point of cleaning up?" she demanded. "It'll be chaos by tomorrow afternoon again!"

"Well, then we'll clean it up again," I said.

"Why clean things up when they'll just be chaos again! What's the point of that!"

I laughed. "Welcome to your life, sweetness."

"Well, I'm not going to do it! I'll just live in chaos! I'm not cleaning up while some guy," she flung a look toward mr. delagar, who was rendering video, "sits around!"

"Ah," I said, because this was a separate issue, which I hadn't known we were talking about. "Well."

"I'm not!" she insisted.

"Don't marry a guy who's been raised in the patriarchy, then," I advised, not adding, good luck with that one.

I didn't have to, of course. She stood glaring at me.

"I'm not!" she yelled.

"No one is going to make you," I said gently.

She stomped away down the hallway.

mr. delagar, not having heard a word of this, apparently, went on fucking about with his video, wholly and entirely oblivious to us both.