Trippin' Through Time

Yea but it's true. Nobody in my family knows how to fucking clean glass or anythingn shiny (which extends to "everything" because if they're leaving massive streaks on glass, they leave massive streaks on everything...

Whoever you are, lady butterfly, all your obscure memes resonate with me. I think we could be best friends, or so much alike we'd rip each other apart in daily cat fights 🐈

This is only true until you get to live with people who 'cleans' pans and put them back with a thick layer of sludge on it and refuses to do a better job cleaning it.

I moved in with a domestic couple several years back, my best friend and his partner. Their relationship was super toxic, I'm glad they split and I helped set my friend up with the love of his life. I was friends with his partner too, but their relationship was pure shit.

She was a mom and didn't earn much wages, she was a part time photographer. My friend had a shitty, difficult mechanic job, and would be exhausted when he got home. I was a single dad, and spent part of my week with my kids at our old house while my ex would leave to stay with her new boyfriend.

Huge piles of dishes would build up, and my friend and his partner would argue about them. She'd say, why don't you ever do the dishes? He'd say, you're home all day why don't you do them? Just the most petty toxic shit that probably wasnt actually about the dishes.

I have a personal policy of never getting emotional about kitchen chores. If I came home from work and there were dishes, I would just do them. Often the partner would come in while I'm doing dishes and be like, "what are you doing??" Like fuming with anger. I'd just kind of ignore her irritation and say, "the dishes." I think she took it like I was judging her for not doing dishes or something, but I could always just repeat my personal policy. I mean I was also cooking and making dishes myself, I really didn't see the problem.

It happened so much, it was kinda funny getting a rise out of her for just trying to be helpful, but good lawd it was always such an ordeal

I'm more like, I don't mind how other people clean, but I have a particular way of doing things, like washing dishes with very hot water so that they dry quicker, or stacking them such that all cups, pots, containers, etc . . are standing face down so they drain properly. It's the little things that bother me, since I worked as a dishwasher for a bit in a couple restaurants, so I actually enjoy doing the dishes overall. But there's an optimal method to anything.

It's also important to accuse anyone who tries to help of "weaponized incompetence."

My damn mother.

She cleans stuff that's already pristine, she won't ask for help and will yell at you because you did it wrong if you try and do it by yourself, and do it herself anyway, and then complain because she has to do everything all alone by herself.

She has ruined every single bone in her body doing this, including her spine; she's in constant pain, and she'll soon end up in a wheelchair or worse if she doesn't stop.

She's aware of this, but still won't stop.

At some point in the near future, once she fucks her body up to the point she can't take care of herself and others, I'll probably have to quit my job to spend my whole time taking care of her, my father, and my uncle (her brother, already in a wheelchair due to his own stubbornness), and live off their meagre pensions and my savings until they run out and we end up on the streets, if her emotionally blackmailing me into constantly cleaning what's already clean doesn't kill me first.

I do love her dearly, but I hate the way she's ruining the remainder of her life, and will eventually ruin mine.

Or if anyone cleans, clean it yourself again immediately after to make sure it's clean. That really motivates people

Franz Kafka, “Poseidon”

Poseidon sat at his desk, doing figures. The administration of all the waters gave him endless work. He could have had assistants, as many as he wanted — and he did have very many — but since he took his job very seriously, he would in the end go over all the figures and calculations himself, and thus his assistants were of little help to him. It cannot be said that he enjoyed his work; he did it only because it had been assigned to him; in fact, he had already filed many petitions for — as he put it — more cheerful work, but every time the offer of something different was made to him it would turn out that nothing suited him quite as well as his present position. And anyhow it was quite difficult to find something different for him. After all, it was impossible to assign him to a particular sea; aside from the fact that even then the work with figures would not become less but only pettier, the great Poseidon could in any case occupy only an executive position. And when a job away from the water was offered to him he would get sick at the very prospect, his divine breathing would become troubled and his brazen chest began to tremble. Besides, his complaints were not really taken seriously; when one of the mighty is vexatious the appearance of an effort must be made to placate him, even when the case is most hopeless. In actuality a shift of posts was unthinkable for Poseidon — he had been appointed God of the Sea in the beginning, and that he had to remain.

What irritated him most — and it was this that was chiefly responsible for his dissatisfaction with his job — was to hear of the conceptions formed about him: how he was always riding about through the tides with his trident. When all the while he sat here in the depths of the world-ocean, doing figures uninterruptedly, with now and then a trip to Jupiter as the only break in the monotony — a trip, moreover, from which he usually returned in a rage. Thus he had hardly seen the sea — had seen it but fleetingly in the course of hurried ascents to Olympus, and he had never actually traveled around it. He was in the habit of saying that what he was waiting for was the fall of the world; then, probably, a quiet moment would be granted in which, just before the end and having checked the last row of figures, he would be able to make a quick little tour.

Poseidon became bored with the sea. He let fall his trident. Silently he sat on the rocky coast and a gull, dazed by his presence, described wavering circles around his head.

From https://jlet.org/poseidon.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poseidon_(short_story)

Oh hey mom I didn't know you were on the Fediverse 😂

For some stuff at work too..

That isn't toxic, it's mental illness.

Yes but laundry

You wanna help me clean? Pick up and move when you see me coming towards you with a vacuum

That's snow-shoveling for me.

My toxic trait is quite the opposite!