How I spent Women's Day this year
Women’s Day on March 8 is a special day in our home. I, the man of the house, wearer of the pants, the seat of masculine power, have a day off from work to celebrate the day. My wife does not. There is some friction as a consequence.
This year, 2026, the year which future historians will refer to as the year when it became unmistakably clear that it was too late for humanity, March 8 fell on a Sunday. So I am up early on Monday, on my compensatory day off to celebrate Women’s Day, time stretching before me like an open road through farm fields under a blue sky. I want to do justice to the occasion, and what better homage in my view, then to let the woman have her complete, unfettered freedom. Do whatever you like, I tell her when she wakes up. Let’s order out for dinner, I say. In fact, let’s not cook or clean, or perform any of those mindless chores whose only reward is their inevitable repetition. I have a presentation at 9, she says. Well, okay, let’s play it by ear, I tell her. Loosey, goosey baby!
The sun is out and the snow is melting, and although this is all a ruse because the forecast has more snow later in the week, it is at least a sign that spring is around the corner. I make myself a breakfast of egg, cheese, and bacon burrito. I offer to make my wife one too but she declines. She has her overnight oats, a coagulating gruel that she suffers through each morning to keep her virtue intact and her insulin regulated. I give her a kiss and express how grateful I am to her for being my wife. “Can you do the laundry?” she asks. I almost roll my eyes but then remember what day it is. I assure her that I will do it later. There are other, more important frogs that need to be killed first.
I hunker in the basement with my laptop and review the first frog. I have to file my taxes, the deadline is about a month away. But this is going to take all day, and wrestling with questions like whether I should take standard or itemized deductions would be a waste of a holiday, and maybe also a little disrespectful to the spirit of the moment, because taxes reek of patriarchy and oppression. The next frog is this four-week AI course that I began two months ago. I try to pick up where I left off but it is hard going. The main problem is this unshakeable feeling that this is a hopeless venture. We are all trapped on the back of a lumbering beast rapidly approaching the business end of a cliff. If somehow we are able to stop at the precipice, the view of the sea will be awesome, so we’re told by the ketamined mahouts who pull at the reins. I digress. This is not a post about AI, this is about Women’s Day. Bloom and shroom, not doom and gloom, although I’ve heard the mahouts do shrooms as well.
Having decided that the frogs can meet their demise some other day, I turn to the TV and pick up where I left off from the night before. The Lowdown is an excellent noir show. I can tell it is good because it makes me want to visit prairie towns in Oklahoma, which is where the show is based. Great casting choices, with Ethan Hawke, Tim Blake Nelson (Ballad of Buster Scruggs, O Brother Where Art Thou), and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Peter Dinklage (Tyrion from Game of Thrones) makes an appearance in one of the episodes and instantly elevates it with his presence. About an hour in, the basement still feels nippy so I go back up to find a blanket and grab a snack from the fridge. The wife is working from home today and I run into her as she emerges from the bedroom, bloodied from her battles with Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint. I invite her to join me on the basement couch but she brushes me aside like I was an NPC asking her to go off on a side-quest. Take a break, I insist, landing light karate chops to ease the tension in her shoulders. Ow! she says, so I stop. Flustered because my attempt at seduction has failed, I offer to put some frozen chicken tenders in the air fryer for lunch but as it turns out, she has already cooked the day before so we have plenty of leftovers. I ask if there’s anything I can do for her. “How about the laundry?” she says. Of course, of course, I say. But first, we need to take the dog out for a walk.
The weather is glorious. The tree branches show red or green buds as they titter in the wind. The sidewalk is finally visible, having shed its icy coat in the sunlight, which is a mixed blessing because it also reveals to us just how many people don’t pick up after their dogs. We steer Milo, our golden retriever, across this fecal minefield and get to a relatively unsoiled patch where he meets an acquaintance, a German Shepherd. They greet as they always do, inhaling each other’s crotches. I wonder why they do that instead of shaking paws. What additional information do they get from that section of the corpus? But hey, what do we know? Our noses are hopelessly underpowered. Who’s to say we wouldn’t do the same if we’d evolved to develop a keen sense of smell? Maybe there is a parallel universe where dogs shake paws and business tycoons and world leaders seal trade deals by bending down for a lungful of gonad fumes. I suggest to the wife that we take a longer walk to soak in the sun. The wind is the optimal temperature and speed. Days like this don’t come often. She tells me that she doesn’t care for the optimal wind, she has to get back to work, having been away from the computer too long.
When we get back, the daughter is finally up and about. She doesn’t have a day off like I do; she is skipping school because she is down with a cold. She welcomes us with a cough that sounds like coins being rattled in a jar. So much for women’s day. She is on the living room couch, illuminated in the sunlight streaming through the main window, arms and legs wound around the cushions in such impossible angles she reminds me of a cubist painting. I should let her be because she is unwell, but I feel a parental obligation coming on like a fever, so I ask if she has caught up on her reading. “I will, in five minutes,” she says. This is a uniquely effective strategy. On the surface it is a very reasonable demand. It puts out the idea that there’s nothing more she’d like to do than to answer our ask but she is currently occupied with something important and would like a short deferment. She knows that when it comes to this game she just has to wear us out. Those five minutes will turn into 10, there will be more requests for deferments, and eventually the parents will absorb themselves into some minutiae of daily life, and the book will remain untouched by adolescent hands.
Not so this time! It is Women’s Day after all and I owe it to her to be persistent. I pick up a book myself and lodge myself prominently in the living room, hoping to inspire by example. It’s one that I have been working on for many weeks. I borrow from the library and my books are overdue so often I imagine the librarians gossip about me. The book that I pick up is Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks. It is a fictionalized account of the life of Caleb Cheeshahteamauk, the first indigenous American to graduate from Harvard College, all the way back in 1665. I like the book more than I thought I would. The story is written from the perspective of a young girl whose pastor father takes Caleb under his wing. There is no real plot, but the chain of events, the tragedies that befall the characters, and the central conflict between native and Christian traditions keep things interesting. The setting - Martha’s Vineyard in the 17th century - provides the right kind of exotic escape for a lazy afternoon.
Unfortunately, my example is wasted. I think. I am not sure, because a few minutes into my reading, I drift off to a nap, book open on my chest. There is an enduring myth that the Inuit people have a thousand words for snow, the idea being that there are so many different kinds with varying qualities of wetness and heaviness and powdery composition, they each deserve their own place in the vocabulary. I believe naps are the same way. Maybe not a thousand variations but definitely multiple. There are catnaps, which are short and light and taken in uncomfortable furniture. Recovery naps, which are taken to make up for a poor night’s sleep. Planned naps, which are taken by psychopaths in anticipation of a poor night’s sleep. Power naps, which are catnaps in disguise but for self-important people. Moving naps, the best kind, where you’re lulled to sleep by the rocking motion of a train or a car. And when the English language exhausts itself, you can reach into Spanish for the siesta, a late afternoon snooze in the veranda of a hacienda after a lunch of paella, or, go east for the Japanese inemuri, which is apparently taken during the workday by exhausted employees working 12-hour shifts. I am no Japanese salaryman, but this is the kind of nap I take on Women’s Day. All that TV watching and dog walking and worrying about taxes have had their toll on me.
When I wake up, it is evening. The sunlight is gone. The daughter has shut herself in her room with her tablet, as is her habit. I go into the bedroom where my wife works but it is empty, as is the bathroom. I hear clanking from the basement and hurry down. To my horror, the wife has a basket on her hip. The expression on her face is a mix of resignation and accusation. “What did you do!” I yell. “The laundry,” she says.
This year, 2026, the year which future historians will refer to as the year when it became unmistakably clear that it was too late for humanity, March 8 fell on a Sunday. So I am up early on Monday, on my compensatory day off to celebrate Women’s Day, time stretching before me like an open road through farm fields under a blue sky. I want to do justice to the occasion, and what better homage in my view, then to let the woman have her complete, unfettered freedom. Do whatever you like, I tell her when she wakes up. Let’s order out for dinner, I say. In fact, let’s not cook or clean, or perform any of those mindless chores whose only reward is their inevitable repetition. I have a presentation at 9, she says. Well, okay, let’s play it by ear, I tell her. Loosey, goosey baby!
The sun is out and the snow is melting, and although this is all a ruse because the forecast has more snow later in the week, it is at least a sign that spring is around the corner. I make myself a breakfast of egg, cheese, and bacon burrito. I offer to make my wife one too but she declines. She has her overnight oats, a coagulating gruel that she suffers through each morning to keep her virtue intact and her insulin regulated. I give her a kiss and express how grateful I am to her for being my wife. “Can you do the laundry?” she asks. I almost roll my eyes but then remember what day it is. I assure her that I will do it later. There are other, more important frogs that need to be killed first.
I hunker in the basement with my laptop and review the first frog. I have to file my taxes, the deadline is about a month away. But this is going to take all day, and wrestling with questions like whether I should take standard or itemized deductions would be a waste of a holiday, and maybe also a little disrespectful to the spirit of the moment, because taxes reek of patriarchy and oppression. The next frog is this four-week AI course that I began two months ago. I try to pick up where I left off but it is hard going. The main problem is this unshakeable feeling that this is a hopeless venture. We are all trapped on the back of a lumbering beast rapidly approaching the business end of a cliff. If somehow we are able to stop at the precipice, the view of the sea will be awesome, so we’re told by the ketamined mahouts who pull at the reins. I digress. This is not a post about AI, this is about Women’s Day. Bloom and shroom, not doom and gloom, although I’ve heard the mahouts do shrooms as well.
Having decided that the frogs can meet their demise some other day, I turn to the TV and pick up where I left off from the night before. The Lowdown is an excellent noir show. I can tell it is good because it makes me want to visit prairie towns in Oklahoma, which is where the show is based. Great casting choices, with Ethan Hawke, Tim Blake Nelson (Ballad of Buster Scruggs, O Brother Where Art Thou), and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Peter Dinklage (Tyrion from Game of Thrones) makes an appearance in one of the episodes and instantly elevates it with his presence. About an hour in, the basement still feels nippy so I go back up to find a blanket and grab a snack from the fridge. The wife is working from home today and I run into her as she emerges from the bedroom, bloodied from her battles with Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint. I invite her to join me on the basement couch but she brushes me aside like I was an NPC asking her to go off on a side-quest. Take a break, I insist, landing light karate chops to ease the tension in her shoulders. Ow! she says, so I stop. Flustered because my attempt at seduction has failed, I offer to put some frozen chicken tenders in the air fryer for lunch but as it turns out, she has already cooked the day before so we have plenty of leftovers. I ask if there’s anything I can do for her. “How about the laundry?” she says. Of course, of course, I say. But first, we need to take the dog out for a walk.
The weather is glorious. The tree branches show red or green buds as they titter in the wind. The sidewalk is finally visible, having shed its icy coat in the sunlight, which is a mixed blessing because it also reveals to us just how many people don’t pick up after their dogs. We steer Milo, our golden retriever, across this fecal minefield and get to a relatively unsoiled patch where he meets an acquaintance, a German Shepherd. They greet as they always do, inhaling each other’s crotches. I wonder why they do that instead of shaking paws. What additional information do they get from that section of the corpus? But hey, what do we know? Our noses are hopelessly underpowered. Who’s to say we wouldn’t do the same if we’d evolved to develop a keen sense of smell? Maybe there is a parallel universe where dogs shake paws and business tycoons and world leaders seal trade deals by bending down for a lungful of gonad fumes. I suggest to the wife that we take a longer walk to soak in the sun. The wind is the optimal temperature and speed. Days like this don’t come often. She tells me that she doesn’t care for the optimal wind, she has to get back to work, having been away from the computer too long.
When we get back, the daughter is finally up and about. She doesn’t have a day off like I do; she is skipping school because she is down with a cold. She welcomes us with a cough that sounds like coins being rattled in a jar. So much for women’s day. She is on the living room couch, illuminated in the sunlight streaming through the main window, arms and legs wound around the cushions in such impossible angles she reminds me of a cubist painting. I should let her be because she is unwell, but I feel a parental obligation coming on like a fever, so I ask if she has caught up on her reading. “I will, in five minutes,” she says. This is a uniquely effective strategy. On the surface it is a very reasonable demand. It puts out the idea that there’s nothing more she’d like to do than to answer our ask but she is currently occupied with something important and would like a short deferment. She knows that when it comes to this game she just has to wear us out. Those five minutes will turn into 10, there will be more requests for deferments, and eventually the parents will absorb themselves into some minutiae of daily life, and the book will remain untouched by adolescent hands.
Not so this time! It is Women’s Day after all and I owe it to her to be persistent. I pick up a book myself and lodge myself prominently in the living room, hoping to inspire by example. It’s one that I have been working on for many weeks. I borrow from the library and my books are overdue so often I imagine the librarians gossip about me. The book that I pick up is Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks. It is a fictionalized account of the life of Caleb Cheeshahteamauk, the first indigenous American to graduate from Harvard College, all the way back in 1665. I like the book more than I thought I would. The story is written from the perspective of a young girl whose pastor father takes Caleb under his wing. There is no real plot, but the chain of events, the tragedies that befall the characters, and the central conflict between native and Christian traditions keep things interesting. The setting - Martha’s Vineyard in the 17th century - provides the right kind of exotic escape for a lazy afternoon.
Unfortunately, my example is wasted. I think. I am not sure, because a few minutes into my reading, I drift off to a nap, book open on my chest. There is an enduring myth that the Inuit people have a thousand words for snow, the idea being that there are so many different kinds with varying qualities of wetness and heaviness and powdery composition, they each deserve their own place in the vocabulary. I believe naps are the same way. Maybe not a thousand variations but definitely multiple. There are catnaps, which are short and light and taken in uncomfortable furniture. Recovery naps, which are taken to make up for a poor night’s sleep. Planned naps, which are taken by psychopaths in anticipation of a poor night’s sleep. Power naps, which are catnaps in disguise but for self-important people. Moving naps, the best kind, where you’re lulled to sleep by the rocking motion of a train or a car. And when the English language exhausts itself, you can reach into Spanish for the siesta, a late afternoon snooze in the veranda of a hacienda after a lunch of paella, or, go east for the Japanese inemuri, which is apparently taken during the workday by exhausted employees working 12-hour shifts. I am no Japanese salaryman, but this is the kind of nap I take on Women’s Day. All that TV watching and dog walking and worrying about taxes have had their toll on me.
When I wake up, it is evening. The sunlight is gone. The daughter has shut herself in her room with her tablet, as is her habit. I go into the bedroom where my wife works but it is empty, as is the bathroom. I hear clanking from the basement and hurry down. To my horror, the wife has a basket on her hip. The expression on her face is a mix of resignation and accusation. “What did you do!” I yell. “The laundry,” she says.
Entertaining to read
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