Another post-holiday hangover, including a smidge of resentment. Bret was irritated with me on Sunday because his parents were coming over for dinner, and he wanted to take them upstairs to show them Lauren’s new bed, and my solution was to just close the doors of the upstairs rooms we didn’t want them to see (because they were messy). He didn’t like that idea, so he tidied them up himself, which was just fine with me.

Maybe that should be the end of the story, but these holidays always get me thinking about equality, and how it isn’t so much the day-to-day stuff, where I’m more or less happy with the division of labor, it’s all the special occasions that are so completely out-of-whack imbalanced. For example, for Easter I, and I alone:

Planned the menu for Easter dinner
Ordered the ham
Did all the grocery shopping two days before
Picked up the ham the day before
Bought a new tablecloth (to match the china, of course)
Bought egg-coloring supplies, cooked the eggs and organized a lovely family egg-coloring event
Bought all Lauren’s Easter bunny presents, including 2 books, 3 t-shirts, a bit of candy, stickers and a stuffed bunny (not all bought at the same time or the same place)
Bought, “stuffed” and hid plastic eggs for Lauren
Planned Lauren’s Easter outfit
Washed Lauren’s new Easter tights by hand
Ironed Lauren’s Easter dress
Got Lauren dressed for Easter – twice; once for church and once after nap so the grandparents could see her in her dress – including fighting her both times and constantly following her around to fix the bow on her dress and her hair thingies
Hand washed all the china
Set the table
Hand washed all the globes from 2 chandeliers (man, those things were fuzzy; a testament to my general housekeeping standards)
Cleaned the house – oops, just the downstairs (minus downstairs bathroom; Bret did do that), plus all the clutter from Lauren’s room and some of the clutter from my room
Cooked a ham, 3 side dishes, and a dessert (which we ended up throwing away because it wasn’t cooked in the middle), timing everything so it was all ready at the same time (mostly succeeded at this)
Got everyone’s drinks; refilled drinks and food a couple of times throughout the meal

I will admit that I’m the one who volunteered to host Easter dinner and I honestly didn’t mind doing it. I rarely cook a decent meal so I actually enjoyed doing it. Bret’s parents do a lot for us and I wanted to have them over on a holiday for a nice meal. I will also admit that I would just prefer to do most of these things myself. I know what needs to be done and…it’s just easier to do them myself. What I do resent is being made to feel bad for not having every room in the house clean. Because I was just a LITTLE BIT BUSY DOING OTHER THINGS.