Can you imagine if I actually had PMS when I wrote this?

Yesterday I watched an episode of Househusbands of Hollywood in the middle of the afternoon, leaving no question as to how desperate I was to avoid mental stimulation or physical activity of any kind.

I need to lose myself in stupid time every once in awhile. It allows my physical, mental and emotional health to recoup and regroup and I emerge from the trance refreshed. In fact, I think there should be a law requiring everyone to experience at least two hours of stupid time a day. Teenagers would be exempt because they would overdose within the first twenty-four hours and we’d never even know. And there would be a caveat that politicians and evangelists would have to keep their pants on the entire time.

I’ve seen all the Real Housewives shows – Orange County, New York, New Jersey and Atlanta and with all the tackiness, gaudiness, idiocy, vulgarity, hair extensions, tastelessness, boobs, Botox and general lack of class and sophistication running rampant in those shows, my physical, mental and emotional health is the best it’s been since I hit forty. I’m seriously considering sending Bravo a thank you card for allowing me to schedule my stupid time in sixty minute increments.

I watched Househusbands with absolutely no expectations other than figuring I’d mutter the occasional And these people spawn, why? and as such, I was not disappointed. Unlike the housewives shows where half the women are single or divorced, Househusbands dealt with married men who presumably stay home and take care of their kids instead of pawning them off on the camera crew. The show was quite boring because no one dated an octogenarian with cancer or married a flaming homosexual or wore a wig that was in peril of being yanked off on a public street by a skinny ass, loud mouth, trash talking ho off her meds. If anything remotely like this had happened, I might want to watch this show again.

Then again, Ryan O’Neal made an appearance so I may not. Depends on how strong the desire is to shove my fingers down my throat and make myself vomit. We’ll have to see.

What I found somewhat bothersome and a little insulting about this show was the enduring stereotype of a stay-at-home dad (SAHD) being dumber than dirt. This surprised me because I usually have no problem believing that men tend to drive in the fast lane when it comes to highways, power tools and sex but in the middle or slow lane when it comes to almost everything else in life and I typically enjoy the plethora of television shows portraying a husband who is gainfully employed but who instantly turns into a simple minded numnuts the second he walks into his house. I chalk that up to the work of really good writers. But Househusbands is supposed to be an unscripted “reality” show so it surprised me that two of the wives actually treat their husbands as if they have all the aptitude of turnips. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that one of the husbands was this <> close to finishing med school before dropping out to become an actor and the other spent eight years in prison for bank robbery.

But let’s say for the purposes of this blog post, because I’m too tired to come up with something else to blog about, that it doesn’t. Instead, I got the impression that these women wouldn’t care if their husbands were Bill Gates and Tiger Woods in previous lives. Once the husband stopped hunting and gathering and became a SAHD, his cerebral cortex rotted within seconds and instantaneously, he had all the intellectual wherewithal of a hairy coconut. Maybe this explains why these two women felt it necessary to leave their SAHD husbands with a to-do list on the counter and, in the case of one, in his inbox.

Now, I can see leaving a note for something out of the ordinary like “There’s a funny odor in the garage, can you check to see if the cat is dead? Love you!” but a generic honey-do list? On a daily basis?

Seriously? I know credit is hard to come by in this economy but wow, if you can’t get even a smidgen from the one you’re swapping bodily fluids with on a regular basis, you are just screwed. Go ahead and assume the position.

Unless these two guys are walking frontal lobotomies who would look upon mushrooms growing out of a carpet as part and parcel of going green, advising them of their supposed duties on a daily basis just smacks of condescending, patronizing, passive aggressiveness. And that’s coming from someone who writes the most detailed, descriptive grocery lists worthy of a Pulitzer when she sends her husband out to Wegmans.

Now, if these two husbands are, in fact, Dumb and Dumber personified, I’ll just hope that the sex is outstanding and totally worth the hassle and move on with my life, right after I call a forklift operator to transport my soapbox back to its hangar.

But if not, then let me climb up here and state for the record that I can’t help but wonder why these men don’t demand their balls back from their wives or at the very least, sprinkle some Rapid Grow on their groins and pray for rain.

Have these women never heard of the stay-at-home species at all? Specifically, that a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) is born with a fundamental understanding of the basics: if it’s dirty, clean it, preferably sometime before the weekend. This goes for dishes, underwear, toilets, offspring and the like. If the SAHM is not born with this intuition, she quickly acquires it after her first mental breakdown. Maintaining the household, keeping the children alive and making a dinner out of Apple Jacks, barbecue sauce and paprika is instinctive, an eighth sense if you will, with the seventh being an uncanny ability to translate 45 seconds of silence from behind a closed door into STOP KILLING YOUR LITTLE BROTHER. DID YOU FORGET I’VE GOT SANTA ON SPEED DIAL?

I’ve been a mom for fifteen years and a SAHM for the last nine. I know what my “job” is and essentially, after all is said and done, if my kids are still conscious and I have lost only 40% of cognitive thought by the time my husband gets home, I consider my job not only done, but done pretty damn well, even if he does wade through the entire food pyramid when he walks across the kitchen floor to kiss me hello. No one has to tell me what needs to get done during the day. I’m aware of what needs to get done and who’s got enough underwear to last another day and how to be in two different places at the same time and the day that Nate writes me a chore list or, for the love of God, emails me one, will be the day I serve him testicles parmesan with a side of scrotum for dinner.

The way I see it, in a perfect world, the only difference between a SAHM and a SAHD would be that we pee sitting down. And we shoot little humans directly out of nether regions. That should be about it.

The show, as a whole, fell under the category of OH MY GOD, MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOP so I have no idea why this particular aspect bothered me enough to want to blog about it.

And you know what bothers me even more?

The fact that I actually did blog about it, because that means I had to think about it and that means that I totally wasted yesterday’s stupid time.

Good thing pre-season football is on. I can more than make up for it tonight.

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