My 16th apology.

More like my 30th or 40th. Even after I stood up from in back of the dryer and announced that I didn't know why I was saying I was sorry, since it wasn't my fault, I kept apologizing. What tedious behavior. I was fixing the problem, not creating it, so why say I'm sorry?

It's a boring story, and I won't type it out, but we discovered that the guy who did our floor--a year and half ago--didn't hook the vent hose up to the dryer when he put it back in place. End result: we've been building a lint collection behind the dryer ever since. It's a damn good thing Catherine has beaten it into my head that you don't leave the house with the dryer running. If the lint had caught fire, at least we would have been there to put it out. Of course, we would have had to reach into the flames to get the fire extinguisher, since we keep it behind the washing machine. Still, it's a good principle. Dryers are fire hazards, even when properly connected, so don't run them un-supervised.

Anyway, the hose was damaged, and I can see why the guy didn't hook it back up, but I wish he would have said something to us. Two trips to Lowe's later, I've replaced the hose and the exterior vent since for some mysterious reason it had fallen apart.

What I was thinking about today while I was painting the back wall of the kitchen: it's not so much that men need to be taught to do more housework, it's that women need to be taught to do less. Women really could do themselves a favor by adapting to the "it's good enough" strategy of cleaning.

I'm not saying that we should accept men's standards for a clean bathroom, nor am I saying we should turn our homes into breeding grounds for infectious diseases, but I will say that a few of my friends could just dial it back and clean a little less often. I swear to god I have never lost a friend over the fact that I only dust my venetian blinds once a year or so. Really, and if I did, it wouldn't be a friend I would have wanted to keep anyway. I just wonder why all my female friends add even more stress to their already full and busy lives by forcing themselves to keep a spotless house on top of everything else. Let it slide, I say. No one's ever died from a few over-sized dust bunnies under the futon, I promise.