If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon by Jenna McCarthy

spot if I saw Joe wielding a Swiffer or emptying the dishwasher of his own accord. But here’s the part that stumped me: The study found that for both men and women, more housework equals more sex.
    As a compulsive Type A neat freak who has been known to make the bed around her snoring husband in the morning, I find this hard to believe. According to this theory, considering the staggering number of hours I already log sorting socks and chasing crumbs and plumping pillows each week, I should be having more sex than a billionaire in a brothel. Am I to believe that I’d be getting significantly more action if I just added some more scrubbing, scouring, sweeping, sponging, and straightening to my endless daily to-do list? Would a gleaming toilet bowl or streak-free windows—made that way through my own tireless efforts and an excess of elbow grease—make me feel ever more frisky? Even more discouraging to consider, is my housekeeper swinging from her ceiling fan at night in a pair of crotchless chaps while I am passed out wearing earplugs and flannel Hello Kitty pajamas?
    The researchers (a man and a woman; no word on whether they were having sex with one another) admit that they were surprised by their own findings, ultimately chalking them up to something called the “multiple spheres” hypothesis, which suggests that people who “work hard” also “play hard.” Interestingly, the same study also found a positive correlation between time spent at the office and frequency of sex—and reportedly they mean sex with the regular old ball-and-chain at home and not a few quickies in the supply closet with a cute administrative assistant. The way the researchers explain it is that compared to “normal folks,” both workaholics and vacuum addicts are better at prioritizing their time to make room for the things they enjoy.
    I am pretty sure my cleaning habits do not lead to more sex. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Joe considers my meticulous nature (what he calls my anal relentlessness) a serious cock block. Regardless of his take on my tidiness, I do know that I’m not easy to live with. I like everything done a certain way (mine), and I like everything to look a certain way (spotless). I hang clothes according to color, constantly twist cans in the pantry so that the labels are facing outward, and alphabetize things—like appliance manuals and the kids’ books—that have no business being alphabetized. When the Hold Everything catalog comes, I attack it with the lustful eagerness of a teenage boy diving into his dad’s latest forbidden issue of Playboy . I realize that it shouldn’t make me want to claw my husband’s eyeballs out when he loads the dishwasher haphazardly (when everyone knows you always load back to front and never place two glasses side by side) or doesn’t close his sock drawer the last half-inch every single godforsaken time he opens it , but it does. It really, truly does.
    “It must suck to be you,” Joe will say, not even meanly. And sometimes I do wish I were one of those easygoing, roll-with-it types, but I’m just not. Occasionally I’ll try to force my square self into a round hole by making a public declaration such as, “Tonight I am going to leave the dishes in the sink until morning!” Most of the time, my resolve lasts less than eight minutes. Remember in the movie The Crying Game when Forest Whitaker recounts the poignant parable of the frog and the scorpion? (It’s the second most memorable scene in the movie, right after the part where the dude finds out his girlfriend has a penis.) In the story, the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across the river because he can’t swim. The frog is afraid that the scorpion will sting him, but the scorpion reminds him that if he did, the frog would sink and they would both die. Finally the frog agrees to serve as the scorpion’s water taxi. Halfway across the river, wouldn’t you know? The goddamned scorpion stings him! Before