Helpless Hausfrau Interrupted

Sanity has been a long way off recently; blog-time becomes scarce when ones husband contrives to get a nasty case of meningitis and thereby scares the wits out of us all. As ever, there is always some humour to be found lurking around the blackest of situations, and this time it came in the form of a lovely nurse, originally I think from the Philippines, who, at the height of his headachy, post-lumber-puncture pain, patted his leg kindly and left with the words "Now You Just Rest In Peace".

Giggling over, (that sort of mad near-hysteria you get when you really don't know what the next few hours hold for you) I ended up for a while sitting somewhat disconsolately around in the hospital cafe listing all the things I Don't Do Myself If R Is Around To Do It For Me. Put up a shelf, for instance - I don't know how to use the drill. Put up wallpaper. Check the tyre pressure on my cars - I lie to R and say I can do this, but always, always get someone to do it for me. Or don't do it at all. And so on. I really am pretty much a caricature of my own stereotype. I am a helpless hausfrau. How the hell did that happen?

As it is, it looks like R will be rejoining health proper in couple of months, and therefore will no doubt be able to carry on with such tiresome tasks.

But there is really no excuse for me. I am more rubbish than I previously realised. What is the point in keeping up the pretence of Modern Female if one is actually as man-dependent as any pretty-little-thing of a Georgian parlour?

So, I pledge, to myself, that I will:

• Learn to check the tyre pressure on my car. And the oil. Etc
• Put up wallpaper
• Drill holes

It's not entirely my fault. If we take the drill thing, there have been occasions where I have stubbed my toe again on the huge great mirror that has been sitting on our bedroom floor for over a year (yes, it has, R, a YEAR) waiting for He Who Drills to put it up, and, in fury, have phoned and demanded "How do I use that drill then?" The answer is always the same; suddenly alert, slightly panicked "Leave it to me, I'll do it as SOON as I get back. I will. I will." And then "There's something a bit wrong with it at the moment. I need to look at the, er, transform-rotatory-2-bit-bar...it, er, it was looking a bit, er...electrocuting. Could be really dangerous. Best let me look first. There was something in the paper the other day about an entire household being wiped out by this faulty drill, which is just the same one as mine...Don't touch it, please don't. For your OWN good, you know" and so on.

I can see his point; he knows I'll get cross and have to prove myself with a drill I know nothing about and our lovely walls will be sitting ducks.

But it does make me think. There are lots of things I need to learn to do for myself now, and not because I've been shocked into thinking I might have to, but because a show of helplessness concealing, badly, the resident laziness beneath is not something I would generally want to see in myself.

If you pay someone to do these jobs though, that's different surely.

Thank goodness - a way out...(but how shameful).