The Rules

My wife has some specific rules about our household. After seven years of marriage, I've finally figured them out.

When your husband is at home:

1) Never enter the garage. The garage is a cold, dark and scary place at night. Not to be entered lightly by the fairer sex, it is best to send your man, shoeless, to the minivan for the forgotten cell phone phone, PDA, kids' art projects, soiled toddler underwear and the like.

2) Never lift a laundry basket. The laundry basket, while of reasonable weight during the day, increases in weight tenfold in the evenings, requiring the better-developed musculaculture of an American male transport it from bedroom to washer.

3) Never fill an ice tray. Filling an ice tray, requiring addition of water to a small plastic receptical with multiple trapezoids that allow ice blocks to form, is an unendurable duty, yet vital to the maintenance of the household. Best to let your husband do it.

4) Never go up or down stairs. While in daylight, stairclimbing is, again, a routine task. In the evenings, gravity exacts a heavier toll. When sweatshirts are required from the closet, toys from the basement or frozen meats from the freezer, it takes a man to traverse the mighty pathways of our house....both up...and down.

6) Change a diaper, say, if you can avoid it. Well, who would, really?