Creative Work is an Oxymoron

In a story written by -- you can't make this stuff up -- "Candy" Sagon, The Washington Post reports that the latest generation has become culinarily illiterate:

At a conference last December, Stephen W. Sanger, chairman and chief executive of General Mills Inc., noted the sad state of culinary affairs and described the kind of e-mails and calls the company gets asking for cooking advice: the person who didn't have any eggs for baking and asked if a peach would do instead, for example; and the man who railed about the fire that resulted when he thought he was following instructions to grease the bottom of the pan — the outside of the pan.

Gathering and sharing these kinds of anecdotes are probably quite common among people who answer questions all day for a living. But still, this reminds me of a story. Of course everything reminds me of a story since I am so experienced and wise. But that's another story.

For the last 27 years I've done ALL our household's cooking. When my wife once complained decades ago that I wasn't doing my fair share of the housework and I brought up the cooking in defense, she exclaimed, "that doesn't count because that's creative work," implying that it doesn't count because it's fun. It seems that work's only work when it's... well... work.

When my wife's sister, who does all the housework in her household -- including the cooking -- heard about this, she got quite upset with my wife and came to my defense in a big way. Since then, my wife has given me full credit for the cooking.

Still, reflecting about all this, I seem to now be doing ALL the housework since I work out of my own home. Damn, I gotta re-think this...

Correction: I do MOST of the cooking, not all of it, as my wife cooks up a mean sesame chicken, a scrumptious chicken-cucumber-macaroni salad, and the occasional taco dinner. So, yes, in addition to my know-it-all ways, it can be said that I've exaggerated once or twice.