Unfortunately, that included mowing the lawn.

Now, let me quote from my last William Times-Metz:

"(After winter), everyone then rushes out on the same weekend to rake their lawn, since the grass has been under three feet of snow for the past six months and most of it has died. The lawn is brown and dead and must be revived to a healthy, luscious green.

"Why?

"I'm not entirely sure. It seems of some import to my wife, who may or may not have been brainwashed from living here for seventeen years. Whenever I ask specifically why it's important that we spend four hours a week, taking time away from our precious weekends to take care of a nonsentient layer of flora that would do fine without us, getting blisters and spending money we could use to improve our lifestyle, she just says that it has something to do with the neighbors.

"I then point out that maybe the neighbors are sick of tending their lawns, too, and they're too terrified to ask us. Maybe, just maybe, our entire neighborhood is sick of this stupid lawn care and would just as soon asphalt the whole neighborhood except for one large patch the kids could play on. I say that we could be trendsetters here and let our lawn die, a kind of chlorophyll-fueled Braveheart, freeing everyone for miles around from the Tyranny Of The Lawn.

"But then she gives me that eerie Stepford Wives glance and tells me that it's important to her. And I do it because she thinks it's important. Frankly, four hours of hard labor for some vague happiness seems a piss-poor investment, but I never said my wife was uniformly bright."

This new lawn on this new house is much smaller. That's a plus. My old house in Anchorage had a lawn that was the size of Texas, and our mower required the Lawmower Heimlich Maneuver after every ten feet of mowing - turn it upside down, clear out the grass by hand, mow again, choke - so mowing the lawn was an activity I looked forward to with all the enthusiasm of painful dental surgery with salt-covered instruments.

But this lawn! It's teeny. I can mow it in twenty minutes! So I took care of it.

And I discovered something bizarre and strange about my nature: I don't care what the fuck it is - if you assign it to me, I'm going to be the best at it.

I've seen this happen before. At work, I was always the guy who would charge in, looking for the worst, most grotesque areas, trying to fix them - then I'd stay there like a moron, day in and day out, determined to get this right. Never mind that it was a stupid, redundant, corporately-mandated thing to do... I'd do it, and I'd do it well. So well, in fact, that usually they gave me better tasks, figuring that if I was willing to knock myself out over useless garbage, I'd be a ball of fire if applied to anything useful.

And they were right.

So when asked to take care of the lawn, I mowed it... And slowly, I felt the thoughts creeping in.

Shut up!

Lawns are stupid! A dumb-ass thing for white people with no soul! I could care less about the lawn!

But still, said the voice, doesn't it bother you that someone's... better?

Next thing I knew, I was buying fertilizer.

I don't remember how I got there - just that I was standing in line with a dazed look, muttering, "And I think I need a lawn edger, too."

It was like I was possessed.

So I started to care about the lawn, fertilizing, edging, raking - all of that stuff that made me feel like I should be smoking a pipe and wearing a tweed hat, and giving wise advice to the kids in the neighborhood on how petting on the first date really didn't give anyone respect.

For Christmas, Gini got me a leaf blower, which I was horrified to find that I actually wanted. It was sort of like someone buying you a coupon for a free transgender surgery, and discovering a secret desire to be a hermaphrodite.

Then I got sick of Comfort Food.

See, Gin's working eleven-hour days - did I mention that? Yeah, she's sick of it, too - and she always cooked. But by the time she got home, she was a wrung mop of exhaustion. "Cook for me! Cook for me!" I'd say, and she'd do one of two things:

1) Take me out to dinner. This was pretty good.

2) Make Comfort Food.

Comfort Food is - and Gini will be mildly upset that I'm sharing this family secret with you - ground hamburger mixed with milk, rice, and flour to make a pastelike slurry mixed with hamburger chunks. When she was a young girl and taking care of her family, this is What She Made - and as such, even though she knows it's kind of lowbrow, it's her default meal of choice. Plus, it's easy. If she was in a coma, she could whip it up.

It's not bad.

Once in a while.

Three times a week, and I was starting to crap rice. And what I was crapping looked kind of like Comfort Food.

Then she mentioned how we were spending a bit too much money, and that she was going to have to cook at home more often.

So driven to distraction by rice and hamburger, rice and hamburger, hamburger and rice - I made Shake 'n' Bake Porkchops and mashed potatoes out of a box.

And you know what? It was pretty cool. We sat down for an actual dinner with actual food and an actual side dish, had beer and wine, discussed the day's events - it was actually very civil, comforting... And most of all, civilized.

The next day, I cooked again.

And again.

And incidentally, I clean the house as well; that old "If you do the job, you do it well" instinct has kicked in there, too. Anyone wanna hear how my toilet is minty fresh?

Nowadays I'm buying basil at the supermarket, discussing the virtues of fresh-made linguini over the box stuff, renting aerators to thatch the lawn, and cleaning the toilet to sparkling clean.

Next, I get to wear a houserobe and call myself June Cleaver.

God help me, I am Gini's bitch.

NEXT: You Say You Want A Dance Dance Revolution