“It was about eight in the morning and I’d just put a pan of gluten-free zucchini muffins in the oven. My children Lacy, 11, Jebediah, 8, and Scooter, 6, had just harvested everything out of the garden as part of their home-schooling project on medieval farming methods, when I turned around and puked all over Lacy’s model of the solar system made out of dried gourds. Boy, was she steamed! I told her that vomit was one of Nature’s ways of telling me I was with child. She went and got the mop and a bucket, and then she said the cutest thing: “I hope you have another girl because I am sick of cleaning up everybody’s shit all by myself while the boys get to work on their Civil War dioramas!” That Lacy! Whenever I assign housework along traditional, gendered patterns she gets as mean as Granny’s chihuahua.”
–Delilah Frunt, New Hampshire, age 47
