Daily chores of the stay-at-home father

I was talking to my wife this morning, post-work-out. "i am a little worried," I confessed, "I am enjoying writing my blog; what if I run out of things to write about?" She suggested that I write about my stay-at-home father chores.
Let me start with the chore I have already accomplished this morning. Cleaning my eldest son's tortoise's cage. For those of you who have not yet purchased your son (or daughter) a tortoise for his/her six-year old birthday (to be specific to our case), consider my experience. Let me give you the guidance I never had. Tortoises live a very long life. They are not cuddly or particularly cute. They tend to hiss at you (which is particularly fun when the hissing in question is related to one's cleaning the tortoise's disgusting cage). Other than the hissing, our tortoise is completely unresponsive. She's not that messy and she isn't noisy, but the same could be said of the chair in which I am sitting. To sum up, allowing a tortoise into your home is like agreeing to house and feed a fairly aggressive/strongly indifferent free-loader for 75-85 years. This notion is particularly irksome when, every week, I clean the tortoise's cage. To do this takes many steps. First, I fill the bathroom sink with tepid water, add dechlorinating liquid to said water, and place the tortoise in for her bath. I remove the animal's food dish, water dish, and climbing structure for cleaning. I, then, pick-up her cage after carefully placing the various heat lamps that she requires off to the side, and empty the contents of her cage into the outside trash (this is kind of heavy, but getting lighter- thanks again Jillian Michaels). When I mentioned carefully placing her heat lamps to the side, I wasn't kidding. Last summer, I carelessly put her night-time heat lamp on my boys' carpet without assuring that it had been turned off. It burned a perfect circle into my sons' floor. The man who repaired the carpet said that as recently as twenty years ago (before flame-resistant carpet), the carpet would have caught on fire and burned down my house. Back to the cleaning: the emptied cage (tank would be a more accurate term) must then be cleaned with a water/bleach compound. The food dish, water dish, and climbing structure need to be similarly cleaned. It's then on to refilling the cage with Reptibark and Alfalfa "Premium Reptile Bedding." Finally, I put the tortoise back in her cage, reset the heating lamps, and voila, a clean tortoise tank. To be fair, it doesn't take all that much time, but I still find myself bitter. It's the principal that gets me. All this work for a loveless-to-hostile animal that probably perceives me as a moving rock to be avoided.
The Russian Tortoise, my son's creature, hails from the deserts of Afghanistan and Kryzigstan where, I assume, day to day existence must be very difficult. To eke out an existence, one needs to be always focused on survival (leaving little time for being cuddly or cute or in any way endearing) and always prepared to defend oneself (by constantly hissing at stay-at-home fathers). I guess I should count my lucky stars that my children don't come from as bleak a place as my son's tortoise. I don't know if I could handle it if they started to hiss at me.
I do the laundry (seemingly a river that always overfloweth). I change the sheets. (An important note here: when putting pillows in pillow cases never allow the pillow's tag to show through open end of the pillow case. It might not bother you, but it's sure to bother your wife). On the same note, all towels must match. I occasionally try to get a little creative with my color pairings (creative or lazy). Clearly, my wife is not creative enough to share my vision for I am invariably sent back to the bathroom in question to ensure that all towels have the same color. I try to keep the main rooms in our house free of toys, papers, and books. This is most easily done by going on vacation for long periods of time (or in some other way, keeping our children away from house. Perhaps least conducive to my attempts at keeping the house clean is my sons' imagination. Usually, a parent gushes over his or her children's imagination. I see the merit in such a response. Imagination is really cool, but I wish my children's would reveal itself in neater ways. For example, my boys love Star Wars and so, need a steady supply of light-sabers. (The real culprit hear is my youngest who always seems engaged in some life-or-death struggle, slashing away at imaginary enemies). My boys' light-saber of choice is a Lincoln Log. This would be OK if they had chosen one Lincoln Log each. Instead they have used every Lincoln Log in the house. This has resulted in a veritable infestation of Lincoln Logs. On every floor in the house, on every couch (between every pillow of said couch), on every counter, on every bed (in every bed), there are Lincoln Logs. If the Empire ever gets its act together to attack our house, they'll be in trouble because we have an ABUNDANCE of light sabers accessible from anywhere at any time.
The chore that I find myself doing most consistently is dishes. I wash dishes. I do a very nice job at it. My wife and I struck an agreement in the early stages of our courtship. She cooks, I clean. This pact continues to this day. So focused on cleaning have I become that every action that I take in a kitchen is done with the subsequent cleaning in mind. I (and I don't suggest this) refuse to use cutting boards. I don't want to clean them. I also try to limit the amount of dishes that I use whenever I do cook (love that grill). Sadly for me, my wife (who is a wonderful cook) and my children (who love making messes) don't share my parsimonious approach to pot/dish/cutting-board/frying pan usage. For instance, we have fruit after every meal. Now, the cleaning-minded me knows that bananas are the perfect fruit. Hold em in your hand, eat, compost the rind. Same could be said of apples, plums, grapes and countless other choices. Do my boys choose any of these easy-clean fruits? NO. My eldest loves mangos (knives to clean, cutting-boards, extra-scrubbing on the dishes that go in the dish-washer to ensure no caked-on mango). My youngest boy insists on water-mellon or cantaloupe (again with the knives and cutting-boards). To make matters worse, my wife insists on using cutting boards for cutting the bread (the injustice!), she uses multiple (and I'm talking MULTIPLE) dishes and bowls (mixing bowls, mind, not just easy put-in-the-dishwasher bowls) for every meal she cooks. Sure, the food tastes terrific, but there is always an equation flashing inside my head. Does X (enjoyment of the meal) = Y (how many dishes I have to clean). Usually it does. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't yearn for take-out on an almost pathological level. Usually, I clean with a steady, calm forbearance. I like to listen to This American Life (the podcasts) as I clean. It's a great radio program and helps pass the time. Still, every so often I get stressed to near-breaking. The other night my wife cooked artichokes (a true nemesis). I hate the taste of artichokes and I hate the butter-sauce. I particularly hate cleaning meals with artichokes in them. First off, artichokes are never the main dish. So, after I've cleaned the pot where the artichokes were boiled, the cutting board where the stems were cut off, the pot where the butter sauce was made, and the knives that cut the artichokes, I know that I have to clean multiple other pots, dishes, pans, etc. So vexed was I by the injustice that I turned to my wife and snarled, "I feel like this whole cooking thing is just a collusion to make me wash dishes!" Strong words, I know. I blame the artichokes.
I have described stay-at-home fathering as a battle. This is true regarding the chores of a stay-at-home father. Indeed a warrior's bravery, stead-fastness, and valor are required when faced daily with a hissing, ungrateful tortoise, a picky wife, messy (if imaginative) boys and artichokes.