Wendy Writer vs. Suzy Homemaker

Wendy Writer’s colleague has issued a June writing challenge – 30,000 words by the end of the month. WW knows she needs to seriously step it up to come anywhere close to meeting that challenge, but despite a family and a full-time job, she says yes.


Due to craziness at work, she starts the challenge several days into the month (i.e. behind schedule from the start) but determines just to do the best she can. A week later, other writers are reporting numbers in the tens of thousands, while Wendy has yet to break 5000, but she is not deterred. She still has weekends, and school is almost over, so longer writing periods are just around the corner.

On a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon (immediately following yet another trip to the basement due to a tornado warning, followed by a torrential thunderstorm), Wendy’s daughter heads to a neighbor’s house to play. Wendy grabs her laptop and dashes past the clutter in the dining room to her bedroom, which promises respite from any residual household noise (i.e. her husband). There, in the center of the bed is a pile of clean laundry, dumped unceremoniously that morning before church, and left there, forgotten and to its own devices. Since the laundry has not folded itself and put itself into the drawers (no surprise there), it remains in a heap in the center of the bed. Without a second thought, Wendy pushes the laundry to her husband’s side of the bed, sets the laptop on her side and fires it up (the laptop, not the laundry).

Just then, Suzy Homemaker arrives. She smiles, lighting up the lovely, perfectly made-up face the same shade of pink as her perfectly pressed apron. “Don’t you want to fold those first?” she asks sweetly.

Wendy grunts. “It’s only socks and underwear. Besides, I have less than an hour until I have to make dinner. It’ll keep.”

Suzy crinkles her perky nose. “But it’s getting wrinkled.”

Wendy waves her away, but Suzy persists. “I can’t believe you walked right by that clutter on the dining room table.”

Wendy’s eyes remain fixed on her computer screen. “I’ll do it later. Right now, the house is quiet.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Wendy watches Suzy gear up for the inevitable guilt trip. The one that will paint her as a poor excuse for a wife and mother because she is typing instead of baking something from scratch; the one that will link clutter on the dining room table to poor digestive health and increased television viewing for Wendy’s family since the dining room table is not available for healthier pursuits.

Wendy sighs. She knows what she must do – she has done it so many times before. Bracing herself, she saves her file, poises her fingers over the keyboard, and in a single keystroke, Suzy is gone.

Thank God for “delete.”