The Housewives

I am, to use the old fashioned word, a "housewife". I work only two days per week and even on those days, I'm the main person in charge of getting our daughter to and from childcare. I'm responsible for all the household-y kinds of duties, like cooking, washing, cleaning, ironing and the day to day child rearing.

I'm totally cool with this arrangement, given that my husband works crazy hours in order to provide a house for us to live in and food for us to eat. We each fulfill our own share of the needs hierarchy, and I'm sure roles could be reversed if either of us wanted them to be. But neither of us is interested in doing what the other does, so our system works well.

Sadly though I'm not a very good housewife in the traditional sense of the term. Like right now, for example, I'm sitting here on my laptop with a giant basket of washing in front of me, play-dough all over the floor and a sink full of dishes waiting to be done. I've just watched over an hour of reality television while playing Candy Crush Saga on my smart phone. My poor husband.

Recently I've developed a...uh...fondness for the American "Reality Housewives" series. It started with a few episodes of the Beverley Hills version and escalated when there was a marathon screening while I was doing the ironing. This led to me watching Beverley Hills, Vancouver and New Jersey in the one day. Now? I'm hooked.

If you haven't seen Real Housewives, it's like watching a train-wreck unfold slowly over the course of 45 minutes. It is just truly terrible, vicious, humanity-at-its-worst kind of viewing. Which of course makes it AMAZING and ADDICTIVE. The Real Housewives of New Jersey is like, next level crazy. The insanity of it is just so epic that I can't look away. Strangely I think the craziness of it stems from the fact that it's probably the least staged of all the series, which is just plain scary but also allows for that element of true voyeurism you don't get with the other versions.

The most recent episode from Season 5, which incidentally happened to be the first one I caught before downloading Season 1, involved an all in fisticuffs between three men who I believe were brother and brothers-in-law while multiple women surrounded them tearing their hair out and screaming. Excellent.

Season 1 sees the "housewives" spending their days at the hair salon and bitching about each other (mostly one in particular, model/stripper "Danielle" who I personally believe is a sociopath) before culminating in a dinner at which one o' the gals upends a table while shrieking at another. It's truly gripping viewing (no, really, it is). I'm onto Season 2 now and while I'm getting a little over some of the drama (Danielle I'm looking at you girlfriend) I'm still getting my kicks.

So, fellow housewives, be you lazy and technology addled like myself or your very own breed of anti-stereotype, be sure to remind your husbands that at least you don't look like this:

The Table Flip

I may have questionable taste but I genuinely recommend this show, if only for a good laugh. Who knows, you might learn how to speak Jersey.

Z x