Think Carefully 8

Hubby’s Chores

By Jonathan Quincy Graves

{ Note: This is the eighth installment of this story. If you have not read the previous chapters, this one will make more sense to you if you do. The opener can be found here: Think Carefully. }

Saturday morning, Gloria asked me to fix breakfast for the two of us while she put together my list of chores for the coming week. When I asked what she would like, she said, “Surprise me.” She didn’t seem to be in a very good mood. You’d think it was my fault she had to make up a list of chores. Granted, not doing my chores to her satisfaction was one of the original justifications I’d used to get Gloria to spank me, but she didn’t have to make such a major production out of it.

I was having second thoughts while in the kitchen frying bacon and preparing the batter for pancakes. I wish I’d thought this through a little more carefully. Maybe if I’d broached the idea of spankings as a game, or as a warmup leading to sex instead of a method to modify my behavior to her satisfaction… Ah well, last night’s maintenance spanking was hot. Not the wooden spoon part. That was no fun, but the rest of it… Yeah, we could do that again.

Still, I thought, I didn’t expect my introduction of spanking would be such a game changer. Before, I was worried Gloria would not be interested. I never guessed she’d not only be enthused by the idea, but she’d involve half the women in her office and make it the center point of our marriage. Perhaps not half the women, but two that I know of, plus the entire graphics department, however many that is.

The bacon turned out a little crispier than I’d intended. My mind was more on last night and what Gloria was doing this morning than on my cooking. I put the results on a plate in the oven to keep warm, but waited to pour the pancake batter on the griddle until she was ready to eat. With Gloria already a little grumpy, serving her a breakfast of burnt bacon and cold pancakes might not be for the best.

What was taking her so long? I mean, there isn’t that much that needs doing. The lawn could use a trim. I plan to do that this weekend, anyway. What else is there? Take out the garbage? It shouldn’t take this long to write down two or three chores. She could probably list them on a Post-It note.

I headed down the hall toward the room we use as our computer room carrying a cup of coffee for Gloria. I was curious, and delivering a cuppa might improve her mood and give me a chance to look over her shoulder. We’ve got a desk, of sorts, from Ikea in a small room intended as a den or a study where we keep our laptops, hers on one side and mine on the other. We each occasionally bring work home from the office, but we mostly use our computers for social media, playing solitaire, looking up recipes (Gloria), or femdom soft porn (me).

As I approached the closed door, I heard Gloria burst out in full-throated laughter. I froze. It appeared her mood had improved. What could be so funny about a list of chores? “I can’t put that on the list!” I heard her say. She was on the phone or a Zoom call, and I’d bet a week’s pay Marissa was at the other end. That woman was the reason my simple request for an occasional spanking from my wife was turning into a life-changing undertaking.

I stood in the hall outside the door, forgotten cup of coffee in hand. Gloria was still talking on the other side, but after that first outburst, I could no longer make out the words. I didn’t press my ear to the door, although I was tempted. Instead, I turned around and walked back to the kitchen. I dumped Gloria’s coffee back in the pot to keep it hot, poured a cup for myself and sat at the kitchen table with my kindle open to an eBook I started a couple days ago.

It was close to twenty minutes later—my third or fourth distracted reread of Chapter 23—when Gloria entered the kitchen. She strode directly to the refrigerator, moved a miscellany of pictures of friends and family and other objects out of the way, and used magnets to post a letter-sized paper on prominent display.

The header in large, bold, red typeface read:

JOHN’S  CHORES  FOR  THE  WEEK

This was followed on the next line by a date range. Under that was a table of eight or ten rows listing chores, some of which had due dates, but what caught my eye was the bold text at the bottom:

Failure to complete these chores plus any others Gloria may identify during the week, to Gloria’s satisfaction, will result in bare-bottomed discipline!!!

The entire sheet looked professionally done, as if some graphics arts department was involved in its creation.

“Not overly subtle,” I said.

“Not meant to be, my darling. Breakfast ready?”

“Just waiting for your arrival,” I said and turned to the stove. I’d study the chores later. The list was longer than I expected and the phrase “to Gloria’s satisfaction” was a little concerning. What might that entail, exactly? The pancake batter had congealed somewhat, so I stirred in a little more milk while the griddle came up to temperature.

I put Gloria’s cup filled with coffee in front of her at the kitchen table. “I heard you laughing and talking in the study,” I said. “Did someone call?”

“Not exactly,” Gloria said. “I made a Zoom call to Marissa, and she suggested we add Cynthia. The basic template for your chores list is Cynthia’s work. She set it up so it will be easy for me to generate a new list each week.”

“And the warning at the bottom?”

“That’s Marissa. Well, no. We pretty much all contributed to that.”

“I figured Marissa must have offered that sentence. Is that what you were laughing at?”

“That and other things. Some of the ‘chores’ Cynthia suggested were… hilarious and too ribald—having to do with my personal satisfaction—for even me to put into print. I’ll handle those under the ‘plus any others’ category.”

Over pancakes, I said, “You’re going to move the rules list up to our bathroom today, right?”

“What’s the third rule on the list?” Gloria asked. After I recited it, she said, “Yes, I will move it after I finish breakfast.”

“And the chores list? That bottom line could be embarrassing for me if our family or friends saw it. Do you plan to move that to a less trafficked part of the house as well?”

“No. That will stay where it is. You may need it as a reminder so there aren’t any uncompleted chores by Friday evening. If there are, or if you complete your chores poorly—which means not to my satisfaction—I will invoke that line about failure to complete, and you will not enjoy those consequences.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. Gloria obviously expected me to devote an inordinate amount of time to completing any and all tasks she might think of during the week. At the beginning of this arrangement, when I mentioned my occasional failure to complete a chore in a timely manner, I was referring to the few chores I was responsible for back then. From where I’m sitting at the table, I cannot read the list, but I can tell, even from across the kitchen, there are more chores on it than were usually my responsibility in the past.

“The list is longer than I expected,” I said.

“Think of it as leveling the playing field,” Gloria said, “or the work arena. It’s time for you to do your fair share instead of leaving most of it for me.”

As we were finishing breakfast, Gloria said, “Take care of the dishes and clean up your mess, then you can check off the first item on your list.”

“Okay,” I said, thinking if all the chores on the list are this easy, my week won’t be so bad.

After I’d cleaned up the griddle, the stove, and loaded the dishwasher, Gloria said, “Are you finished?”

“Yup, all complete,” I said.

“Alright,” she said, “let me show you how we set up this table. The first column lists the chore, followed by a due date, if necessary. If no day or date is specified, you have the current week to get the chore done to your own schedule. Then, there is a box for you to check when you believe the chore is complete. If you think you are done with the first chore—Breakfast & Cleanup, Saturday—check that box. The next box is for me to rate your performance on a scale from 1 to 5. I’ll give this one a 3.” She entered the number in the box. “Then there is space for me to comment.” Gloria wrote: Bacon burnt. Table not wiped down.

“A three, huh? Fair enough, I guess, although you didn’t mention wiping down the table.”

“It’s all part of the chore,” Gloria said, “and you may be happy with a three, but the only acceptable grade is a five. I will address anything less during your weekly maintenance, which I will deliver with my brush, wooden spoon, or a belt, as I deem appropriate. A grade of a one or a two will also result in same-day correction; usually, a spanking at bedtime, corner time, writing lines, or other suitable punishment. How does that three look to you now?”

“A little unfair,” I said. “You never told me.”

“What is rule six?”

Gloria was referring to the rules still posted on the wall behind me. I memorized them last week with the promise she’d move them out of the kitchen up to our bathroom where no one but us was likely to see them. “‘Perform tasks and chores as assigned by Gloria, on time and to Gloria’s satisfaction,’” I quoted. “But still…”

“So, you have been told. It’s in your rules. A chore must be done to my satisfaction to earn you a five. Recite for me rule number eight?”

“‘Receive discipline with an accepting and penitent spirit, from Gloria and those she may designate,’” I quoted with a sigh.

“A verbal critique is a form of discipline,” she said. “When I correct you, I expect nothing less from you than an ‘accepting and penitent spirit.’ Understood?”

“I guess,” I said, realizing how far afield the whole chores topic had gone since I raised the issue a couple weeks ago to justify Gloria spanking me.

“You guess?” Gloria said, raising an eyebrow.

“No, I mean yes, I understand. I just didn’t expect…”

“Now you know what to expect, my dear. So, no more excuses. That first chore, breakfast Saturday morning, will be a recurring chore. Plan on it.”

“Okay, and this next one?” I said. “‘Change the Sheets & Straighten Bedroom?’ I’m guessing you want me to put clean sheets on our bed. Right?”

“That’s right. That is also marked as due today. You should expect that to be a weekly chore as well.”

“That’s a chore I haven’t done since we married. I Didn’t change my sheets often when I was living by myself before we married either.”

“I remember,” Gloria said. “And dear, it says ‘straighten’ but there is more involved with that than you are probably thinking. To get a five—complete the chore to my satisfaction—you’ll need to gather up any dirty clothes and put them in the hamper, dust and arrange the things on the dressers, vacuum the carpet, and perform any other tasks required to make the bedroom look nice. After you check that chore off the list, I’ll want to be wowed by your efforts when I step into the bedroom to check your work.

“Do you have any questions about the rest of the list?”

I was reading down the list. “Mow the Lawn” was there as expected, along with “Eliminate Stacks of Papers,” “Take Out the Garbage (Without Being Asked),” and a couple other small tasks. Based on Gloria’s expansive definition of “straighten,” as it applied to the bedroom, however, a seemingly small task might not be so small after all, if it was to be done to her satisfaction. I strongly suspected that just mowing the lawn, for example, would not earn me a five for that chore. Maybe not even a three. I might have to rake, and I would definitely have to edge it. And might that chore involve weeding the flower beds? This was getting way out of hand. At least I had the entire week to complete those chores.

“I may need some clarification on some of these,” I said, remembering her promise of hairbrush, spoon, or belt used in next Friday’s maintenance spanking. Not to mention the threat of “same-day correction” for earning a one or a two. Add to the list the “plus any others” that I must perform to Gloria’s satisfaction, and this was going to be a busy, possibly red-bottomed week.

END of Part 8

The story continues with: Think Carefully 9 

Copyright © 2023 by Jonathan Quincy Graves. All rights reserved.  Please do not repost or use for any commercial purpose without written approval from the author.

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