Being on my own the last three years has forced this old dog to learn new tricks. This is part of life. Two folks live together for over 40 years, and when one goes on to heaven, the other one is left to figure out which end is up and where did she keep the toilet paper.

I’m not sure who is better at this. The guy or the gal?

The gal has to learn about the stuff he handled in the daily duty of things. She has to learn to crank the lawn mower and check the oil. She studies up on 285-70-R17s. The world of tires is foreign. Maybe he paid the bills. Maybe it was her job all along. It makes a difference when suddenly his job becomes hers.

All I know is my list of duties expanded considerably. I had to adjust my male view of the world to include girl stuff.

Now look, I know that it’s crude of me to think of a division of duties in a marriage along gender lines. Women are not defined by doing the dishes any more than a man is defined by watching football, which happens to be his God-given responsibility to the SEC.

But we all know that the duties get split up, and we all know that some areas just belong more on the girly side of life and some on the manly side. I’m not making any policy here. I’m not exploring Mars and Venus gender themes. I’m just saying, we all know how the flow goes, and it usually goes along similar paths.

For example, while I am writing this bloggy thing to you, I am at the same time washing and drying my clothes. This is not clearly a girly thing. Through most of my forty-something years of marriage I shared in the washing. I pulled my 10% and pulled it gladly.

However, now I am fully engaged in the entire process. From the dirty clothes basket, back to the hanger or drawer, I’m in charge. Some things I do because of the way she did it, but with some things, I have developed my own methods. And unashamedly, I am well aware that they are full-on-male methods.

I sort clothes by type, not color or fabric.

For one thing, I don’t know my fabrics. I can barely tell a cotton from a polyester. I wouldn’t know a chiffon thread if it slapped me in the face, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing chiffon anyway. Denim is the only fabric I know for sure.

T-shirts, socks, and underwear go together. I don’t really care what color they are. I don’t wear white Ts anymore, so mixing reds with dark blues is not an issue. Jeans make one pile. Sweatshirts can go with jeans if needed. Towels, yep, they’re a separate load.

Then there are fourteen settings on the front washer dial. I don’t know what they all mean, nor do I care. I only know that the “Normal” cycle takes 56 minutes, and that is absolutely too long for me to wait. The “Small” cycle is 23 minutes, which is more my style.

And since my idea of a normal sized load is a small double-arm-full, I don’t figure I’m breaking any earth-shattering rules of domestic engineering.

Washing clothes is not my only gender crossover experience. I have also claimed the kitchen. You already know this. I’m not just cooking hamburgers on the grill, which is a guy thing anyway. I’m experimenting with recipes. I know what’s on the spice rack. I’m in charge of the pantry contents. I make the lists. I do the shopping. I have reluctantly learned to use a crockpot liner. I get excited when using parchment paper in the oven.

The scary part is this. Sometimes I talk about recipes with the womenfolk at church. This is new to me. On a couple of occasions, I have taken a dish to the Sunday potluck and have had other women ask me for the recipe. I don’t know whether to feel weird or grateful.

I am well aware that men cook all the time. I’m told that my D’Daddy did all the cooking when he was alive. I’m just saying, this is a big change for me.

Some men would feel threatened by a shift in roles. But I can take it.

When Marion and I are talking on the phone about our day, going through the routine of our lives, she will often ask me what I did that day. I might tell her about working in the shop. I might talk about a trip to the hardware store. It could be that we talk about working out in the yard.

But if I talk about a new recipe I tried, or I tell her I discovered a new softener sheet I like for the dryer, or that I decorated a new shelf I put up on the wall, she pokes at me.

“You’re such a girl.”

Take, for example, my dishes. I have eaten off the same plates since 1978. We received an eight-place setting of Noritaki everyday china as a wedding gift. I have stared at little flowers and girly designs beneath my creamed corn and mashed taters for longer than I care to admit.

There are only three bowls left and one of them is chipped. A few of the breakfast plates are missing. I’ve never used the tiny, delicate coffee cups. A man would sooner take a colonoscopy than to hold a cup by a handle that doesn’t have room for at least three fingers.

So, I have been on the prowl for new dishes. I have looked at stoneware. I have studied the world of melamine. I know I don’t want china again. I have looked through sets of dishes at junk stores and yard sales. I have shopped on Amazon until I’m cross-eyed. I am absorbed in the world of dinnerware.

My goal is this. I want to eat off of a plate that looks like a man’s plate.

My research, however, has provided a lot of girly banter between me and Marion, which is not really justified since she does so many things normally reserved for guys. I won’t get into that for several reasons. Just know that she is one tough gal.

I finally ordered my new plates last week, and they were delivered just the other day.

They are light weight. They give off the aura of manliness. I am all smiles with my new dinnerware. Plus, my youngest daughter needed new plates and was glad to get my old ones.

Marion was here visiting the day the new plates arrived. I got excited. I wanted to stop what we were doing in the shop to open the boxes. I put down a man’s hammer in favor of taking a look at my new dishes.

“Boy,” I said, “these are great. They are even better than I expected.

We washed them all and put them away in the cabinet.

Marion is grinning, bigtime. She couldn’t help herself.

“You’re such a girl.”