This week, I am living the bachelor life.

My wife and daughters are in Washington, D.C., where our older girl is attending a conference for high school student leaders.

They will be visiting the Washington Mall and the National Zoo to see the pandas. I am home with the dog and the parakeet.

So I am doing what every red-blooded American male does when the women in his life are out of town: Cleaning and foraging for food.

Not that there's no food in the house. It's just that my wife usually does the shopping on the weekend and it seems kind of silly to go out to buy food for one person (and a dog and a parakeet.) It's one thing to go through the express aisle; it's another to go through with one pork chop or one dog biscuit. So I'm checking the contents of our refrigerator, opening and sniffing the little plastic tubs, wondering maybe if this is OK to eat or maybe this.

I'm actually afraid to toss anything out for fear of violating the Star Fleet prime directive against interfering with the evolution of intelligent life.

How intelligent, you ask? When I open the refrigerator door, a voice says, "Hey, turn out that light."

Now, if you are going to prepare food, you are going to have to clean up after yourself. This is a concept many men have trouble grasping. Growing up, our mess magically disappeared, even though our parents reminded us that they "weren't put on Earth to be your servant." When we got married, this lesson finally sunk in.

(Of course, most of us didn't move directly from our parents' home to married life. But while on our own, we had our own way of dealing with the cleaning issue. We didn't. Our apartments, while they looked fine to us, tended to leave visitors - especially persons of the female gender - in a state of stunned silence. There's not much you can say that's complimentary when the dominant theme in your home décor is dust and stacked Pabst empties.)

Our significant others made it clear that the cleaning was not going to do itself. And, unlike our mothers, they meant it. Now, as modern men, we know that housework is not an exclusively female domain (like shoe shopping.) It's just that when we look at the task we see it differently.

In general terms, when a woman looks at a couch littered with newspapers and nacho chip crumbs she sees clutter, disorder and filth and thinks that, for the safety and well-being of her family it has to be cleaned. A man looks at the same scene and sees, well, a couch - a comfy, inviting couch that is beckoning him oh, so enticingly. And what he thinks is, "Where's the remote?"

So, I have a little catching up to do before the rest of the family arrives home, just as soon as I make lunch - and figure out if this smells OK.

TOM REILLY is a Sun Chronicle news editor. He can be reached at 508-236-0332 or at treilly@thesunchronicle.com. He does not do windows.