Something must be UP because as a person who absolutely , and I mean absolutely, hates washing dishes, something very strange has just happened in our household.
I have hated that after meal routine with a vengeance. I think it began when I was a child of about 10 and I grew into the chore of taking my turn to do the dishes alone after supper. Not sure why this attitude developed exactly--it might have been the amount dishes to wash, as there were often 7 or 8 for the supper meal, plus the after school snack dishes, not to mention the unspeakable lunch box leavings. It might have been that supper wasn't until 6pm in our house and the best television programs came on early in the evening. I developed a type of Cinderella Syndrome I fear, as I could hear everyone else laughing in the living room as I remained back in the kitchen alone and sulking in a pool of self pity and pre-adolescent despair. This type of despair can sometimes turn into adolescent despair of which much has been written but to which no solution has been found.
It could have been that there was no such thing as wash, rinse, and rack to dry. Very little rinsing was done due to water restrictions on a dry land based farming operation-- so drying and putting away was the norm. The water was often very hot to begin with as the rule was we could only use just the hot water tap to fill the dish basin following the theory that water would be saved if one didn't dilute the hot water with cold.
I always found the silverware to be particularly annoying what with the forks poking into the tea towel used for drying causing various verb forms of the utensil to come to mind. Just the general piddliness of handling such little things separately was trying. Give me a stack of plates that one can dry with a clink clink clink like a deck of cards being shuffled and there wouldn't be a dirty dish left in fifteen minutes from start to finish one way or another.
Old dried potato pots and cold burned on gravy at the bottom of roasters left until the last, in by then lukewarm water, were almost impossible to get clean let alone dry, as the allotted tea towel would be so wet it would more than likely just leave streaks on whatever it was that one was 'drying'.
Yes it is, and was, no secret that the dishes were /are not my favourite household chore. Even my children, I suspect, realized that, and I know my husband is certain of it.
So that is why the incident this evening is particularly unusual and perhaps not a little troubling.
This week and this week only I promised myself (as part of getting a real life program) that "I am going to have a clean kitchen". So right after supper, I , without too much hesitation, gathered the dishes and utensils and started to fill the sink with both hot and cold water, poured in the detergent, wiped down the stove and proceeded with the chore. I was puzzled when I realized that there was only one dinner plate in the sink from the meal shared with my husband. As I KNEW that we had not eaten off the same dish (that sort of romantic eating stopped a lonnng time ago), and as neither of us had eaten right out of the stew pot, I naturally wondered what had happened to the missing plate. I asked my husband if he had brought his plate back to the kitchen and he assured me that he had, and even pointed to the exact spot where he left it by the sink. Doubting this I sent him back to the living room in a quest to find the other supper plate. He returned with a glass but no plate. I proceeded, with not a little apprehension, to look in the fridge and then in the bathroom, thinking that perhaps it had gotten put down somehow in error. Nope--no plate to be found.
The only place left to look after checking the oven and tea towel drawer (where it wouldn't have fit anyways--I don't even know why he even opened the drawer) was the dish cupboard.
Now, I ask the reader to keep in mind that the last place setting of four that I purchased was on sale from Canadian Tire for $15 plus tax and it only has 4 plates, 4 bowls, 4 cups, and 4 saucers. This same reader, therefore, can readily understand the astonished exclamation that burst from my lips when, after careful counting, and consequent recounting of said dish set, it was discovered that there were three clean plates sitting in the cupboard.
Creepy little shivers ran down my back as I stared down at the sink, jaw hanging open in awestruck dismay, where the fourth sole plate lay languishing as it awaited its turn to be cleansed and placed with its patterned companions.
It seems the extreme stress of the toil of washing my own dish and putting it back into the cupboard immediately upon completion of my meal has wiped out all and every bit of memory of the deed.
What does it mean? It might mean I should invest in more paper plates. It might mean I should invest in a dishwasher. It might mean my husband will do dishes more often. It might mean I am truly losing my mind...
What do you think it means?
I have hated that after meal routine with a vengeance. I think it began when I was a child of about 10 and I grew into the chore of taking my turn to do the dishes alone after supper. Not sure why this attitude developed exactly--it might have been the amount dishes to wash, as there were often 7 or 8 for the supper meal, plus the after school snack dishes, not to mention the unspeakable lunch box leavings. It might have been that supper wasn't until 6pm in our house and the best television programs came on early in the evening. I developed a type of Cinderella Syndrome I fear, as I could hear everyone else laughing in the living room as I remained back in the kitchen alone and sulking in a pool of self pity and pre-adolescent despair. This type of despair can sometimes turn into adolescent despair of which much has been written but to which no solution has been found.
It could have been that there was no such thing as wash, rinse, and rack to dry. Very little rinsing was done due to water restrictions on a dry land based farming operation-- so drying and putting away was the norm. The water was often very hot to begin with as the rule was we could only use just the hot water tap to fill the dish basin following the theory that water would be saved if one didn't dilute the hot water with cold.
I always found the silverware to be particularly annoying what with the forks poking into the tea towel used for drying causing various verb forms of the utensil to come to mind. Just the general piddliness of handling such little things separately was trying. Give me a stack of plates that one can dry with a clink clink clink like a deck of cards being shuffled and there wouldn't be a dirty dish left in fifteen minutes from start to finish one way or another.
Old dried potato pots and cold burned on gravy at the bottom of roasters left until the last, in by then lukewarm water, were almost impossible to get clean let alone dry, as the allotted tea towel would be so wet it would more than likely just leave streaks on whatever it was that one was 'drying'.
Yes it is, and was, no secret that the dishes were /are not my favourite household chore. Even my children, I suspect, realized that, and I know my husband is certain of it.
So that is why the incident this evening is particularly unusual and perhaps not a little troubling.
This week and this week only I promised myself (as part of getting a real life program) that "I am going to have a clean kitchen". So right after supper, I , without too much hesitation, gathered the dishes and utensils and started to fill the sink with both hot and cold water, poured in the detergent, wiped down the stove and proceeded with the chore. I was puzzled when I realized that there was only one dinner plate in the sink from the meal shared with my husband. As I KNEW that we had not eaten off the same dish (that sort of romantic eating stopped a lonnng time ago), and as neither of us had eaten right out of the stew pot, I naturally wondered what had happened to the missing plate. I asked my husband if he had brought his plate back to the kitchen and he assured me that he had, and even pointed to the exact spot where he left it by the sink. Doubting this I sent him back to the living room in a quest to find the other supper plate. He returned with a glass but no plate. I proceeded, with not a little apprehension, to look in the fridge and then in the bathroom, thinking that perhaps it had gotten put down somehow in error. Nope--no plate to be found.
The only place left to look after checking the oven and tea towel drawer (where it wouldn't have fit anyways--I don't even know why he even opened the drawer) was the dish cupboard.
Now, I ask the reader to keep in mind that the last place setting of four that I purchased was on sale from Canadian Tire for $15 plus tax and it only has 4 plates, 4 bowls, 4 cups, and 4 saucers. This same reader, therefore, can readily understand the astonished exclamation that burst from my lips when, after careful counting, and consequent recounting of said dish set, it was discovered that there were three clean plates sitting in the cupboard.
Creepy little shivers ran down my back as I stared down at the sink, jaw hanging open in awestruck dismay, where the fourth sole plate lay languishing as it awaited its turn to be cleansed and placed with its patterned companions.
It seems the extreme stress of the toil of washing my own dish and putting it back into the cupboard immediately upon completion of my meal has wiped out all and every bit of memory of the deed.
What does it mean? It might mean I should invest in more paper plates. It might mean I should invest in a dishwasher. It might mean my husband will do dishes more often. It might mean I am truly losing my mind...
What do you think it means?
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