Dirty Dishes: The Leading Cause of Divorce

by Patti


Our dishwasher broke.

There is sits, deceptively beautiful; pristine; stainless steel. 

Useless.

And so I have been washing the dishes by hand for months now.

Lest you call me spoiled, I’ll have you know that I have never, in all my adult, living-on-my-own life, had a dishwasher. No, I have been hand washing those muthas for YEARS. When we bought this house 2 years ago, my greatest joy was the dishwasher! Yay dishwasher!  But, because we just bought a new stove - one of those pricey, double oven, convection numbers (that, if you want to know the truth, kind of seems to bake the same as the old 70’s number we had before)  – the purchase of a new dishwasher will have to wait. 

Hence, hello hand washing.

I was sick with a cold this past week. Like, the kind of cold that when I got home from work, the only thing I had energy for was to flop myself down on the couch, and then beg S to cover me with a blanket because after the flopping I’d be too weak to do anything else.  But the kid has this bothersome habit of needing to eat, and because I do after-school and evening duty since M doesn’t get home 3 nights a week ‘til after 9 pm, that means I am stuck with all the cooking, cleaning and homework on those days. To be fair, he does his share on his days off: He cooks, he cleans, he does laundry, he irons, he hangs out with the kid and doesn’t refer to it as “babysitting”. I know I’m lucky in this sense. (He’s a pretty good kisser, too.) BUT. His standards are sky-high, and this can be the most annoying thing on the planet to live with. Especially when I’m sick. 

M had the nerve to sigh all dramatically when he got home one night because the sink was full of dishes. Yes, they were 2-days old and they kind of smelled, but I WAS SICK, and I was kind enough to still bother to cook and leave a plate out for him. I told him that if the dishes were bothering him that much, he should roll up his sleeves and get to work. I also reminded him that not too long ago, HE was sick, and oh BOY did the world end when he was sick. He lay on the couch like a dying Victorian woman, moaning and wincing, while I scurried around doing everything by myself, AND giving him medicine and juice. *I* get sick and what do I get? 20 math problems from my daughter that even I don’t understand, and a lecture from my husband.

Ain’t that grand?

That night I went to bed as huffy and pissed as my cold would allow me to get, and woke the next morning to find the dishes done. Not put away, no, that would be asking for the moon AND the stars and just who do I think I am, but DONE, at least. As I put them away, my mind wandered back to the caveman times. Why was it that the caveman was the one always carrying the club, while the cavewoman walked around empty-handed? It seems to me that the club would have served a much better purpose in the hands of the cavewoman.

Just sayin’.