I made a discovery amidst my family’s unfortunate new reality. Since I am not a genius, I am sure most of you already knew what I just found out. However, it solved a long-standing conundrum for me.

I’ve been doing the dishes in my domicile for about a decade. There are two reasons and both pertain to my lovely wife. First, her hands get dry and cracked sometimes after she washes dishes. It isn’t a big deal to pitch in and do something, so I figured I could help AND save money on expensive lotions. The second reason is that she said I never looked sexier than when I’m elbow deep in soap suds. If that ain’t reason enough, I don’t know what is.

We have this long running argument about the necessity of some pots, pans, and utensils to the cooking process. I believe that she has an evil plan to soil every dish we own – thus my dirty kitchen apocalypse theory. She discounts my hypothesis and doesn’t seem to care anyway. I still maintain that chocolate chip cookies shouldn’t require seventeen items to make. Yet every time I smell them cooking, I know I have seventeen new items to wash.

All of that leads to today’s brilliant finding. She had been at the hospital with our youngest for two weeks. It has been a rough stretch with me playing Mr. Mom. Thanks to the generosity of others,  I have yet to cook (a fact that makes my other daughters very happy since my culinary expertise doesn’t extend past piling things on bread.) I noticed during the last few days that I didn’t have many dishes to wash at all. Bonus!

We finally got to bring our sick baby home this week and, lo and behold, within an hour the sink was full of dirty dishes. Nothing could dampen the joy of the reunion, but I admit I was slightly peaved. So I playfully confronted the offender with the revival of my dirty kitchen apocalypse theory.

My lovely wife didn’t flinch, just laughed and waved me off.

“But I haven’t washed this many dishes in two weeks,” I complained to her back as she walked away.

“You have to cook to make dishes,” she replied over her shoulder.

Ahhh, so that explains it.

And off I go to fill the sink with suds, hoping she’ll take notice.

 

photo credit: Mysid (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons