“Remoted” – Workday 118 / Day 170 (Wednesday)

Dishes. Ugh. 

Day five with no dishwasher. It may be time to rethink the longstanding aversion to disposable plates and microwavable dinners that can be eaten from their disposable containers.

I wash the bathroom floor by hand (it’s easier to see how it’s going up close than a mop handle length away) and cook more food from scratch than packaged food. This is my homage to June Cleaver and Betty Crocker and other imaginary housewives. 

The broken dishwasher is illuminating exactly how spoiled I am by modern conveniences. I miss the magic of making the dirty dishes disappear into the box for several days and taking them out clean later. Any quaint charm once ascribed to the hand washing is gone. The pleasure of playing in the soapy bubbles has reached its expiration date.

Oops. 

Now, it’s every damned day with washing dishes and the dish soap is running low. Breakfast bowl, lunch plate, dinner plate, morning coffee mug, afternoon tea cup, silverware and bam, the sink is half full again. I went years with no dishwasher. How? Why?

The crystal wine glass for my weekend wine is out of circulation since the sleeve of my bathrobe knocked it over and smashed it as I was setting up the coffee maker one morning. The funny part is, it wasn't in the sink because I was afraid it would break. I was using the crystal wine glass under the idea of enjoying things instead of "saving" them for some vague someday. Ha ha, the joke is on me. At least I didn’t have to wash it. Now, as a form of penance, it’s the plastic picnic wine glass. No point endangering any more of the crystal. 

Yesterday, when the sink was filled with the day's dishes, inspired by the previously broken wine glass, I considered smashing the dishes because taking out broken glass trash seemed preferable to washing more dishes. Luckily, that notion passed quickly, because it wouldn't take long to run out of dishes, and I like shopping even less than the recent dish washing.