Anyone with me on this? There are other household tasks I find enjoyable, soothing, relaxing; or, if not exactly fun, at least matter-of-fact, businesslike, things that just have to be done and that's that.
But dishes. I used to like doing them. Now they're just...hateful. Glowering at me from the sink. Threatening me with the inevitability of foul odors and mold if I ignore them. Refusing to go away or to be put off. Getting worse the longer they're let go. Giving me tight shoulder and back muscles when I finally get around to them -- not to mention dry skin.
In short, dishes are entropy at its most top heavy. Most undeniable. Most EVIL.
Never have I longed more for that bastion of cleanliness, that fortress of sparkling surfaces -- the dishwasher. This is one desperate housesinglewoman.
And the desperation keeps building. Not of singleness, no. Of dishwashing.
Dishes. A housekeeper's homework. The Chore That Doesn't End.
Oh dishes! Oh dishes! I hate you! You stink!
I wish I could blast you all out of my sink.
If only a rock would explode every glass.
Oh dishes! Oh dishes! You're a pain in my ass.
I'd rather do taxes late into the night
or replace a blown fuse with a broken flashlight,
scrub toilets barehanded, dust shelves with my face
than wash the plates lying all over the place.
Oh dishes! Oh dishes! You grow like a weed.
My hands are so chapped that they're starting to bleed.
If you'd just wash yourselves, I could love you, I think.
Oh dishes! Oh dishes! I hate you! You stink!
4 comments:
Wow. Not only do you hate doing dishes as much as I do, you've also taken a poem I enjoy and deftly adapted it to the subject at hand. There's not a single thing I don't love about this post. I think I may print it out and hang it over my sink, if only to distract me the next time I attempt to make headway against the growing pile of dirty dishes.
I love doing dishes by hand. I do them in the morning while waiting for the water to boil for coffee.
It's like, in that foggy half-wakefulness, I become a sort of dishes-doing machine. Unthinking. Scrub, rinse, drain, repeat.
I hate doing dishes after a party/having people over for dinner. That pisses me off. I don't like seeing every spoon I own on the counter, along with ten-twelve salad plates and all of those damn wine glasses that I'll have to be careful not to break.
So, I try to make other people do THOSE dishes.
BTW, you should totally post your bread recipe. I can't find ANYTHING to match it.
I put off dishes more than just about any other chore. This morning, I scrubbed gunk off my stove, scrubbed my floor on my knees, and tidied up the rest of the apartment, but I took a look at my full sink, and moved right along to something else.
Strangely enough, I'm the first person to volunteer to wash the dishes at a friend's house after a dinner party.
I really should wash my dishes tonight.
Oh! Jack Prelutsky! Brilliant!
I memorized "Homework Oh Homework" in the third grade, and I am sad to say (as numberless verses of "The Lady of Shallot" slide from my memory forever) that I can still recite every word.
And I now hate dishes nearly as much as I hated homework then.
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