Rant #1,238: Chores Bores

Thank goodness this is a holiday week.

As usual, the weekend went too fast, even though, for the first time in a long time, I did absolutely nothing on Saturday and Sunday.

My wife worked the entire weekend, so I was pretty much bound to the house. I let my son sleep as long as he liked, since his sleeping days are over with his summer camp job beginning today, and he took full advantage of this.

When was the last time you slept until 2:45 in the afternoon?

Anyway, this Rant has nothing to do with that, it has to do with chores.

Yes, chores, those things that you have to do around the house to keep your dwelling ship shape.

Basically, our home chores are handled by my wife and myself, more 75-25 with her doing much more than me. We have tried to integrate our son into this, but by the time he gets to do what we've asked him to do, we've done it already.

Typical teenager, knowing that if he waits it out, he won't have to do it.

Anyway, one of my chores is emptying the dishwasher each and every morning, or at least five or six times a week in the morning after I wake up, take a shower and get dressed for the day.

This is not one of my favorite things to do.

All the dishes, plates, pots and pans and silverware need to be put away, and since I am the first person up, I am elected to do this.

When I am still half asleep, to do this, well, that is why they call it a chore.

For three people, we used a lot of dishes, plates, pots and pans and silverware each day and week, and it is my job to put the stuff away.

It's not like I have to walk all over the house to do it; all the cabinets are right before me.

But I think it is simply the mundane manner of the whole exercise that bores the heck out of me.

Do I mind doing it? Well, I do, but looking at what my wife does--cooks, cleans, and everything else--it is the least I can do to help her.

I often empty the laundry during the weekend, and certainly, when she is working an entire weekend, I empty the washing machine, which I did this weekend.

But there is something about emptying a dishwasher--our new dishwasher, as you already know--that just turns me off.

But I do it, and it only takes a few minutes, and I am done.

I remember that I saw some type of futuristic kitchen, where your drawers and cabinets actually became a dishwasher at the press of a button, and you didn't have to put anything away because it was already away as it cleaned.

Fat chance of that every happening in the real world, eh?

Again, my wife does the bulk of the chores in the house, so I really can't complain, but nonetheless, add emptying a dishwasher with putting on a tie as among the things I really don't like to do, along with shaving and hearing anything more about the World Cup.

And it's funny, but every morning, after emptying out the dishwasher, I start the whole process up again, because whatever I use for breakfast--generally my spoon and my cereal bowl--go right back into the dishwasher, so it really is a 360 degree thing for me.

And tomorrow, it will be back to the dishwasher again.

Yes, sometimes I do feel like one of those hamsters in cages that go on the wheel and seemingly don't ever come off of it, getting nowhere in the process.