Rant #1,290: Dishes ... Wishes

Regular readers of this column know all too well that I hate to put on a tie each morning before I go to work.

To sum that up, it is like putting a noose around my neck, and I find it unnecessary as I go about my workday.

There is something else that I hate to do, but I do it just about every morning, and that is putting away the dishes from the dishwasher.

But unlike the tie thing, this is something that has to be done.

We have three people in my house: myself, my wife and my son.

We eat three meals a day here--of course, during the week it is two meals a day, less lunch--and the dishes can pile up, so we do a dishwash just about every day, or seven per week.

We use plates, bowls, forks, knives ... you name it, and they have to be washed and cleaned.

We have had a few dishwashers over the past several years, and we just got a new one a few months ago.

It doesn't do the greatest job, but it does a good job with a lighter load in it, like today, where everything pretty much came out spic and span.

But all of those things had to be put away in the cupboard, and since I am the first one up and about, at between 4:15 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. each and every morning, it is my job to put away the dishes.

It is a moribund task, but it has to be done. Everything that comes out of that dishwasher has its place, and it has to be put back where it came from.

So each and every morning--or at least five days a week, much like this column--I put away the dishes.

On the weekend, my wife and I usually handle this task equally, but during the week, I am the go-to guy.

I remember that years ago, futurists predicted that dishes would wash in their own places and that nothing would have to be put away like this, but they were very, very wrong.

At least we have a dishwasher to get the cleaning job done.

I have washed dishes in the sink, and, well, been there, done that, and I don't want to have to go back to that.

So if you are up at the same hours that I am, please think of me, putting away those dishes like a machine programmed to do that job.

It is a bore, I don't like doing it, but it is one of the ways I contribute to the upkeep of our house, so I do it, and do it methodically.

You can't always be creative, and I guess that the least creative thing I do each day is to put away the dishes.

That's part of my job, you know.