I really have no words for what when went down today. Lost the house (twice), lost the senate (barely but still), lost the presidency, impeached (twice). I am feeling [somewhat] upbeat. I am also weary. The Orange Baboon and his cult (yes) have taken a lot out of my faith in my fellow citizens and we still have another week. Or more…

So let’s talking about washin’ dishes. Somebody on facebook posted one of those memes that has a long list of things and did you do this or not? This one was about cooking. Like have you ever baked biscuits from scratch (yes and I am not good at them), made a jello salad (maybe but can’t remember), mashed potatoes from “scratch”, whatever that means in terms of mashed potatoes (always and I guess it means not *instant* potatoes, yuck). Etc, etc.

I don’t do memes but one question caught my attention. Have you ever lived in a house without a dishwasher? Well, yes! Many times. Most of my childhood our shabby little Superior St. bungalow did not have one. When we finally bought one, you had to wheel it over to the sink and connect it to the faucet to run it. The Comm moved it up to the Dillon house and she was still using until she died.

We *still* wash dishes by hand at the moomincabin. The main improvement we’ve made in 60 years is to install hot water so we no longer have to heat dishwater in a big teakettle.

Not surprisingly, neither of my grandmas had dishwashers when I was a kid. Grandma Margaret (a few blocks away from us in Sault Ste. Siberia) had dishwashing help if she needed it from the two single women that lived in that house, her sister and my granddaddy’s sister (my great aunts). Bolette (step-grandmother in Detroit) *always* pulled me into the kitchen to help her with the dishes while the rest of the adults hee-hawed at the dining table. I *loved* this. She let me squish the soap suds around in all kind of creative ways and when she asked me questions about school, etc., she *listened* to the answers.

When we bought the Landfill, there was a dishwasher but it was noisy and didn’t really work all that well. Eventually we replaced it and *that* one was noisy and didn’t really work very well. At some point I just gave up and for about I dunno 10 years, I hand-washed the dishes. What the heck, I had plenty of practice.

But then… We encountered a wonderful Certified Kitchen Lady who helped us gut and replace our 1970s kitch. I still dithered and dathered about getting a dishwasher. I know most people don’t want to buy houses without them but we weren’t/aren’t planning to sell this place and I figgered whoever ended up buying it would HATE my teal blue subway tile, etc., and unceremoniously tear everything out. It’s happened a couple times in this house. So I decided to buy a new dishwasher.

So that meant we had to, you know, *buy* one. Man oh man, it is fun [not] to buy appliances with the GG. There was the time the ancient washing musheen gave out and we spent at least an hour at Big George while the GG and the salesman took apart *every* washer on the sales floor to determine if it had the same crappy “controller” that our old one did. Not my idea of a good time. Why am I here?

A version of that happened when we bought Bertie, our dishwasher. The GG pulled out the drawers on EVERY dishwasher on the floor and invited me to choose between them. Whut? While he was so occupied, I peered at the sales guy and said something like, “mid-price dishwasher that’ll clean the dishes.” I came home with an $800 or so Bosch and I started using a dishwasher again. It gets the dishes sparkly clean and it’s QUIET! There are still a lot of things I hand wash.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2021 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.