There are Dirty Dishes in My Bathtub

When I was a kid, I picked up a thin paperback book at a scholastic book fair titled, The Man Who Didn't Wash His Dishes. Our school librarian read us the book when I was in the first or second grade and something about it really captured me, so I jumped at the chance to get my own copy when the book fair came around.

My mother was also in love with this book. It was a lesson she liked to remind me of. Do you want to be like the man who didn't wash his dishes? Of course not!

By the time my children were born, this little paperback book was yellowed and had a big tear right in the middle of it. My children all read the book, however. Recently, it even came up in conversation. They each have very vivid memories of this story where a man puts off washing his dishes until he is eating out of things like the soap dish and a flower pot. He piles the dirty dishes higher and higher, because he is too tired to wash his dishes, until eventually he moves all his dirty dishes out into the yard in the back of his truck where a rain storm washes them clean again. In the end, the man decides washing dishes isn't such a chore, after all.

Why do I think of this story now?

There are dirty dishes in my bathtub. Not a lot, but dirty dishes, none-the-less. Our dish washer*, you see, broke down on Saturday. It was New Year's Eve and it was't a terribly unexpected thing. Our dishwasher is more than 10 years old, has moved with us three times, and has completed upward of thousands of wash cycles.

*Side note: Isn't it amazing that you can still find a review for a dishwasher that was published more than ten years ago? I think that was one of my highest grossing reviews on Epinions.

I've haven't been a total slacker. I have been doing dishes by hand. My daughter and my husband have both been seen doing dishes by hand. But when the dishwasher quit working on Saturday, I decided buying a new one would be a priority. And because I was already in the store, I bought a new stove, too. Our oven hasn't worked consistently for more than a year. It's been on the "need to replace" list since we bought this house almost six years ago

Thus, the dishes in the bathtub. That's where I hid them when they came to deliver and install my new dishwasher and stove today.

It's a New Year, but it's like Merry Christmas all over again.