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Broke
Wife, Big City
An open letter to my dishwasher
By Aprill Brandon
I
hate you, dishwasher. I hate you so much.
Seriously,
so much. Like, if you were on fire and I really
had to pee, I'd still use the toilet. Because you know what? The toilet
doesn't
constantly remind me what a failure at housekeeping I am. Sure, it
starts to
murmur something after too many weeks of neglect but you... oooooh...
YOU.
There
you are, everyday, just sitting there. Needing something.
You always need something. Need emptied. Need filled. Need the gunk
from your
bottom scraped out because someone (FINE! ME!) was too lazy to scrape
the
dishes beforehand.
Oh.
OH! And don't even get me started on your job
performance. You literally have one job to do. It's in your very name,
for
crying out loud.
Dish.
Washer.
And
yet, it never fails. I pull a supposedly
"clean" glass out of you only to discover the fruits of your labor
have left behind a weird crust on the bottom of it. Or I pull a plate
out only
to find you were too lazy to get ALL the ketchup off. Oh! And my
personal
favorite, the pan you decided to completely ignore even though I soaked
it in
hot water and soap for two hours beforehand to try and help you out.
I
just don't get it, dishwasher. What did I ever do to you
to deserve this? The Great Thanksgiving Overload Incident of 2011
notwithstanding (WHICH I apologized profusely for already). I mean,
none of my
other appliances are nearly as needy and underachieving as you are. For
example, your cousins, the washer and dryer, do their jobs incredibly
well,
even going above and beyond on those rare (and/or weekly) occasions
when I
happen to spill wine on myself.
Your
nemesis, the stove, doesn't constantly remind me it
needs attention with a giant pile of dirty dishes overflowing from the
sink.
The fridge? Only needs emptied and refilled with actual edible food
when out-of
town guests are coming over (and then only if I really like them). The
TV?
Well, that glorious machine... no, you know what? That's not even close
to a
fair comparison. The TV is pretty much my soul mate with my husband
coming in
at a distance second, so let's not even go there.
But
the point remains, you are the appliance equivalent of a
juvenile delinquent teenage boy. Your whole purpose in life is to make
my life
a living hell, a situation I end up blaming myself for because it's
simply your
nature.
And
you know the worst part of all of this? I'll never not
need you, dishwasher. My only two alternatives are to start washing
dishes by
hand and/or stop eating altogether. And I refuse to do the one because
it's
wicked gross and I refuse to do the other because modern food science
has given
us frozen mozzarella sticks you can now make from home
So,
where do we go from here, dishwasher? Huh? HUH!? It's
not like I can ignore you and give you the cold shoulder until someone
else
(cough... my husband... cough) notices you need attention. The last
time I
tried that, we ended up eating cold soup out of a frisbee.
So,
I guess the only other thing I can hope for is that this
column wins me a Pulitzer and consequently I become a filthy rich and
famous
writer who can finally afford to pay someone else to deal with you.
Fingers
crossed.
Can’t
get enough of Aprill? Can’t wait until next week?
Check
out her website at http://www//aprillbrandon.com/
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