Dirty Dishes: Grand Finale

I may have mentioned that The Professor is keeping vampire hours at the moment. He hits bed around 6:00 am and gets up midafternoon. That’s fine by me. But it means he’s up and about in the wee hours, doing whatever it is Professors do when Salamanders are sleeping.

Well, the night before last he dragged out his new Soups Cookbook and decided he was going to make curried celery soup. We had it with dinner last night, and it was wonderful. That, however, is not where this story is going. (Anyone here surprised?)

When I left the house for work at 6:30 yesterday morning, I noted the mess in the sink in the kitchen. When I got home at 4:30, the mess was still there. I was a little annoyed by it, since none of the mess was my doing. It didn’t help that the Professor was nowhere in sight, having said he was running out to Circuit City. I had no idea when he was getting back, so I did not begin any dinner preparations. Nor did I wash the junk in, by and around the kitchen sink.

The Prof returned at 6:30 with his booty (more on that later) and it didn’t take long for him to start agitating for dinner. I was just making leftovers (dilled salmon, so don’t feel too sorry for him; even the second time around it was excellent). He wanted to try his curried celery soup as well, and he wanted a salad.

I started pulling stuff together, and could only find three bowls. We only own four bowls, and I found the fourth one buried in the sink. I didn’t feel like washing it special, so left it in the sink for after dinner and elected not to make a salad for myself. I also got a bit huffy about it, which The Professor, being nobody’s fool, picked right up on.

He pointed out that I said I was doing all the dishes from here on out. I pointed out that he’d argued with me about that, saying it wasn’t fair to stick me with all the dishes, and that I felt it certainly wasn’t fair to stick me with dishes first thing when I get home. He said he finished cooking at 6:00 this morning and was tired and wanted to go to bed. I said I’d gotten up when he went to bed, and that I’d put in a full day’s work and was tired too. Etc. Arguments of this sort are boring when they’re predictable, and anyone who has read any of my diary can pretty well predict what was said.

The final, true resolution: I own the kitchen. It is my domain. If I elect to clear off the table after dinner and do the dishes, he will no longer give me grief about it. I, in turn, will do all dirty dishes, utensils, stovetops, and other such ilk with no protest. The Professor will assume all responsibilities for bathroom cleaning, including scrubbing the tub and toilets, and will take over the vacuuming. His responsibilities will not be daily chores, and he will therefore be able to schedule them at his convenience.

Do I expect this to be the end of the Great Dirty Dishes Debate? Yes. Do I expect that this means the end of bickering? No I don’t, though he may well prove me wrong when it comes to holding up his end of the deal. The only bit of cleaning he seems to enjoy is the vacuuming, so I will be amazed if things get cleaned on any schedule. At least I no long need fear food poisoning though! So stay tuned to this channel for the next saga: Of Tubs and Men.

Back to The Professor’s trip to Circuit City. I thought he was headed out in search of a memory card that plugs into the Universal Port of a computer and works somewhat like a very small floppy, making it easy to copy and transport information from one computer to another. Serves me right for assuming. The Prof returned with a 24-inch flat screen television! I guess I should have seen it coming; he came back from California extolling the virtues of flat screen televisions that had some particular kind of hook-up for DVD players. I’ll admit I was initially a bit alarmed; this was not an expense I’d been anticipating and we usually share this sort of purchase 50/50. He told me that he purchased this with no expectations of splitting the cost. He then went about settting it up (with much cussing, since he’s one of those “when all else fails, read the Manual” kind of people). We watched the rebroadcast of the premiere episode of “Enterprise” on it last night, and I have to admit, it is rather slick.

I finished getting my chores done around 11:00 last night (“Enterprise” rather got in the way of my schedule) and started getting ready to go to bed. The Prof shocked me by saying he was heading over to the Y to work out for a bit (????!). They’re open until midnight, but this is a guy whose idea of working out is using all ten fingers on the keyboard. We’d planned on going together again this evening, and he hastened to assure me that he was still planning on going with me tonight too. I just hope he doesn’t burn himself out on this new hobby.

And yes, the day wouldn’t be complete if Salamander didn’t fall into a new test. Here’s today’s:

you are a veterinarian who likes Tolkien and chocolate.

Take the web’s most accurate personality test now!

Looks like they nailed me on this one!

Finally, I was messing about with my site meter and found a few more new hits through google searches. The first was due to KfH’s bout with pancreatitis (“Pancreatitis lipase”) while the other was due to The Professor’s continuing fascination with Indian cooking (mullicatawny). I can only imagine the disappointment with which the searchers greeted my entries when they found what their searches had wrought!