Yours, from suburbia

I live in a household with people who hate cleaning dishes ...

I despise doing dishes, perhaps more than any of them but somehow I've ended up with the task because they can all outlast me in terms of what I can bear or they have their very own righteous mountain to stand on while telling why they won't do dishes.

Yesterday I almost died of smirk.

Smirk?
It translates to the state of being created when I did something so outrageous that worked.

I had Gert's children dry the dishes my daughter was washing them.
This is novel and outrageous indeed.

My daughter had taken the laundry and ironing as her designated task in a beautiful sleight of hand a few weeks ago and okay, ironing is actually my most despised to-do task. I'll do many things to avoid it and had a glorious system of non-ironing while living alone in Istanbul.

However I had cleaned up the laundry after coming back to a backlog post-Brussels wandering and so in a sleighter sleight of hand, I gifted her dishwashing yesterday.

And the stepkids were lounging around in that limbo-like state of 'no school, let's just watch tv'. A state created in some children when they have parents who do absolutely everything for them.

I pounced and said in a matter-of-fact, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary voice 'Hey guys, will you do the afwasen?'

And they did.

Today Gert is ill with a stomach flu, the stepkids are gone, my daughter is sleeping off what might be a similar stomach flu.

Today it was just me and dishes.
I cleaned house all morning, avoiding the kitchen but nothing works, the dishwashing fairies never come anywhere near my place.

And did I mention how much I despise washing dishes...