September 8, 2010

There has to be a better way

Washing dishes is not an activity I enjoy. I'd much rather be catching 'the pepper' from a young pitcher with more speed than he knows how to handle or mowing the yard. Seriously.

But, like all things in life, there are some unpleasant tasks that require doing because the Jetson's lifestyle has yet to catch up to our desires. No home robot to take care of the chores and no cars that fold up into briefcases. I'm crushed.

Today, the dishes have taxed me to my limit, though.

Regardless of the careful flow of the arrangements in the dish drainer, the dadgum plastic Tupperware tumblers are DETERMINED to compel me to wash and rewash them in some sort of Twilight Zone moment, which has NOTHING to do with half-naked vampires...

The tumblers, apparently possessed of some sort of artificial plastic intelligence, pop off from the little cup holders on the side of the dish drainer and skittle across the floor like they are alive, which they probably are.

I scoop them up.

I dip them back into the sinkful of scalding water (at least that is what everyone tells me the temperature is when they are compelled to washup something that is tardy to the party and I'm done with the dishes).

I wash them and rinse them and reattach them to the sides of the dish drainer.

Alas, it doesn't last.

The bliss of drying dishes is marred by the sound of the tumblers smacking the porcelain tiles once again.

Or, in a total change of direction, they slip off and roll around the counter knocking the recycling off into the floor.

Either way, I'm bending over scooping up something from the tiles and wiping up little droplets of bone breaking liquid that will certainly come back to create agony if given half a chance.

I'm ready for some entrepreneur to get on the stick and create the Jetson's kitchen for me. While I enjoy cooking, I must admit I'd like the convenience of having Rosie the Robot to whip up a sumptuous 7-course meal from leftovers. I'd also like a self cleaning kitchen.


And while we are on the subject of self cleaning room fantasy, I'd also like a self cleaning bathroom. There cannot possibly be a long list of tasks more odious than that of cleaning the toilet. After all, consider what it is employed to do...do...

Sorry, juvenile pun at your expense. But you smiled and that makes it worth it.

I have wondered if someone could take the time to invent a drying station for the home kitchen so that things could roll through like a small pizza oven set to warm, not bake, the dishes. The convenient little machine could also stack them and put them away.

But, if we are going for the gusto, how about the Star Trek version of dishes. Some aspiring wanna-be rich kid needs to invent the replicator. Then everything from soup to nuts and the serving dishes that hold them would be returned to their subatomic state to be rendered into something else at a later date.



And, since atoms are notoriously clean, even waste products and garbage could be similarly reduced, reused and recycled. No more landfills!

Oh, well.

The last of the dishes calls to me since I was a complete slacker and didn't do a single dish before bed last night.

Does that make me a bad person or simply a hopeful one? Hoping that by morning they would have done themselves or been subatomically rearranged into fat free Belgian waffles?