My Daducation

Archive for the ‘Marriage’ Category

One the better inventions of the last century for kitchens everywhere was the dishwasher. The promise of never washing another dish, of easily cleaning up after dinner, of spending more time with the family……..what a crock. I have yet to see a dishwasher clean a dish without human intervention. It’s pathetic.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe my wife is in tune with this reality. Her confidence in our dishwasher is staggering. I have witnessed the depth of her confidence as she loads the dishwasher. I can see she believes she has a dishwasher that actually WASHES dishes. Spaghetti still on the plate? No problem. Oatmeal still in the bowl? Easy. Cake on a platter? Piece of cake. (sorry)

Of course, the reality is that the dishes are not clean. If there is a speck of dirt on them going in, it’s still there when you take them out. I’m not sure what is happening in there, other than jacking my water bill, but it certainly isn’t WASHING anything.

Yes, I’ve seen that advertisement from Maytag where the guys loads a full cake into the dishwasher and it disappears. What a total joke. What a great way to destroy your plumbing. I don’t care if it has chopping blades or not, can it scrape that grain of pulverized oatmeal off a bowl???

I’ve had friends tell me to try different detergent. So I did. This appears to be a whole other racket. Seriously, how many different detergents do you need? And how do you choose when NONE of them get anything any cleaner? Reminds me; I need to buy stock in these companies.

So, of course, I have been relegated to hand-washing each dish before placing it in the dishwasher. Now, mind you, this is only to rinse debris off the dishes, not an actual soapy cleaning. Why should the dishwasher get off that easy? No, our dishwasher is a sanitizer now. At least now I won’t know if it isn’t doing its job.

Which leads me to the next problem…..loading the thing. Not to brag, but I have the ability to organize the loading of a dishwasher pretty well. It is an art, because not only do you need to fit everything in, you need to do it so that the water reaches all the dishes. However, my wife does not appear to be concerned with this. Actually I would guess she loads the dishwasher using a horseshoe toss technique. From across the kitchen.

I open the dishwater to find bowls on top of bowls on top of more bowls. Cups turned over and full of water. The silverware is wedged in the tray so tightly I need a crowbar to extract them. A huge pot is turned upside down blocking all water from reaching the top rack, like a blast shield. The pot is huge. Real big. It should have its own zip code.

“Hey, ” I mention to her, “why didn’t you just hand wash the pot? It’s too big for the dishwasher.”

“Ah, it can handle it. Besides did you see how big that thing is? I’m not washing that in the sink. It won’t fit,” she responds. “By the way, can you load the dishwasher tonight?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Great. Make sure you throw in the toy box. I need it sanitized.”

I think I have to ban her from touching it.

So it follows not long after that I smell burning in the middle of the night. I rush downstairs to find the dishwasher near the end of its drying cycle. And something is smoking. That something is a plastic spoon that slid down to the heating element and melted into something that resembled the devil’s pitchfork.

But worse than this, there is a green film all over the inside of the dishwasher which does not want to come off. I scrape. I scrub. Not coming off. It is not until I look into the bottom on the machine and see a little green paper stuck in the silverware tray. It is the wrapping of a crayon. A green crayon.

“Oh yeah,” my wife says,” The one-year-old must have stuck that in there when she was playing with the dishwasher tray earlier.” She finds this hilarious.

“Of course,” I say. “Silly me, I didn’t know this was one of her toys.”

“Oh pipe down, slim,” she says. “She likes the dishwasher. Who cares if she plays with the tray?”

Apparently I am the only one with a hangup on a properly operating dishwasher. As for the green mess, well I am wondering if I can find a way to get the one-year-old to clean it up since she loves the dishwasher so much. Any ideas?

I don’t consider myself a rabid football fan. I follow the sport, I know most of the players by name, and I can usually give you a pretty good indication of which way to go if you are betting a game. In fact, I am not particularly interested in watching the Super Bowl. I find it anti-climatic. And since I am an Eagles fan I find the NFC Championship is anti-climatic. For 4 of the last 8 seasons. Let’s not go there.

The Coveted Fantasy Football Trophy

My wife would disagree with all of this. She thinks I watch football ALL THE TIME. However I have to point out that in order to watch games ALL THE TIME I would need to be watching them on Sunday afternoon. Which I rarely do. Sundays we are usually running errands or going to my in-laws. So watching an entire game is impossible. I may catch 10 minutes here or there, but that’s it.

The problem is the 24-hour sports news cycle. Between ESPN, NFL Network, and Comcast Sports Network I can catch up on football at anytime. So I do. A lot.

I may end up watching the same sets of highlights four or five times in order to get any additional info I may have missed.

So why would I bother with the constant watching of the same sportscasts over and over? I’ll tell you. I have a disease. It’s called Fantasy Football.

Thankfully, fantasy football has been over for several weeks. Well, not really. There is a draft in April to prepare for. Life is semi-normal now. However, my family is definitely wondering what the hell they are going to do about it next season.

The thing is its kind of pathetic. Fantasy Footballers are regular guys who create a league on the Interweb where each can own a football team and draft players, living out the FANTASY of being a real football GM. Each team then matches up each week and points are tallied based on the real players actual performance on the field. Wins are determined by the greatest accumulation of points by the team. I usually lose.

Imagine me explaining this to my 8-year-old and my 5-year-old. This happens one day when I am screaming at my live stat-tracker.

“What are you so mad about?” the 8-year-old inquires.

“I started the wrong running back today. I thought Gore was injured,” I say.

“Started him? Started him how?” he asks, confused.

“I made this football team online where I pick real players and I get points when they do well,” I explain.

“Why?”

“To win the game,” I say.

“No, I mean why would anyone want to do this?” he asks.

“Don’t you have chores to do or something,” I ask, perturbed at the fact that he doesn’t see a football genius at work.

“So it’s not a real team?” he asks.

“No.”

“Does Mom know you do this?”

“Yes.”

“Come on,” he says to his brother, “he’s gonna hog the computer all day. Let’s go to the garage. I have this book that shows you how to blow stuff up.” I think he is kidding.

The fantasy football business comes to a head as I am offered a trade. I am cruising for the first pick in the draft next season, and the other owners want to see if they can pry it away from me. The trade is interesting. Interesting enough that I agonize over it for days. My wife is completely disinterested.

“What should I do?” I ask urgently.

“Rub my feet,” she says.

“No, I mean about the trade.”

“You need help,” she informs me.

“I know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“I mean professional help.”

Obviously I can’t count on her. As it turns out I negotiate better terms for the trade and make the deal. She is not impressed with my negotiating skills.

“Since you’re so busy with fantasies, why don’t you and your friends work on getting raises at work,” she asks. Smart aleck.

I’m not sure the family can tolerate another year of obsessive fantasy GM Dad. Maybe I could just call it quits. Maybe I could find another outlet. Maybe….

Nah. I have the first pick in the draft.

OK, so this study was among my friends. But I stand behind it. However, I don’t think my wife agrees. Nor do their wives. In fact, they still think we’re idiots.

My wife recently wrote a post about my inability to read her mind. Now, she would say that it isn’t about reading her mind, but rather paying attention to what she is doing. I can respect that statement, however this assumes I am not doing something myself. Which is what she thinks, I’m sure.

Yes, my wife does a lot. More than me. I do a lot as well, including getting the kids up, fed, and to school in the morning. Some days I give my daughter lunch and put her down for her nap. I fold laundry when it is sitting there. I handle the kids while she is making dinner. Every now and then I cook meals. Sometimes I even make the earth stand still. OK, I may have dreamed all that.

However, the other day she was furious with me because she said I wasn’t helping her. I was in the living room with my daughter, and she had gone downstairs to put laundry in. After that she began to get dinner ready. We had earlier discussed what we would be having for dinner. We decided on cooking a frozen pizza. Fast and easy. However, after a few minutes she peers around the corner from the kitchen and shouts, “GEE, THANKS FOR YOUR HELP.”

I am stunned by this. Did I miss her calling for me? I didn’t hear any trouble in the kitchen. The boys were upstairs and my daughter was with me.

Ummmm……

I proceeded to ask her what she was talking about. She flips.

“Oh, I don’t know. I had to put laundry in and start dinner. Don’t you think I could use your help?” She yells.

“OK, I didn’t know you needed help unwrapping the pizza and throwing it in the oven. Nor did I know we were starting dinner now, since it is much earlier. Maybe you should have asked me to do it so I knew the agenda,” I say.

This apparently does not matter. I should have sensed what she was trying to do. Somehow. There were several walls between her and I at the time, so this may be why her ESP brainwaves never reached me.

I get irritated when I hear the “you always” or “you never” complaints even though a specific instance cannot be repeated to me. I employ the “give  me one instance” self-defense maneuver in these situations just to prove that I do help out. I have even heard these complaints while I am folding laundry.

I would never go so far as to say that there isn’t more I can do to help. However, some guidance on the agenda of the day would help me know what is going on in her brain and help me anticipate how I can help.

To me the essence of ESP is still verbal communication. It’s more about anticipation than reading her mind. But drop me a clue on what you are trying to get done that day so I can plan mine.

Now if I can just find a way to get these kids to do some of these chores, I’ll be set.

*DISCLAIMER*  This article is based on opinions from the author and doesn’t necessarily represent facts (as per my wife).