Change Six – Get Better At the Dishes

Despite what you might expect, this isn’t simply about doing the dishes. I actually do wash the dishes, after each meal, even. (And Sarah does the cooking. It’s part of this whole division of labour thing I got roped into.) The problem is that I’m not a real attention-to-details kind of guy. I don’t half-ass it, but I’ve been known to three-quarter-ass it on occasion. Which means I’m not also so good at getting all the crud off the dishes. I swear that I don’t know that I’m doing it when I’m doing it. I don’t see that half brick of cheese caked on to the plate. I overlook that chunky bit of whatever that gets trapped in the bottom of the glass. I’ll let Sarah correct my if I’m overstating these stats here, but I think that five dishes out of six come out okay, but that sixth dish always seems to end up with shmeng on it--which I don’t see until it’s been on the drying rack for half a day.

And this isn’t a new phenomenon. I remember Brady pointing this out to me a couple dozen times. “Dude, when you wash the dishes they’re actually supposed to be clean when you’re done.” After bugging me about it about it for about a year, he just sort of resigned himself to the fact that nothing would change. We’d be in the kitchen, he’d pick up a plate and say “that’s a Dave dish right there” as he flaked off some crust with his fingernail. Then we’d just keep doing what we where doing.

So here, officially, I pledge to do a better job.