The Kitchen

A little while ago, I was asked a very reasonable question via Twitter:

@JimmyJames70

@Dad_O what is it that you do in that kitchen night after night to make it so messy? Wait. Maybe I don't want to know…

Innocent enough, but it got me thinking: why the hell is the kitchen so hard to keep clean?

Tonight, I decided to investigate.

Yesterday, Amy and I teamed up to clean everything. All the dishes were done, right down to the silly crap that you have to handwash. That meant that when we went to sleep there was literally not a single dirty dish in the house (and as it turns out, when that is the case, the cupboards don't really have room for all the clean stuff, but that doesn't come up much).

So tonight as I loaded the dishwasher, I took inventory of how many dirty dishes our little family of three managed to accumulate during the approximately 12 hours between when I leave for work and when we put the little one to bed.

Here's the list, again, keeping in mind that we are a household of two adults and one small child.

In no particular order, tonight's dirty dishes include:

• Two sauce pans (with lids)
• One large frying pan
• Two whisks
• A wooden spoon
• Two serving spoons
• One pinch bowl (I think that's what it is)
• Seven glasses
• One kid bowl
• Three kid spoons
• Eight forks
• Eight spoons
• Three steak knives
• A butter knife
• A measuring cup
• Two kid cups (with lids)
• Three Tupperware containers
• One measuring cup
• One snack cup
• Eleven plates
• Eleven bowls
• Eight forks
• Eight spoons
• Three steak knives
• One meat tenderizers

If you do the math, that works out to just over 30 dirty items per person per day. So, @JimmyJames70, to answer your question and mine, that is why the kitchen is so hard to clean.

Although we are, it seems, finally getting a grip on it and I think have managed to cobble together a system that at least gets us back to zero each night. And really, how can we ask for anything more than that?

Super Bowl XXLICCLI (or something like that)

This time last year I was watching the Steelers finish off a dicey fourth quarter with an 80 yard drive ending with Santonio Holmes in the end zone to beat Arizona. This year the Steelers were sidelined short of the playoffs and I could really have cared less who won the Super Bowl.

I spent the first half with the TV on, watching Babe-O burn off some energy chasing a beach ball around in circles and shouting goofy stuff at the top of her lungs. We were having eggs for dinner, so I sat with her and watched the game while she burned through every bite of two eggs and then started angling for some of Amy's soup.

She had been going strong all day so we didn't wait until halftime to get her in the bath. By the time we were done with that, we were just in time to catch The Who on stage, which Babe-O celebrated by dancing naked on the bed, flapping her arms and grinning ear to ear.

Then the game got interesting fast with New Orleans pulling off an onside kick to keep the ball after the half. I was impressed, but Babe-O was pooped so I shut the TV off and curled up with her to go to sleep.

She crashed out after about five minutes in the dark and I went downstairs and watched the Saints pull off the win. Sure next year I'm hoping to be at a party someplace watching Pittsburgh win a seventh Super Bowl ring, but I'm not going to lie...spending this one goofing off with Babe-O was a blast.