Thursday Rant It's Official: I'm on a Dishwashing Strike

I HAVE A FOLLOWER!!!! Already, I know! How exciting for me! And no, she's not my mom. By the way, Mom, why aren't you a follower?!? Now I have to make sure I have interesting enough blogs to maintain my following.

Speaking of which... I have been pondering ideas. I like the way Travis over at "I like to fish" has his set up so I might try a similar approach and see how it works out. You can check out Travis here. Funny stuff.

Thursdays will be for ranting... that way I can get them over before Friday and the weekend. Makes sense to me anyway... Let me know what you think. Constructive criticism always welcome. "Props" definitely accepted. : )

So my dishwasher broke shortly before my youngest son was born. He's now FOUR MONTHS OLD!!! And contrary to popular belief, the dishes don't just wash themselves. So I have been washing dishes by hand ever since. Not my idea of a fun afternoon.

Let me just add that my dishwasher could have not broken at a more inconvenient time - both the particular night and in my life. We had just had friends over for dinner and I swear every dish in the house was used for one thing or another. So I easily had two full loads and probably a small third to do. So I load it up and put in the soap and... nothing. UGH! The next morning all the lights were flashing and the number display was counting down from 50. It did that for about two months before it completely shut down. I always joked that there was a bomb inside somewhere malfunctioning. So you can imagine four months later I had quite the science experiment growing in my dishwasher. It wasn't really as bad as it sounds; but I never imagined that I would still be looking at it four months later.

Washing dishes is such a time consuming task for me that I thoroughly do not enjoy and I have to do it every day to stay on top of the regenerating pile of dishes in my sink. Dishes are like the laundry... you think you have everything cleaned and put away then you find more. Ugh! My hubby and I have had many "discussions" about this over the last four months. I had to convince him that even though there doesn't seem to be many dishes in the sink it still takes me at least an hour to complete the task from start to finish. I will spare you the details... just trust me on this one. I timed myself numerous times.

For those of you who know that my husband is a plumber, I should tell you that this was an electrical problem. So it is not his fault. Now the leaky faucet... that's another story. We know an appliance service tech who insisted that he could tell my husband how to fix this problem over the phone. He was trying to do us a favor by not having to charge us to come out himself. I can appreciate this. But, on the other hand, my husband is a very busy guy, and this guy was not always available when my husband had time to mess with the dumb thing.

Finally, my husband tells him to just come out to the house and we will pay him the $45 service fee for him to tell us what's wrong so we can do something about fixing it. Something we wanted him to do all along... I think my husbands exact words were "can you get someone out here today because my wife is threatening me with divorce papers?"

So a few hours later he shows up. Long story short, it would take almost $450 in parts to fix my 8 year old dishwasher. No thanks! I wanted a new dishwasher anyway.

So we bought said dishwasher last night from Best Buy. Its pretty... stainless... nothing on the front but the sleek handle... buttons on the inside... Soon to be the new beacon of light in my kitchen. Once my plumber husband installs it.

When I jokingly (seriously) asked him if he was going to install it when we got home last night he said "sure, but there aren't any dirty dishes." Problem solved... my dish washer went on strike effective immediately. She works for the union, as do I, so I can't cross the picket line and maintain my dignity with the union. (heehee)

I thought maybe washing dishes all this time would be good for my hands and nails... but its not. All those commercials lie when they tell you their dish soap will leave your hands soft and strengthen your nails. I'm gonna find that old hag, Madge, and give her a piece of my mind!

Don't know who Madge is? She was the "star" of Palmolive advertisements back in the day. The commercials would show her out and about around town and everywhere she went women would stop her and say "Look, Madge" and hold out their hands for her to see how soft their hands were. What a load...

Anyway... I digress...