Of Children, Curses and the Dishwater Sh**s

You filled in the missing letters right? Because I really try not to use language my children have to avoid and even though they have not mastered reading (at 2, 4, and 5), someday they will and I would hate for them to think me a hypocrite.

Did I have a point? Oh, yeah!

So we had our first delightful dinner of the outdoor season on the deck last night. It was splendid and everyone ate well and had fun. It was a Cleaver moment. Then it was time to clean up.

Wayne's World flash back with me, will you? When I was growing up I had a skill that very few have ever mastered like I did. I could always find a way out of doing the dishes and not just any way. I had talent. You had two choices. I could vanish into the bathroom and not come out for oh say, an hour or two. This worked particularly well on any night that had a dinner featuring Mexican, seafood, or cabbage.

And then there was option two. I would "clear the table" and by that I mean I would eat everything. Slowly. I didn't care what it was. I would dig the last pea out of the bottom of the tuna noodle casserole dish if that is what it took. In the meantime, my benevolent, forgiving, kind and gracious sister (who reads this blog) would have washed everything, wiped down the counters and swept the floor leaving me, my fork and the dish I was licking as the only things that still needed to be cleaned. And of course with the sink full of clean dishes they would air dry and be put away in the morning.

I had skills. I found out later that it is what my grandfather called - you guessed it, "The Dishwater Sh**ts."

Flash forward to last evening.

Beloved had two choices - clean something (table and dishes or children) or go to the wholesale club. Watch this unfold with me. He decided that he should go check out the hours for the wholesale club so he knew if he had enough time to do the whole shopping and get home in time for bedtime and tuck-ins. It's incredible that in all my surfing today (housework was light) the world wide web, my server and my modem were all cooperative and had incredible response times. And yet when Beloved tries to pull up one site, crash city. Things that make you go "hmmmm."

By the time I realized that he hadn't pulled out of the garage I had roped Mo into helping clear the table and had the two smaller children in the tub soaking off a layer of crud. So the kitchen was done and I was about to put the wraps on a round of baths. Somebody caught The Dishwaters.

They say The Mother's Curse only applies to children (One day you will have children just like you) but I beg to differ. I think the curse can come from anywhere. Oh, he may think he has skills but now he has tangled with The Master of the Dishwaters!

Dum. Dum. Duuuuuuum.