What to Do?

My dishwasher bit the dust the other day. Twelve years of hard water and hard work took its toll. All it does now is blink at me, little blue lights, flashing away beside unresponsive buttons. I tried doing a hard reset, disconnecting it from its electrical lifeblood. But to no avail. My hand was forced. I had to shop. So, I spent the better part of yesterday driving around looking at dishwashers. Oh, joy.

Unfortunately, I am ill prepared to dissect all the so-called bells and whistles they offer. I mean, it’s not like I buy one every other day. I do think a third tray at the top for large flatware is nice, but almost all of them had the silverware basket in the bottom tray and ours has it on the door. After looking at three different places, all offering essentially the same brands, I settled on one I liked. But I couldn’t pull the trigger and shoot the $700 bullet, so I just went home and washed my dishes by hand and thought I’d wait a bit to see if something would come on sale.

Besides, there’s just me and I can go two or three days without running the machine and maybe I could just wash my coffee cup every day when I finished rather than use every cup in the cabinet before I washed them. And I could actually do the same with plates and saucers and knives and forks. And I’m a trained hand dishwasher courtesy of my mother. So, I think I’ll give it a go and while I’m doing it, I can thin the coffee cup herd. There are way more cups than one man can use. In fact, there is way more everything than one man can use in my kitchen. I have two sets of dinner plates, and that’s not counting the fine china and now I’m thinking I’ve opened up a Pandora’s box of post-wife housekeeping issues. Lord, help me.