First Dishes Debate

I'm having a difficult time starting this entry with something other than "Adventures in Audrey and Addie Having Redundant Discus-uments About Things That Don't Matter, vol. 52"

They're called "discus-uments" because they always start off as general discussions, and end up in full blown arguments. While it has only amounted to name-calling and character assaulting once, these little moments are great in their infamy. So great, that if these topics just so happen to come up in conversation with other people, we just stop talking. That's how polarizing it is.

Famous examples of these discus-uments:

- whether the song "I want it that way" by the Backstreet Boys is a perfect pop song (Addie pro/Audrey con)
- whether or not Ramen noodles can be considered Chinese fast food (Audrey pro/Addie con)
- should you be sympathetic for Nurse Ratched? (Audrey pro/Addie con)


And it's odd, but these random war zones don't irritate me at all. Because they're basically fights among 5th graders-- best of friends, a sudden fight, and then we're over it 10 minutes later when a funny commercial comes on. And no matter how heated the fight, we're always laughing about it the next day. Since we're both way too talky-talky and have only been living together for 3 months, we haven't had many opportunities to have a big, screaming, blow out fight. So we take them where we can get them.

With that said, let's talk about Sunday night!

I've mentioned before how few dishes Addie uses throughout the day. He's got that boy talent that allows him to use one glass per day, rinsing it out between drinks. And he'll never use a plate when he can eat off a paper towel or out of a tupperware container, in which he'll also store left overs. So when he's by himself, he'll have like 4 dishes to wash at the end of the week.

I'm the exact opposite. I have lots of dishes because I like to use my dishes, including plates, bowls and real silverware. Beyond that, I have a debilitating habit about needing a clean cup for each time I have a new drink. I think it comes from watching my dad drink a glass of milk, immediately filling the cup with water, and drinking it, even though it was milk-cloudy (dad's from farmer stock, and rarely sees anything as "gross"). I'm pretty famous for not liking "stuff" in my drinks--from not drinking water that's had a lemon slice in it for more than .2 seconds, to avoiding pulpy OJ and any kind of mojito. I just need my dishes to be clean, right? And we don't have a dishwasher, so instead of washing dishes 37x a day just to have clean stuff, I'll use the dishes that are already clean, and then do dishes at the end of the night. Logical.

But I'm also human (lazy) and sometimes let a day or two go between dishes. And since Addie can't get me to conform to his dishes-minimalism, we've just decided to do our own dishes. Problem solved. And that seemed to settle things. Until Sunday.

I can't remember how it started, most likely with me saying "If you have dishes in the sink when I'm doing mine, I'll wash them for you. It's no problem to me. But you always leave mine for me. What's the deal?" Jesus lord. I think we discuss-umented for about 8 hours as to why he won't do all the dishes in the sink. But the most ridiculous part is, we threw around the same lines of argument for the entire 8 hours, with neither one of us backing down.

"If you're at the sink, doing dishes, and you see a few extra cups, why not do them too?"
"Do you know how much time it takes me to do ALL the dishes you use?"
"Like 10 seconds, maybe, if you're slow?"

"When I do dishes, it's like one or two pieces. You always have like, 7 or 8."
"So? It's a consideration thing. Why do you take all the responsibility for taking out the trash and recycling and most of the sweeping--but shudder at washing a few extra pieces?"
"Because there are so many of them!"
"You act like I fill up the entire sink and use every single dish we own!"

"The problem is-- you're used to doing dishes all the time. I'm used to taking care of mine."
"How can you just wash some and not all, especially with our spider problem?"

"I think that you're afraid if you do my dishes once, I'll keep leaving them for you to do."
"No, not at all." (3 hours later) "I don't do them because I don't want to get stuck constantly washing all your dishes." (duh)

"And I never ask you to wash my dishes. And I always tell you to leave them for me."
"That's not the point. The point is, I'm doing something for you so you don't have to do it. And it's not a problem for me to do it, it's a problem that you don't want to do it for me."
"But I take out the trash!"
"You always get to it before me!"


Yeah, so it went ON and ON and ON like that. It ended with me conceding not to ever wash his dishes again. But ultimately, I won, because of this little moment of righteousness:

"Really? How have you changed since you've been here?"

"I've so compromised my habits! I keep a nalgene bottle so I don't use 800 water glasses everyday. How have you compromised?"
"And I've let you throw out food that I *know* hasn't gone bad yet."
"I do that because if food is even slightly expired or slightly moldy, I get sick."

After we settled things, I had the rest of the Mongolian Beef that he had made on Friday. And 3 hours later, woke up with a vicious, 12 hour case of food poisoning.

Granted, it's the most painful way I've won a most pointless argument (because he's totally right, I have no problem with doing his dishes if he's the one who has to get spiders in his car from driving the recycling bin to the dump, and walk the smelly trash all the way to the trash spot), but whatever. I'm a winner.

And he did all the dishes last night. And today. :D