What is Wrong With Me???

All day my kitchen has looked like this:

And it still does, only now there’s dinner dishes too.

Last night I was so tired that after waking up at 8:45 in the chair in Nora’s room, I took myself upstairs and fell into bed without even taking out my contacts or changing my clothes.  I woke up at midnight just long enough to actually get ready for bed, and then slept blissfully until 6:30 this morning.  It was so nice to catch up on sleep for once, but it also meant that I woke up to a disaster…a disaster that is still there because have you tried hand-washing a sink (and counter) full of dishes with a toddler and an infant?  So now I have today’s and yesterday’s dishes waiting for me.  Ugg.

And the worst part is, I keep thinking about how I turned down a dishwasher.  What is wrong with me???

When Chris’ dad was here in February, he did a lot of dishes. Which was awesome, especially because he hates dishes almost as much as I do.

Thanks, John.

He also offered to buy us a dishwasher, which at face value sounds awesome too…but I said no.  No, this has nothing to do with my commitment to simple living.  I am not crazy.  I really, really wish we had a dishwasher — electricity and water usage and fancy technology and all — it would hugely improve the quality of my daily life; Luddite-ism be damned.  So why did I turn his generous offer down?   I’m too practical…or something.

Here’s the thing: I’m trying to raise money for a business.  Everyone knows that; I talk about it all the time.  If he wants to give us $450, I’d much rather use that money for Papoose.  I told him as much, but he said he didn’t want to give any money for the store, so I turned down the dishwasher.  Chris tried to argue that it’s not taking money away from the store, because he wouldn’t give us the money for the store, then we should take the money and buy a dishwasher, but it doesn’t feel right, to be asking people to donate money and then to go out and spend $450 on a non-necessity.  “You don’t have to tell anyone,” he said.  But that seems dishonest.  Of course, you all would know if I got a dishwasher, because how could I not blog about it?  Really, if I had a dishwasher, I’d probably have more pictures of it on the blog than of Nora.  Even if she is ridiculously cute.Besides the fact that it (unbelievably) feels frivolous right now, there’s also the tiny detail that Chris’ dad wouldn’t really be giving us the money, but deducting it from a loan we took from him to move out here and have not yet been able to repay.  Which means we don’t have the money anyway.  And on top of that, I’m not feeling 100% committed to renewing our lease when it ends in September, and the Scrooge in me is horrified by the prospect of spending so much money on something we may not even need in seven or eight months.

So, I turned down a dishwasher, which, I guess, means I don’t want a dishwasher that badly.

…but I am sort of kicking myself for it right now.