I'm currently reading a book during my spare time (I both have a LOT of spare time due to staying at home all day but also no spare time at all due to being occupied with other things while staying at home) clled "1001 Inventions that Changed the World." I love books that have one page for each entry, gives out the most pertinent facts, and then I'm done. Like reading the encyclopedia; I love reading the newest editions of the World Book Encyclopedia at the library because a.) they're brand spanking new because no one except me goes to a library to read the encyclopedias and b.) they compact the information to one single resource so I can be reading about lasers in the L section and then in the next page reading about Latvia, and c.) PICTURES! Contrary to the layman's image of a nerd reading through an all-text dictionary, encyclopedias know that pictures enhance everything and disperse plenty of them throughout. Man I wish I were a kid again and had those hours and hours of free time back to go through it all.
But the inventions book is nice; it takes me through all the important ones since the dawn of time (candle, 3000 B.C.E.), irrigation (6000 B.C.E. by the Sumerians), toothpaste (5000 B.C.E. by the Egyptians) to the mostly recent (kind of ironic that the newest inventions like iPhone 2007 and high-density computer storage (IBM 2005) make this book about inventions obselete), but it doesn't cover (or I haven't gotten to it) one of the most important and practical inventions for stay-at-home people, the dishwasher! Oh man of all the arguments, tiffs, squabbles, and shouting matches MJ have had, I'd say a solid 10% have been about washing dishes or at least dishwashing-tangent. She doesn't like washing dishes but wants them to be a certain way (a.k.a. "clean" in her eyes); I don't mind washing dishes, finding it kind of relaxing and gratifying to turn dirty things into clean things, but apparently my standard of "clean" does that meet the only standard that counts: MJ's standard. Makes for a very tense situation with lots of passive-aggressive sighing when MJ finds "substandard" dishes, and on my part resentment for having done the dishes but not being rewarded for it and also frustration for having the work that I did re-done, same as if I hadn't done it. And I HATE wasting time and effort.
Our old dishwasher hadn't helped in placating our squabbles, and in fact had exacerbated them because it was left over from the previous homeowner who just didn't clean it, let it rot, and it become a foul cesspool of standing water. Our new one (delivered from Costco) is godsend in comparison, obviating the need for us to do any more dishes and cleaning it throughly, even better than how MJ could have done them herself (she admitted as such, a rare concession on her part). It's quiet, it's by Samsung (Korean brand meeting the Korean standard!) and importantly, it does both he detergent and the rinsing (my parents' dishwasher only rinses, which is not really helping because rinsing is the easy part! The scrubbing and taking the oil and other material out is the hard part) The dishwasher is seriously just a wondrous invention, getting into all those spots that human beings can but would wither fingers and cost so much in human capital, human labor, and spousal goodwill (MJ and I demonstrated such). Since that fateful day in 7th grade home economics class where I got scolded by the Home Ec teacher for spilling hot soapy water on the ground while washing dishes, even though I was trying to be diligent and helpful, I've always suffered at the "home maintenance" area and looking forward to bypassing that step all together. This dishwasher has done it. Huzzah! Yesterday (before I had a dishwasher), all my troubles seem so far away........
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