Mom recently had knee surgery. Dad had the same surgery and was up and around within three days. Mom, on the other hand, is taking a bit longer as hers was more involved. She was going to be off of work for a week, and now she is home for over seventeen glorious days. Ah, do you detect sarcasm?
I love Mom, but she is getting a touch of cabin fever. I woke up to the strong smell of vinegar. I thought someone must have purchased an entire vat of pickles and smeared them all over the floor, but it was only Mom cleaning out the coffee maker with a Costco sized bottle of white vinegar. At six A.M. I don’t rise that early, but the merriment had ensued beginning at that time.
I shuffled myself off to work in the office, occassionally poking my head out for a drink of water, or to let the little SnackHounds out to do their business. Lo and behold, I decided to soak a pan overnight.
“You don’t have the pan soaking! It’s not enough water.”
“What?” I really did hear exactly what she was saying, but just didn’t understand how a pan full of water is not enough.
“See, there is a lip here. You missed the top of the pan. It’s not filled all the way up.”
“Oh. Well. That’s like two millimeters.”
“But its not to the top. It needs to fill up and spill over.”
“Well, doesn’t the water slosh around when you turn on the faucet to rinse other stuff? Or it might settle around at night.”
“Water doesn’t settle.”
Okay, so touche’. I proceeded to scrub out the pan, now that the grime had been miraculously lifted despite being two millimeters shy of water. Well, if it didn’t get completely soaked, would there be a crust there? Maybe that’s how French chefs season their pans. They put painter’s tape over the crust they want to keep. At any rate, I scrubbed the heck out of that thing and rinsed it about 67,000 times and then put it in the dish drainer.
“Wait, you didn’t rinse it enough.”
“What?” I asked.
“You didn’t rinse the other side again. And there’s a very tiny mark on it. You have to rinse off all the pathogens. There are pathogens everywhere!”
“I already rinsed it 40 times, you just weren’t looking. Aren’t pathogens microscopic? You can’t see them. This pan could have a spot on it and there might be none of them. Or it could look clean and be infested.”
Of course that is not what she wanted to here. I sallied forth. “Mom, get a little joy out of life. So there’s one little spot on the pan. Why fight people about it? Just find some happiness.”
“Well, clean dishes make me happy!”
I guess that game was over.
Moving back in with your parents after having lived in two different states, on one’s own, with roommates, married, then divorced is a big adjustment. Of course, there are matters of personal space. I have solved that largely by keeping all of my baking stuff in a box under my bed and then bringing out when I use it. However, there is a big competency obstacle. Mom thinks I am 18 years old again and I don’t know a heck of a lot about life. Maybe she will have a different view of me as time goes on…when I finally move out…which will hopefully be soon.
