Oh, woo. Look at the time. I gotta get to bed. I still gotta brush my teeth, feed the hog, still got some homework to do, still got those bills to pay

Our home has been enduring the worst appliance failure I can imagine. Our dishwasher is broken. This broken dishwasher is causing much angst among our residents here. Everyone hates doing dishes by hand! Hand dish washing has so many drawbacks. It takes a long time, they are never cleaned as well as in the automatic washer, our sink is not the proper kind for hand dish washing (you need a double sink to properly hand wash dishes, we have a single sink), it brings out the worst in my children, etc...

I am no stranger to washing dishes. I grew up in a home that didn't have an automatic dishwasher. One of my dad's favorite sayings when asked why we didn't have a dishwasher was to point to Anna and I and say, "I've got two. Jennifer and Anna." Annoying! I hated washing dishes as a child. Anna and I would devise all kinds of ways to make it endurable. My first tactic was to distract my dad. If dish washing time was at the same time as Mr. Wizard was on Nickelodeon, I could put off the dishes til after Mr. Wizard was over. This also worked with Jeopardy!. I guess my dad considered educational television more important than housework. One of Anna's tactics was to lay on the floor and whine and complain. This didn't get very good results. We would sometimes sing while we would wash. That made time go faster. I have fond memories of rousing renditions of "There's a hole in the bucket." Another game we played was called "10 and 10." This was simple. She washed 10 items and then I washed 10 items. You got a break while the other person was washing. We were child geniuses.

My children are hating washing dishes as much as we did. They are employing a few tactics of their own. The first involved piling as many dirty dishes inside the broken dishwasher as possible, closing the door and hoping no one would notice. I started to notice that some of the plates were missing and my silverware drawer looked empty. I opened the dishwasher and could not believe my eyes. Or nose. I got very angry and that's all I'm going to say about that. They are also taking tips from Anna's playbook and employing the whining and complaining tactics. This is working about as well for them as it did for her 18 years ago.

I don't know what is wrong with the dishwasher. I tried to take it apart. I know...bad idea. I couldn't tell what was wrong and now it is not completely back together because I can't remember how to do it. If anyone knows a mechanically inclined person who might be able to fix it, send them my way. Until then, stay away from the Vos house after meal time. It's a dangerous place.