Airing out my Dirty Dishes

So I get this new cookbook and go on and on about how great it's going to be cooking all these delicious desserts, and how much more interesting this whole process is going to be from now on.

And then I disappear.

I know, I know, I'm a terrible blogger. And everyday I think about this site and wonder if people are checking it, wondering where the hell I went and thinking about what a slack blogger I am. I started this whole thing to give me something to do in my free time, something that would be challenging but also fulfilling, and now it's become something that is sort of stressful. Not because I don't have the time or don't want to cook and blog about it, but because this

is what my kitchen perpetually looks like. And that's only the sink. I know I always say this, but whoever decided women were just natural born cleaners has clearly never lived with four women. I walk in and see the pile of dishes and our counters so covered with crap that I don't even have enough room to make a sandwich, and I start to itch and wring my hands, and hold my head, until I just have to leave the room. I live with 3 other girls and even though we have a dishwasher, the pots and pans just keep piling up. Don't get me wrong, I do my part to load and unload the dishwasher whenever I can, and make sure to always clean my dishes immediately after I'm finished with them. But there's only so much one person can do.

Oddly though, my roommates will go through random clean sweeps, thoroughly cleaning just one area of the house. For example, the other day, someone cleaned the bathroom so thoroughly I actually felt like I could walk around in it barefoot and didn't want to gag when looking into our sink. Or, someone will sweep and vacuum the front hall so that it doesn't look like a herd of wild boars just went barreling through.

The other night one of the girls was making dinner for a friend, so she went about cleaning the kitchen. Yay! I thought. Finally, the sink will be empty again and we won't be in danger of being condemned by the city's department of health. I walked into the kitchen to make some dinner, and I am greeted with the smell of lemony cleaning product. I start to get excited, see the counter has been completely wiped clean and notice our kitchen stools are resting on it upside down. She must be getting ready to sweep or mop the floor. But then I notice that the lemony smell is coming from the can of Pledge she is using. To polish our wooden stools. Our $8, pieces of crap wooden stools. I look to my right and lo and behold the sink is still full of dirty dishes. Seriously?

It's sort of like the time someone cleaned and disinfected the kitchen sink. What about all those dirty dishes you may ask? Oh, no problem, I'll just put them over here on the counter, out of the way. And then leave them there. For days. Meanwhile, the sink is clean enough to eat out of. Perfect! We'll just skip the dishes all together.

Before I realized I would have to climb over this mountain of dirty dishes in order to reach the oven, and was planning on actually cooking and posting something real, I was going to ask all of you lurkers out there to DELURK! and leave me a comment. You see, there are a few blogs, both food and non-food related, that I read obsessively. But typically, I only stumble upon said blogs after numerous posts have already been published. So what I do is sit at my computer and devour months, or sometimes years worth of material in just a few settings. As the number of unread postings dwindle, I start to get anxious that I won't be able to support my habit because I'll have to start relying on the writer to post new material, which I'll be forced to read at a painfully slow pace. But since I typically read blogs that are already well into their prime, I very rarely post comments, mostly because the writer is not going to read a comment on a post that is 2 years old. This habit carries over even into present day, and I staunchly refuse to comment on any of the blogs I read, even when I think I have really witty and funny things to contribute. Which is always, clearly.

I have no idea why I am like this, but I suspect there are others like me out there, some of which (hopefully) read my blog. So, I invite all you silent but nonetheless obsessive readers to post a comment, just a quick hello to let me know that you're out there, that you missed me, or that you're sick and tired of waiting for another post, dammit!

Thinking about it now, this post may not be the best one to ask you to do that on, considering I've probably lost half, if not all of my readers by now, being the delinquent blogger I am. I also realize this opens me up to the possibility that no one will comment, meaning no one actually *is* reading this blog. And if that happens, fine. I'll deal with it, will probably cry a little inside, and then through a thick fog of denial, decide that it's just because I haven't updated in so long. Or that you all just don't take direction well. Either way, I think I'm covered.

Anyway, I'll be back cooking when being in my kitchen doesn't make me want to claw my eyeballs out.