My family members don't spend much time reading blogs or visiting newsgroups or building "online friendships."
I do, and my family thinks I'm strange. I rarely disagree with them.
I say things to them like, "You are MADE OF WIN!" and "That's utterly CRAPTASTIC!" and they think I make up words and phrases, but I don't. I learn all of this good stuff from the internet and I share it with them, only to be ridiculed. Sometimes I wonder why I bother trying to enlighten them.
This morning I was picking on Erin for her OCD tendencies, which are FAR worse than mine. If you don't believe me, read this post she wrote about pre-washing her dishes before she puts them in the dishwasher. Seriously - she WASHES them before she DISHWASHES them. I'll give her an ounce of credit: she did try to load her dishwasher with dirty dishes, but she dry-heaved the whole time and couldn't bear the thought of those little food particles sloshing around in her dishwasher, so she went back to her old pre-washin' ways. (In her defense, she's kicking ass in other areas of eco-living, so we'll forgive her for this transgression.)
Back to the dishwasher: The woman loads her dishwasher with so much precision and artistry, it looks like Bento on Crack**.
I picked on her about it. I wish I had taken a picture of her freshly-loaded dishwasher after the Thanksgiving meal - it was THAT impressive. She had just finished carefully washing, organizing and loading every dish by color, shape and hue, when I picked up one of the kids' cups and loaded it in the top shelf. About a half inch of disturbingly thick, dark brown chocolate milk sloshed across the top of all the dishes. Quickly I tried to shut the dishwasher before she saw what I'd done, but she caught me in the act.
And rewashed every freaking dish, but only after she stopped that melodramatic twitching thing she does.
This morning she sent my and my other sister, Shannon, this email:
OK,
I know you're both a little twitchy like me, so I thought I'd share this story with you. Today, Patrick got up at OH:Dark-Thirty because he's got a bid due, yada, yada, yada. Anyhow, the faint noises of him showering and stuff usually wakes me up just enough to give me wierd dreams or wake me from my sleep. Today I woke up damn near hyperventilating due to a creepy dream I was having. Now here's a quiz to see how well you know me. Was my dream that:
A. Someone broke into our house, chopped off my toes, put a cat on the bed, and stole the children
B. I found myself at high school prom, naked - not with my perky little 18-year-old body, but my 35-year -old, bore three children, eats cheetos and doesn't excercise body.
C. I opened my silverware drawer and found that someone had tossed in a bunch butter knives SIDEWAYS, and also put my potato masher and a wooden spoon in there -- when we all know those go in the other drawer with the cooking utensils.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
So, I called her to let her know that she was, most definitely, MADE OF FAIL, to which she replied, "You, my friend, are MADE OF DORK."
So, baby sister Erin, this one's for you. This is how REAL people load their dishwashers:
** I think Bento is awesome. I'm envious of people who take the time to create such neatly-organized, beautiful food. I wish I had the patience to make my food pretty, but hunger usually outweighs my desire to be fancy.