Second date 2, The kitchen

As we got to the house and started some coffee, D outlined her plan: the kitchen on Monday, the study on Tuesday, the bathrooms on Wednesday morning and then catch her flight out. And I was thinking, "Yeah, that should work -- I think I just saw a flock of pigs flying past the window, and this morning's weather report made a point of mentioning the sudden cold snap in Hell that has left frost on all the brimstone. Piece of cake." But who am I to stand in the way of progress?

D wanted to start with the kitchen because she was burned out from her trip and she figured that it would be mindless. But she soon found that it was anything but. In the first place, she couldn't clean the counters without getting to the counters, and she couldn't do that without putting away all the appliances. And after all, she asked, how often do we really need the blender and the mixer and the Cuisinart? Do we use them daily? If not daily, they shouldn't take up prime real estate so let's put them up in the cupboards. All perfectly logical. And with that she hit her first -- and biggest -- real obstacle.

The obstacle was Wife, who wanted D to clean the kitchen and give us more usable counter space, without having to put anything away.

"What if I want to use one of those appliances? They are too heavy for me to lift down by myself!"

"Ask Hosea to do it. Or ask Son 1 to do it -- he'll be a teenager any day now, and he is already as strong as some men."

"But Hosea will be at work and Son 1 will be at school."

"So ask them the night before. How often do you need an industrial-strength mixer without having at least 24 hours' notice?"

"But I want to be able to handle this all independently!"

"You also want counter space, and you can't have both."

That point took a lot longer to resolve than I have described here, but I insisted that D was only being logical and Wife finally gave up. (To say she was persuaded would be a little too optimistic.) This victory, though, didn't accomplish much. If the appliances are going to be put up into the cabinets, then which cabinet?

"That one. It's easy for you to reach."

"But it's full already."

"With what?"

"Ummm ... well, there are some jars of 20-year-old jelly that was canned by my mother back when she was still alive, and there are a lot of empty Mason jars."

"You are saving an entire cupboard of empty Mason jars?"

"Sure. You know, some of those jars date from the 1940's -- you just can't get jars like that any more! Besides, I want to have them handy for when I want to do canning."

"How much canning do you do?"

"I can things all the time!"

At this point I (Hosea) interrupted the discussion to point out that the last canning Wife did was during the summer of 2004 ... and that I couldn't remember whether she had ever done any before that in all the years of our marriage. So the few jars of jam and pickles got integrated into the pantry, and the Mason jars went out. Wife protested, sputtered, whined ... and then just sulked.

In the interests of strict chronology, I should clarify that this particular conversation actually took place in mid-afternoon. But it summarizes nicely the problem that D found she was facing. Wife wanted this project to improve a lot of things; but she was unwilling to make more than token changes to the way she herself was living, and she was unable (or unwilling) to see herself and her own choices as prime contributors to the state the house had fallen into. And so every significant step forward was made in the teeth of opposition from Wife, who had in some ways commissioned the whole project from the beginning.

Needless to say, Wife did not see herself as an obstructionist. After all, she was more than willing to part with this bauble here and that doodad there. But meanwhile, D was plowing through our cupboards asking more fundamental questions. Do we really need to save Tupperware containers for which we no longer have lids? How about Tupperware lids for which we no longer have matching containers? Does any house really need three ladles? Or service for 24, when there are four people living here? Is there some logical reason that we have four, ... no five, ... is it six? ... no it's seven different cheap plastic spatulas, all more or less the same size and some of them cracking with age? And so on. And on. And on.

Then there was the inside of the refrigerator, which had unidentified goo encrusted all over the shelves. OK, let's pull out the food so we can clean the shelves. By the way, this head of lettuce has completely dissolved into mush -- is there a reason you're keeping it anyway? Why is there a half-gallon container of ice cream in the freezer with no more than three ounces of ice cream left inside? Does anyone remember what exactly was being stored in that jar in the back, and can someone explain to me why the contents now seem to be moving with a life of their own? And could you please bring the trash can a little closer, because I can't quite reach it from here?

In all this, D kept the rest of us busy and organized as well. Not Wife, to be sure, since she spent much of the day sulking in bed with a headache. But the boys and I were going full tilt all day. She set Son 1 to scrubbing the burners on the stove top: when he was done they didn't exactly look new ... but I would have given long odds against ever again seeing enough of the black grime removed that the underlying metal could glint through, and he got them to at least 90% clean. Son 2 scrubbed all the unidentifiable stickiness out of the cupboards under the stove. And whenever D needed some little task handled, they were both there to do it. When I drove D back to her motel that night, she praised their contribution so unequivocally that I told them the next morning it had made me proud to be their father.

It is worth noting that Wife can almost never motivate the boys to help clean up. That D got them energized and eager to help -- partly by praising their work instead of carping, partly by promising them a magnificent dessert as a reward, and partly (I think) by contributing to the work herself instead of just ordering them to do it from afar -- none of this sat very well with Wife either.

By the end of the day, the kitchen was clean, the countertops were clear, the cupboards were usable, and the floor was mopped. The trash cans were completely full, and several boxes of stuff had been set aside to give to charity. Not bad for a day's work. We got dinner and opened a bottle of wine, and D announced that Tuesday she would take care of the study. Little did she realize at that point that the study would make the kitchen look like a walk in the park.