The resistance to dishwashers ran long. Not only due to living in the hundred-year old castle with the sketchy wiring and sporadic successful plumbing but because they represent the final hurdle into full urban routine and domestic complacency. Now that we have set up in a new location and the house is new and the dishwasher is RIGHT THERE, I have had to make peace with the thing, and still wash fully half our stuff (thermal coffee mugs, PJ's eyeglasses) by hand, thank you very much.
I am so feral and uncontainable and the circus still runs through my bloodstream painfully so, to the point where it was really quite a brutal moment last week when Lochlan's mother saw the dishwasher flung open and pulled apart so that the fresh clean dishes could DRY already and mentioned that I could buy rinse agents to speed that along exponentially.
Oh.
Really?
Must I?
I bought the little bottle of 'jet-dry' when I was buying apples and carrots and coffee and birthday cards and I brought it home and regarded it suspiciously for several days and this morning I had to search 'adding rinse agents to dishwasher' online in order to see where exactly I had to put it and how much and what is that dial for with the numbers on the inside and let's go halfsies and see what happens and I wish someone would hold the flashlight and really...
You know what?
Life was not so hard living in a camper without a clean dish and hanging off the bar in the lights by my knees, being passed a chocolate chip cookie from a well-meaning rigger and calling it supper and really I would have balked quite magnificently at paying $7.99 for a bottle of something that makes my dishes pretty, unless I could have used to to wash down the random meals I was given as well.
So there.