Horse and Carriage

In most families the birds and the bees talk is a conversation dreaded by parents and offspring alike, but as is often the case, my slightly unconventional brood had no struggle with the traditional and sailed through addressing reproduction issues. Being of the "divorced" status, marriage was our tabooboo subject...

Out of the blue one day my daughter looked me squarely in the eyes and asked, "Mum, is marriage something I should try?" I didn't think it'd be addressed quite like that!

Did I "try" marriage? What happened to the fairytale fantasy of all little girls to grow up and get betrothed in a big white cloud of meringue?

Oh that's right...I destroyed it.

Marriage, I can't quite decide if I'm for it or against it...I've done it twice already so I must like it right? Well I think I did once anyway.

I did some research to try and help me decide on how I felt about marriage now that I'd got a couple under my belt, and my daughter needed to plan her future.

The statistics don't look great in the good old US of A...50% divorce rate on first marriages, 67% on seconds, and a whopping 74% if you're brave enough to try the "third time lucky!" claim.

I wonder if I count in those statistics, having married Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb (a French man and a Hungarian) in England.

If anything else had a failure rate of 50% it'd be banned...if cigarettes killed 50% of smokers they'd be off the market in a flash, if anti-depressant drugs rendered 50% of users suicidal, there'd be lawsuit after lawsuit, if Toyota accelerators got stuck 50% of the time...well you get it! So why then is marriage still legal? Why do we keep on trying to get it right?

Love, love, love, and health insurance.

Seriously though, a lifetime union based on love? Pretty fragile tie I'd say. Such a union based on financial support, or health coverage, or a death threat, might work but that flimsy unpredictable thing called love? I don't know!

Could I look my baby in the eyes and tell her no? Of course not! Life is a journey, filled with dreams, some of them turn out to be nightmares, but all hearts need exercise and the best way to get a heart pumping is a good old dose of love, followed by as long of a transfusion of marriage as we can possibly bear...until we get it right...or accept that it's OK if we don't.

So I told her yes darling...it's worth a try...or two!

Breaking up is never easy

In some cases I would have to agree that "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" but not in the case of a kitchen.

I wish I'd never known how it felt to fall in love with my upgraded self closing maple cabinets, to feel the smooth coolness of a solid granite countertop beneath my fingertips, to hear the dulcet tones of a garbage disposal, but most of all I wish I didn't know how it felt to be loved by a dishwasher. Having a dishwasher is something I wish I'd never taken for granted when I was in my last relationship with a kitchen.

You see, I'm now dishwasherless, and I miss my better half more than I can say. I've given up using the word "hate" so I shall just say that I have an intense dislike of washing up. There is nothing nice about leaning over a sink ( especially when you're 5'11" and your sink was installed in the 40s) up to the elbow in bubbles scrubbing away the food you just cooked from the dishes it seems like you only just washed. I've tried to improve the situation by buying delicately scented fancy looking dish soap, I wear frilly blue rubber gloves, and have a rather lovely drainer, but nothing can heal the emptiness I feel in my heart when I think of my old DW.

It's not like I can even replace the special little scrubbing machine either as my tiny little 1946 Burbank bungalow has yet to have a plumbing update and the kitchen has no allocated space for such a luxury. The other missing luxuries such as a garbage disposal, or a fridge with an ice maker, or tile that was...let's just leave it at tile, I can live without but I shall always be desperately seeking a kitchen with a dishwasher.

So people, learn to appreciate that little machine that without complaint loves and cherishes you and your dishes, in fact, go give yours a hug for me right now!