Knowing how way leads on to way

Here's a slice of life for you --

I'm sitting here typing a longish blog entry. It's my day off, and I slept in this morning, and then SuperFiancee came home for lunch and that was lovely, and she asked me to throw in a load of laundry if I had time as she was leaving to go back to work, so I took a shower and then started the laundry and sat down at the computer. And after a while I start feeling parched and a little headachey, which usually means I'm dehydrated because I drink a lot of juice and milk and soda and very little actual undiluted water, so I go out to the kitchen to get myself a glass of ice water.

Fair enough.

But there are no ice cubes in the big ice cube hopper inside the freezer door. Rotten babies -- they'll snatch out ice cubes all the livelong day to put in their drinks; even the six year old can reach that high; but unless you threaten them with a bullwhip, they refuse to undertake the onerous task of wrenching and bending and twisting the plastic ice cube trays to get the ice cubes out of them and into the hopper.

So I do that, which takes much longer than it would if I weren't an incompetent at nearly every pragmatic matter, and which involves a great deal of cursing and beating the ice cube trays against the counter, which is probably either amusing or appalling to the girl who rents the small studio apartment directly above our kitchen, and as she's a devout Born Again I figure I know which.

This of course means I have to refill the ice cube trays, and being what Clumsy Carp used to refer to as a maladroit, in the process of doing this simple task I manage to splatter water all over the floor in front of the fridge, so I have to clean that up.

Pray remember: All I wanted was a drink of ice water, but it's starting to look like I'll never get out of this kitchen alive.

After I wipe up the floor, I realize that breakfast (which I blissfully slept through) and lunch (which SuperFiancee and I hurried through because we'd spent most of her lunchbreak doing things you don't want details of, or even if you do, you can't have anyway) have generated between them a decent sinkful of dishes. And there are clean dishes in the dishwasher to be unloaded, of course. Unloading and reloading the dishwasher is another one of those Bullwhip Chores in our household, and I could leave it until the SuperKids get home from SuperSchool and then relentlessly dump it on them (sometimes you just have to brandish that bullwhip; it's something all parents know but few of us are willing to talk about) but there are occasions when I don't feel like I'm pulling my weight around here (mostly because SuperFiancee makes more money than I do in her 'real job' which, as at least two of my silent lurkers would happily tell you, makes me a dreadful parent and not much of a man into the bargain), so, fukkit, I'm out here anyway, I may as well do that.

So I unload and reload and the dishwasher is currently running even as I type. (But most likely not as you read. Ha! Confusing time dilation stuff.)

So I get done with all that and now the washing machine should be finished so I open the basement door and stick my head past the entryway to listen and sure enough, all I hear is the sound of the various basement water heaters busily thrumming and/or hissing as they heat up water for the various different apartments in this large, converted, once-one-family home. So I troop down there and pull the clothes out of the washer and throw them into the dryer and start up the dryer and then hit myself in the forehead and go "D'oh!" as I realize I didn't clean out the lint trap which, you know, if SuperFiancee were here and she knew of my crime she'd just shoot me like a dog and I'd deserve it, too, so I stop the dryer (after casting around vaguely for several seconds looking for an 'off' switch, I finally just give up and open the damn dryer door) and clean out the lint trap and then close the dryer door again and push the start switch once more.

And now, here I am, typing all this to you.

I just wanted a drink of water.

And I have one, and feel much better now, thanks.

I should probably take the garbage out...