And it's not as if I had all that much to do! I've done tons more than that in a day, and on higher heels as well. It's not like I have a real job or anything, either.

I'm blaming it all on hormones and leaving it at that.

Besides, why moan about something trivial like that when I can be bitching about something else?

I have a sponge on a stick. It's a nifty thing-- you fill the hollow handle with soap, and then you can wash a lone plate or a few wine glasses under running water, without messing about with filling the sink and so forth. I love it to death, and whenever we're in the US I'll stock up on refill sponges because they're not available in Europe, or at least not in any place that I've lived. It seems kind of silly, really-- kitchens here tend to be small (and in Italy even smaller!), and a lot of folks don't have a dishwasher, either.

I've tried explaining to the girl that cleans our house (Yes! I have someone to clean my house and STILL I whine!) that the Sacred Sponge is only for dishes, and not for the counters, the floor or anything to do with the bathroom. She has not grasped this simple, yet important point because she has all the brain cells of the sponge itself.

She's not a good cleaning lady, which is why I refer to her as the girl who cleans my house. I'll probably never fire her, though, because she sort of tries, she needs the money and she does windows. Some of them, anyway. Plus, she's cheap. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

Anyway, so what I do is I hide the sponge. When she's coming to clean, I pop it into the dishwasher, on the top rack. That is one place she'd never look for it, or even happen across it by accident. Come to think of it, she doesn't really try that hard.

Remember our dishwasher? When we moved in, I was wondering if it had vapor lock or something similar because it would only work every third day, or if it was just being a typical water bearing appliance and hating me for no reason. Whatever the reason, it no longer does that anymore, and has been working on a daily basis for a couple of months now. Which is pretty much what most people expect out of their household equipment, but which makes me absurdly grateful.

Elvis got his shoes shined a while ago. He likes getting his shoes shined, as it involves going to the pub straight from work (so he's still wearing the shoes that need shining), and drinking beer until the shoe shine guy shows up on his usual rounds. Then he sits there and drinks beer while the shoe shine guy does his stuff. Not bad, eh?

Usually, I'll go down and meet him there when he does that. In fact, that's what I did last week. It was a good night at the pub-- lots of friends there that we don't see very often. Shoe shine guy was there relatively early, so he decided to nip home while I played some darts.

I'd made some chicken soup, and he decided to warm up a bowl and eat it as long as he was there. He's a big fan of what he calls Marital Harmony, Elvis is, so he rinsed off his dishes and put them in the dishwasher instead of leaving them piled in the sink or on the table in front of the TV as a lesser husband might have done. Noticing that the dishwasher was almost full, he decided to be extra helpful and run it for me.

You can see it coming, can't you?

Elvis didn't. In fact, the first he noticed that anything was amiss is when the cat started making strange noises. He went into the kitchen and was faced with giant, puffy white mounds of foam issuing from the dishwasher and advancing across the floor, much like that famous laundry episode of the Brady Bunch.

Or like the time our family went on vacation in Florida. My sister and I couldn't find any dishwasher detergent, so we used liquid dish soap instead. I don't remember whose bright idea that was. Probably mine. The only reason we're both still alive today is that it was in a rented condo, and not in my mother's kitchen. (Which is carpeted, by the way. I've always found that very silly. It would certainly never work for me.)

In any case, that is why, when Elvis called me and explained what was going on in an urgent, slightly hysterical, voice, I knew immediately what had happened. He didn't see the sponge. I'm not sure if he would have realized the consequences if he had. Probably, he would have. He's pretty sharp that way, and he's not twelve years old.

In any case, he mopped it up and came back to the pub to drown his sorrows. When we got home, we decided to leave it for the next day. The next day, the prospect was still too scary, so we left it for the day after that. First step was to drain the water still left in the machine. We figured we could do that by advancing the dial to the end of the cycle until we heard it start to drain.

Except, the soap that was still in there was still pretty lively, and the washer was full of suds before we got that far. Elvis used a bucket to scoop out as much suds and water as possible, and we tried again. We got it to drain that time, but there were still suds everywhere, including stuck to the top of the inside of the washer. We did the lather, rinse, repeat thing several times, with decreasing amounts of lather, until we figured that it was safe to run the entire cycle to get rid of the last vestiges of washing up liquid.

We still don't know whether or not this was a correct assumption, because after running for about one minute, there was a loud POP and the electricity went out.

Not good.

At least I know where I keep the flashlight, and where the circuit breakers are, so we had the electricity back on in minutes. So we turned off a few things and tried again.

It ran for about a minute, then (POOF!) suddenly everything went dark.

We tried one more time, and got the same result.

I suggested that maybe things had gotten a bit wet back there, what with the foam and all, and it was causing the damn thing to short out. It was as good as an explanation as any, so I decided to try again the next day.

A couple days later, I finally worked up the courage to give it another go.

POOF!

At least I did it during the day, when there was light coming in from the windows.

A week after that, I screwed up my courage and gave it one more go. I don't need to tell you what happened, do I?

So, we've been washing a lot of dishes in the sink lately. Eventually, Elvis will get around to calling the rental agents to have them arrange for a repairman. Me? I can't wait. You know how much I love repairmen.

But eventually (very eventually-- they're repairmen) I will find myself stuck at home-- probably on a beautiful, sunshiny day-- waiting for some guy to come and fix our dishwasher.

And then, my friends, Portugal might finally feel like home.

I just ran this through the spell check. It doesn't like POOF! Instead, it suggests, among other things, the following: POUF! POOH! POOP! POOL! POW! POT! POE! PROOF! and POX!

Not that that has much to do with anything. It just amused me.