“I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious”

Albert Einstein

Now, I know what you’re thinking….

“Jeez Creasy, we don’t hear from you for like, a whole pandemic, and then you post twice in a few days. What the hell is going on?”

I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe I have all these pent up feelings that have been building up over the past few months; I have been a little emotional lately. Maybe I just need to vent a little. Maybe I just needed to talk to someone. Maybe, just maybe, I don’t understand why perfectly intelligent people can’t achieve something as simple as stacking a bloody dish. Yeah, maybe that’s it. Maybe that is exactly it!

I have this amazing daughter who I am increasingly convinced will solve Fusion and then go on, quite separately, to invent a fully functioning warp drive. Either that, or she will write the next series of best-selling great epic novels about short tubby people with big hairy feet and magic rings who, counter intuitively, battle tall, muscle-bound and horrid monsters successfully, but with tiny swords. Or, she could become the next Greta Garbo. All, totally within her grasp.

Then there is my incredible artist son who produces these beautiful light paintings using wands and silk and light, with digital cameras set to all kinds of funny digital settings that are really quite tricky and technical, and he does it flawlessly. He spends pretty much all his time ruining my lawn as he swirls and twirls like a bloody Ninja in front of his sodding camera. Totally expecting a call from the Vatican any day now for him to pop over and redo the Sistine Chapel.

Last but certainly not least, I have this beautiful gem of a Best Friend / Life Traveller / Spiritual Guide who you could only describe as the ultimate multi-tasker, juggling a high powered career in Finance whilst being the ultimate Mum and role model to our kids and boss beautiful Wife to me. She should wear a cape with a big S on it. I am expecting her to come home one day and explain a new business idea that will revolutionise the world of Threading and make us rich as Sheiks. This time next year I will be writing my blog from the aft deck of our her Super Yacht whilst slurping down a frozen Daquiri. Totally going to happen , I know it.

“Creasy, you are truly blessed to be surrounded by so much intelligence, beauty and talent and to be so good looking, smart and charming yourself.”

Yes I am. That is totally true. I am blessed, and I fall to my knees and thank something, somewhere everyday for the enormous chunk of good luck that made me so very very blessed.

You can understand my problem though, right? Being so blessed and being surrounded, as I am, by all this intelligence, wit, talent and beauty, I think my expectation that these same geniuses be able to scrape their plates, stack plates with plates and bowls with bowls and to place their dirty knives and forks in the dish I have provided for just that purpose, should be considered entirely reasonable. It is reasonable isn’t it?

“Well, it’s not unreasonable Creasy”

See, that’s what I think too. I think it’s a reasonable expectation. So why won’t they? Why won’t they stack the plates with plates and the bowls with bowls? How can they be capable of all these world changing things and yet not stack a single dish. Are they doing it on purpose? Are they just doing it to mess with me or are they doing it to piss me off?

OMG! Are they trying to make me insane so that they can have me sectioned like that Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest? Is this how they avoid the cost of a good nursing home in a couple of years when I need to eat dinner through a straw? Is Nurse Ratched, and a big silent Native American who rips big sinks out of the floor all I have to look forward to?

Is that it?

Is that it?

IS THAT IT?

“Sheeit Creasy, calm down sunshine! Woosa……Wooooooooosaaaaaaa….How the hell are we supposed to know? Maybe they are just being a bit careless”

D’you think so? I suppose so. I mean I suppose it could be that, but really? Who is careless about stacking dishes properly? That’s not normal, and it’s a funny word that “Careless” isn’t it? Care Less. Couldn’t Care Less. Don’t Care. Don’t give a monkey’s. If I cared less it would be a crime.

It is a crime!

“Well, it’s not actually a crime Creasy”

It’s not?

Well, it ought to be a real crime. I ought to be able to call someone and have them arrested and taken away and put in prison. Instead, one day I am going to lose my shit and go batshit crazy (maybe break some stuff), and someone is going to come and wrap me in a coat I can cuddle myself in, and take me away to the psyche ward where Nurse Ratched will be waiting for me with medical instruments she can probe me with.

“I think you’re being a tad paranoid Creasy. A smidge”

Am I? Am I though?

Ok look, let’s take a breath. Maybe you’re right Creasy fans. Maybe I am taking all of this a bit too seriously. All I’m saying is that normal people should be capable of this simple domestic procedure after each meal and in our house they’re not, so either they are not normal people or they are trying to make me crazy and I don’t know why.

People who love one another don’t try to make them, crazy do they? Of course they love me, who wouldn’t? So maybe I need to think again; not be so paranoid. What if it’s something else altogether that is preventing them from performing this simple task well?

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth”

Sherlock Holmes

So maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I haven’t provided the leadership around this whole thing. Is the process too complicated to follow? Lets take a look.

No, no, that’s not it. The instructions couldn’t be more clear and the logic and options within the sequence are clearly defined. It’s taped up over the sink so that you can check each step as you go. And of course there’s the recorded tutorial that anyone can initiate with a simple spoken instruction

“Hey Google, how do I stack dishes?”

We did the whole 2 day internal training workshop thing last year, and a refresher course during the pandemic because the situation was just going from bad to worse. Then there was the sternly worded memo, which included another copy of the process, admonishing them to try harder so that Team Creasy would be the talk of the dish stacking Fraternity, but none of this has worked. It’s as if all my concerns have fallen on deaf ears.

I even wrote a song about it using Simon & Garfunkle’s Sound of Silence music so they could sing along as they stacked (Click here to hear a great version of that original song by Disturbed). After our “Learn the Lyrics” workshop, I can tell you that everyone knows the words and fully appreciated the sentiment. C’mon, you know the tune, sing along and perhaps you can improve your dish stacking skills as well…

dinga donga dinga donga ding

Hello Dishes my old friends
I've come to stack you once again
Because I love Creasy so com-pletely
And these dishes will be stacked neatly
And the forks that are dropped in the special dish
They smell like fish
before they have been cleaned

In restless dreams I walked alone
No dishes scraped something's gone wrong
I didn't do it after my dinner
I think that makes me such a huge sinner
And now they are smelling really strong
They really pong
I think I'll lose my dinner

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand dishes maybe more
Lined up all along the work surface
Did my kids do this on purpose?
It will take all day just to stack them properly
And all for free
I think I'll go and pee

Fool say I you do not know
Fungus like mushrooms will grow
Hear my words that I might teach you
Would you like to see these plates like new?
But my words like silent raindrops fell
That's a shocking smell 
It really smells like poo

And the people stacked and scraped
With the scraper Creasy made
And the sign flashed out its warning
And the words that it was forming
And the sign said the food on the plates is stuck now for ever more
Are you sure?
They'll need a soak 'til 4:00
 
dinga donga dinga donga ding

And, riddle me this.

The recycling bin has been conveniently placed just inside the kitchen door so that as you walk into the kitchen with that empty tin, or when you have just emptied the cardboard cereal box, you can simply drop it in. Voila! Done! Why then is it that the work surface next to the sink is regularly piled high with recyclable detritus, when that work surface is precisely 18 inches away from the recycling bin. What’s that all about? Explain that to me. You can’t! There is no explanation.

Is this what housewives have been dealing with for, well the entire history of housewifery? Piles of unorganised, unstacked dirty dishes lying all over their kitchen like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie? No wonder they all wanted to go to work and do all that suffragetting! I mean, it’s not having that effect on me, but I can see how it would.

It’s like there’s a rat inside my skull scratching away trying to get out “eek-eek-eek, scratch-scratch-scratch, eek-eek-eek”. No single thing in and of itself sufficient to lose your shit over, but collectively adding up to an internal scream that lasts a week. I find myself sitting in corners facing the wall, giggling and babbling to myself incoherently….

“and that dirty fork was just sittin’ on the window sill, no plate just a dirty fork on its own…on a window sill…nowhere near the sink or dishwasher or anything. Hehehehehehehehhheeeeeeee”

or I will wake up in the middle of the night and find myself standing naked in the kitchen, in the dark, not knowing how I got there but stroking a whimpering and shivering Bobby’s head like Lenny from Of Mice and Men “George? Can I pet the rabbit? Can I George? Can I?”. The lines of unstacked dishes glinting eerily from from the black marble work surface…

“1,2,3,4 un-scraped bowls…haha, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 forks…why so many…hehehe, 1,2,3,4,5,6 pans and 8 lids hehe, 1,2,3 collanders…we didn’t have anything that needed straining though…HAAHHAHHAHAHAAAAHAA”

But that’s ok, I ain’t mad. Naw, I’m fine. No really, I am. Ain’t no thang. I’ll be a’ight. It’s all in my mind. Every day in every way I’m getting better and better. Better and better. Yes.

So each morning, I spend my entire life side-stacking the dishes properly; plates with plates, bowls with bowls, glasses and cups together, utensils in the special dish, before then stacking the dishwasher properly. Utensils first at the top, then glasses, cups and bowls in the centre and finally plates, pots and pans at the bottom. And when it is all done and the dishwasher is busily murmuring away, I feel comforted and relaxed and I think…

“Maybe tomorrow will be different, and when dinner is finished I will look at the side-stack and it will all be perfect and neat and food free”

…but it never is. It’s like fecking Groundhog day.

“Ok Creasy, this is where you hit us with the punchline and the philosophy stuff and the genius life changing ideas that we all come here for because otherwise that would be twenty minutes of our lives we’ll never see again, right?”