Mindy washes up
It's been a long couple days and the dishes are piling...
Mindy lugged two heavy grocery bags up the long outdoor stairs that led to her upstairs apartment. Her arms felt like they might fall off at the shoulders from the weight. Sweet release was mere steps away.
When she left Gillis’ Market, the bags hadn’t seemed heavy at all. She remembered being so proud she hadn’t overloaded her shopping basket, and she could avoid calling a cab to take her home. She wasn’t exactly avoiding Darryl, Dunnock Bay’s only cab driver, but after (gently) declining his invitation to dinner the second time she stepped foot in his cab, she wasn’t going out of her way to see him, either.
She’d gone with the small bag of cat food, even though it was a much crappier deal. Charging more for smaller amounts of product always struck Mindy like a tax on people who live alone or don’t have much money. The only people who can afford to save money by buying stuff in bulk quantities are people who can afford to buy stuff in bulk quantities. She’d raise her hands in protest, but just now, they were weighed down by the heaviest grocery bags that have ever existed in the history of groceries.
The first few blocks from Gillis’ weren’t bad at all. She stopped after a hundred paces or so to re-arrange some of the items in her bags. She had three cans of tomato paste and a can of chickpeas in the same bag as the cat food, which just seemed silly from a weight-distribution standpoint. She traded the canned goods for a bag of English muffins. When she stood up, she couldn’t believe how evenly distributed the weight was in her hands. She could probably walk forever with balance like this.
She had to stop again in front of the shuttered vinyl record store, setting the bags down to give her poor arms a rest. She stretched her arms out and waved them around a bit, hoping to find some hidden endurance. Maybe she could make it the whole rest of the way home without stopping. That felt like a great goal.
It was a completely ridiculous goal. She stopped to rest three times on Hill Street alone. The third time, however, she sat on someone’s front step and spent a few minutes watching the sunset over the harbour. It really was a lovely evening.
At the top of her stairs, she set down one bag so she could unlock and open her door. She pushed it open and stepped into her entryway.
Home.
She set both grocery bags on the pink Formica tabletop and flipped on the lights, illuminating her tiny kitchen.
“Oh, crap,” she said.
The dishes.
Piled all along her counter beside the sink (and in it) were two days worth of dishes.
She’d never meant for them to get so backed up. She was pretty good at keeping up with her dishes. Part of the joy of living by herself was being in complete control of how clean her kitchen is at any given moment.
How had it gotten like this?
Yesterday morning, she made herself a couple of perfectly coddled eggs and toast. What a little luxury! She and her new friend Jenny had found four antique Royal Worcester egg coddlers last weekend at the little antiques barn on the edge of town. She took two and Jenny took two. It worked out perfectly.
Mindy sat in her front window seat with Darryl (the cat, not the cab driver), dipping spears of toast into the delicately soft yolk. She took her time eating and sipping a nice breakfast tea.
When she was finished, she saw she had just enough time to make herself a sandwich for lunch—tuna salad and iceberg lettuce, just like Grandma’s—and clean up before walking out the door for work at the library.
She was barely done sealing her sandwich into its little baggie when the phone rang. It was Jill from the city’s IT department. Jill had apparently neglected to mention they were upgrading all computers on the network overnight, and things had not gone well. Something about a driver incompatibility and a chance that there had been some back-up failures when indexing the entire digital card catalogue of the Dunnock Bay Free Public Library. Whatever it was, Jill needed Mindy to come to the library right away. Mindy grabbed her sandwich and rushed out the door, leaving her dirty dishes beside the sink.
The computer issues were easily resolved, thank goodness. The precious card catalogue was saved. Mindy had a regular busy day at work. She dashed home just long enough to re-heat and eat a bit of the previous evening’s curry before heading back tot he library to facilitate the monthly book club.
Book club at the library graduated to wine and a more informal book club at Jenny’s house. By the time Mindy walked into her apartment at the end of the evening, it was well past 11 and well past time for civilized people to do the dishes.
This morning, what could she say? Wine and informal book club caused her to sleep in so late, not only did she not have time for coddled eggs and making lunch, she barely had time to eat a bowl of cornflakes and rush out the door.
Which brings her to this evening.
Mindy hung her keys on the hook by the door and took a long look at her cluttered counter. You’d think a single person couldn’t generate this many dishes in two days, but here she was. First she put away her groceries. Then she rolled up her sleeves.
Mindy turned on the warm water and let it run over her cold hands for a moment.
She smiled. This was the nice part.
She grabbed the bottle of dish soap on the counter and squirted the tiniest amount into the sink. A lot of people go crazy with the soap, but she is sparing with it. She didn’t need a mountain of foamy bubbles to tell her her plates were getting clean. She liked a just little bit of bubble, occasionally refreshed with an extra drop or two of soap.
She began with glassware, because that’s how her mum taught her. Always wash glassware with the cleanest water in the wash cycle to avoid streaks or fingerprints. Living alone, she tended to re-use the same cup for a day, so she had minimal work here. She washed three cups with her hand-knitted dishcloth, rinsed them with a quick blast of fresh water from the faucet, and placed them open-side down in her drying rack.
Silverware next. She plucked her cereal spoon from her bowl, along with the dozen or so other bits of flatware she used in the last few days. The spoons she used with her soft egg and her cereal needed the most attention. A single corn flake had sat on her spoon since she discarded it at breakfast this morning and had turned into a unique matter that was half gooey, half dried hard as cement. She needed her scouring brush to finish that one off.
She had somehow accumulated six dirty teacups in the last two days. She liked a fresh cup every time she sat down for tea.
Had she really had six cups of tea in the last two days? It just didn’t seem possible. She’s not been here all that much.
Ah yes. At least two of them were from the night before last. She’d watched the musical Newsies (the Christian Bale version from the 90s, not the newer Broadway version) for the ten-millionth time, and that movie needed two teas at minimum. She realized she was now working on a stack of dishes from three separate days.
What had become of her?
Mindy smirked.
She’d been in Dunnock Bay for almost three months now. She’d made real friends and was having a great time. If a fresh start in a new place meant sometimes the dishes stacked up a bit, she was ready to see it as an indicator things were going well.
After the teacups, her drying rack was full. She spent a few minutes drying her glassware and cups and putting them away before turning her attention to the plates and bowls.
She washed the bowls first, because they inevitably took up more space on the rack. She washed them one at a time, starting with the smallest and working up to the biggest so they nested together. She washed her plates and slid them into the opposite end of the rack.
As she looked to her next items to be washed, she noticed her dishwater had gotten a bit flat. She added a few drops of soap.
The pot she’d heated her curry in wasn’t as bad as she’d worried. Her past self had the insight to give it a good rinse before stacking it beside the sink. The rice pot needed a bit more attention, but she’d left a little cold water in the bottom the evening before, so the grains hadn’t adhered to the pot.
Last of all were the Royal Worcester egg coddlers. Even after lining them with a smear of butter, bits of egg had become baked onto the porcelain. This took a bit of scrubbing with the abrasive pad. She had to call her fingernails into duty for a bit at the very bottom.
With all her dishes clean, Mindy grabbed her tea towel. She knew she could just leave everything in the rack to air dry, but she also knew this was a trap. If she left it, it would be a job that still had to be done later.
Mindy started again with the silverware. Same reason. Mum said so. And while Mum wasn’t right about everything, she was right about this. She dried each spoon, knife, and fork and deposited them into the drawer to the left of the sink.
She marvelled for a moment about how little thought she had given to where things went in the kitchen. In her last apartment, she’d moved the drinking glasses three times before they found their final home. In this kitchen, everything just made sense. The cutlery went there. The plates go up here. The pots hang here. The pot lids slide in here.
With everything clean and dried, she wiped down all surfaces. Table. Counter. Sink. She rinsed and wrung out the dishcloth and walked it down the hall to the bathroom to toss in the dirty laundry. She returned to the kitchen, replaced the dishcloth, and neatly arranged the tea towel on the door handle of the oven.
Almost perfect.
She turned on the dim light above the stove and turned out the main kitchen light. Her older sister had given her this trick. In the low light, a clean kitchen looked even cleaner.
Mindy filled her eclectic kettle and flip the switch to set it to boil. She took a cup down from the cupboard and placed a teabag in the bottom. This would be a quiet night. A lovely night. She and Darryl could curl up with a book. She’d make herself some supper a little later. No need to mess up the kitchen just yet.
Before the water could come to a boil, her phone rang. She could hear it buzzing in her purse. She fumbled with her bag for a moment before she was able to put a hand on her phone and answer it.
“Hello?” she said.
“Mindy!” said Jenny. “How are you?”
“I’m good!” she answered. “Just got home. I had to clean up like three days worth of dishes.”
“Ugh,” said Jenny. “Look, I don’t mean to harass you, but I’m bored and I’m hungry. Do you have plans?”
Mindy looked at her teacup on the counter. The switch on her kettle clicked off as the water came to a rolling boil.
“Nope,” she said.
“Come over,” said Jenny. “We’ll order pizza. We’ll watch terrible television. It’ll be great.”
Mindy smiled.
“Sounds perfect,” she said.
Thanks for hanging out in Dunnock Bay with me this morning! I hope you’re enjoying it. Make sure to like and share so more people can find it.
I flipped and flopped a couple times trying to decide what to write this week, but then I realized Mindy had some dishes piling up in her kitchen.
Be sure to also check out my weekly newsletter The Quack where I have a lot of fun writing about not much at all.
Have a great week. <3 Davy