The Zen of Doing the Dishes

Image via Pixabay

For most of my life, I have despised doing dishes. I'm probably guilty of hiding dirty silverware in the cabinet under the sink when I was a child assigned to dish duty. When I was a young woman living on my own, I may have let my dirty dishes pile up in the sink until every last dish and utensil had been used. During the times in my life that I have been blessed to have a dishwasher, even rinsing the dishes before running the thing was too much of a hassle for me. I hated this chore.

Until now. These days, washing the dishes is an oddly calming and zen-like activity. There's something about it: the way I can arrange everything into categorized piles, tackle the easy stuff first, finish with the pots and pans that have been soaking, dry everything off, and tuck it all neatly away in the cabinet. I suppose it allows me a little quiet time and some measure of control on some of my more chaotic days. That is until a one-year-old sneaks up behind me and bites me on the tush for paying attention to something that has nothing to do with him.

So there you have it. Confession: I enjoy washing the dishes. Just don't tell my husband.

Date Night!!

Wow! It has been a while, huh? February was insane. We had my family visiting from the States for two weeks, Little Man's first birthday...there was a lot going on. Once things settled down a bit, Hubby surprised me with the news that we were going on a date! No prodding from me--he just told me one day that my sister-in-law was going to babysit and we were going out. I thought he was kidding. Our last date was in July 2014 when Little Man was only five months old. So, it had been roughly seven months since we stepped out as a duo instead of a trio.

We put Little Man down in his crib to sleep and showed my sister-in-law how to work our Netflix account. Then we hit the town. We went to a really cool restaurant/bowling alley combo. It was definitely family friendly, but I wouldn't want to be chasing our little guy around the place--it was huge. It seemed like a lot of families head there after church services, so lots of people were dressed up. Hubby put on a cool shirt he had never had a chance to wear [doesn't he look sharp?]

We had some pretty typical restaurant fare called a porcão, or portion. It's basically a big dish with a variety of meats and delicious fried foods. You can mix and match--we ended up getting sauteed steak, French fries, and fried yucca. Oh, and some awesome freshly made juice--orange juice for Hubby and passion fruit juice for me.

Can never remember to take a photo before we dig in...

Delicious and supposed to help you sleep

We asked if they had a dessert menu, but they only sold popsicles. So on the way home, Hubby pulled over at an açai/ice cream shop. You choose your cone, dish, or [in our case] cone dish, fill it with the ice cream and toppings of your choice, and pay by the kilo at the end. I treated myself to some brigadeiro and cappucino flavored ice cream with chocolate sauce and M&M type candies.

So delicious...

We didn't stay out for long. Afterall, we really are homebodies. But it was nice to have some one on one time when we knew Little Man was sleeping sweetly at home. We're even hoping to make Date Night a once or twice monthly thing!