The Absentminded Chef-Messer

Last week was a busy one here at the homestead, with Val getting home late three out of four days of her regular work week due to conferences, and having to head to the lab on Friday. So the kitchen was in a bit of disarray this weekend. I washed up several sinks of dishes, including The Pony's cake paraphernalia from Monday. That's right. From Monday.

Normally, Val does not let her dishes linger. But The Pony swore he was going to wash these himself. You know, because of Val's FluShotKnee, which has, in the meantime, recovered. But it was iffy on Monday, due to duty before and after school, and the long nights of not being propped up during conferences. Each night, The Pony swore he was going to wash those dishes before bed. But they remained.

It's not like there was mold growing on the giant plastic bowl or foil cake pans. The Pony had rinsed the bowl and two of the tins, and another one that had held cake had hardened like shellac. Yes. Val washes out foil cake pans. You can take Mom away from Val, but you can't take Val away from Mom's habits. There was still a sliver of Oreo cake in the cake container, which I made The Pony scrape out for the chickens, if they could get to peckin' before the dogs arrived.

All of this stuff had been piled in a box on the kitchen table. The table that Hick finally moved in from the garage. With our odd hours, the kitchen table had not been used for mealtime. Oh, who am I kidding? The kitchen table is rarely used for mealtime. Hick goes to admire his chickens and shacks as soon as he gets home, and The Pony takes to the basement couch for computer games, and Val slips into her lounging ensemble and heads for her dark basement lair. So we often just grab a plate and head our separate ways, with Hick choosing to chow down around 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. Not like Val's childhood home, where supper was on the table and sat down to at the stroke of 5:10, the minute her dad walked in the door.

I went to gather the washables out of the cardboard box. There were also leftover little plates suitable for serving Oreo cake to juniors and seniors listening to a how-to speech, a bottle of cooking oil, an opened tub of frosting now inedible due to lack of refrigeration, a plastic container of toothpicks used for stabbing a maybe-done cake, a crinkly clear-plastic bag which once held cake powder, and a cut-off egg carton that had protected the three home-laid eggs The Pony needed for his ingredients.

WAIT A MINUTE! THERE WERE EGG SHELLS IN THAT CARTON!

That's right. The Pony had brought home the shells of three cracked eggs and left them on the kitchen table in a box for six days! I'm shocked that they didn't stink. To shame him, I made him take that mini-carton out on the porch and take a picture, and throw the shells over the rail.

"Huh. I guess my helper put the shells back in the carton. I didn't know she did that."

Always passing the buck, The Pony.

I suppose his helper didn't know that he carried them home and let them sit on the kitchen table for six days.