It's the little things

My husband hates to see dirty dishes stacked in the sink or piled up on the counter.  Sometimes while I am still eating dinner, he will get up and start to do the dishes.

Perhaps you're wondering why he doesn't just stick the dirty dishes in the dish washer?  Are you sitting down?  Trust me, you will want to be sitting down when I tell you that we are one of probably only five homes in North America that doesn't have a dishwasher (slight exaggeration -- maybe there are twenty homes that are dish washer-less).  Crazy, right?

So in light of his dirty dish phobia, my husband and I have a somewhat unspoken agreement about doing dishes.  The dishes are always done before we go to bed -- he really hates to wake up to dirty dishes -- and the person who washed the dishes stacks them neatly in the dish drainer for the other person to put away.  Doesn't that sound like an equitable division of labor?

If my husband does the dishes, he does them right away (see the first paragraph).  If I do them, I usually do them right before I go to bed, which might not be until two or three o'clock in the morning.  But, no matter how tired I am, I always do them.  And no matter how tired I am, if G has done the dishes and left them in the dish rack to dry, I always put them away before I fall in bed.

So tonight I did the dishes and -- surprise, surprise -- I did them right after dinner.  For some reason it just seemed like a good time.  With the dishes out of the way, I was free to play a computer game and watch Monday Night Football and my husband was free to check out iTunes for some songs he wanted for a church project.  It was a win-win.

About an hour after my husband went to bed, I went to the kitchen to get a snack, and what did I see?  The dish drainer full of the clean dishes that I had washed earlier in the evening.

Did G forget and think that he washed the dishes so I was the one who should put them away?  (Maybe.)  Did he think that I should have washed the dishes and put them away?  (Not unless he's lost his mind.)  Is it okay for him to wait until the morning to clear out the dish drainer, but I'm expected to do it before I go to bed?  (That doesn't seem fair.)  Am I being way too nit-picky about this?  (Probably.)

I know that this situation shouldn't bother me, but it does.  And tonight isn't the first night that it's happened.  I probably should just ask him why he expects something from me but doesn't expect the same from himself, but I'm not sure I want to go down that road.

I guess I'll just walk through the kitchen on my way to bed and pretend that everything is neatly stowed away in the drawers and cupboards.  But if I wake up in the morning and the dish drainer is still filled with dishes . . . .