Mondays are for rambling?

Today, you get a cat pic because cat pics go well with rambling.

I folded clothes today! Hallelujah. Though I suppose I shouldn't celebrate too much. There's more in the wash. We'll see if I fold those.

I also pulled in five days of exercise last week. Of course, one of those days, I could only do fifteen minutes on the elliptical due to some pretty severe foot cramps. And two of those days, I shoveled the driveway for exercise (with Big's help). But it was a foot and a half of snow, and our driveway is at least 3 car lengths. Plus, we live in the country, and the county plows aren't even remotely careful about plowing people in (or knocking over mailboxes) like they are in the city. And my body feels like I worked out for four hours every day so I'm counting it. Here's hoping I keep it up.

I still feel inadequate. Like I'm not doing enough. And if I'm to be honest, I have to admit that I'm not.

Big and I have become addicted to ARK. Like, it's becoming a problem.

This isn't unusual for us. We find a new game that we both like and we play it every free moment we have until we're so burnt out we can't even look at it.

The burn out period isn't coming as quickly as it usually does. Especially for Big. I'm to the point where I need to be doing other things, but I think that's mostly because...

Last night, after dinner, I realized just how much time I'm letting this game suck up, and I was kind of grossed out. After dinner, the counter was covered in dishes, and instead of doing them, I went back to playing. In my defense, most of them were from dinner. We had chicken tacos, and I set them up buffet style so we could build our own, so I used damn near every bowl we own.

I didn't have room to make breakfast, so I did them this morning, which consisted of sticking most of them in the dishwasher. Before I loaded it, there were two plates and two cups in there. When I was finished it needed to be run, and there were still a couple plates left over.

Bleh. I need to knock that shit off.

I can't tell you how nice it is that when my counter is full of dishes, all I have to do is load the dishwasher. Until we moved here, I would've been slaving over that shit all day. Big doesn't really appreciate or understand the difference. He's always like, "What's the point of a dishwasher if you have to wash the dishes first?" Well, an entire dishwasher full would have taken me hours by hand between scraping, washing, rinsing, hand drying, and breaks to give my hips a rest. This morning, I rinsed the dishes, loaded the washer, and washed a drying rack full of pans in half an hour. And therein lies the point.

I don't actually wash the dishes before I put them in the dishwasher. I rinse them. And really, I don't have to rinse them to put them in the dishwasher. I rarely ever rinsed them when we first moved here; except dishes with eggs on them. I've heard putting eggs in the dishwasher makes it smell bad. After a while of not rinsing, the dishwasher started to stink, and the dishes started to stink, and I couldn't get rid of the smell. I let it soak with vinegar, and that didn't work. I let it soak with bleach and that worked for about a day.

So I started googling the problem, and trying to figure out how to fix it, and found out that our dishwasher doesn't have a removable filter. I mean, you can remove it, but to do so breaks some seal, and without a professional, the seal can't be fixed, and there's potential for...something. It's been a while. I don't remember exactly what the forum rep said. (Or if it's even true. It's not uncommon for reps to lie so you'll call them and pay for repairs that you could have done yourself.)

And after that, we got a pretty major clog somewhere between the bathroom and the kitchen, and I convinced myself that it was because I'm not careful enough about what goes into the dishwasher and down the sink drain. So I started rinsing the dishes again, and bought those little net things that go in your drain hole to catch all the teeny bits that get left on the plates after you scrape them.

And then my mother goes, "Well, how often do you clean your dishwasher?" And I looked at her like she was crazy. Clean my dishwasher? Why would I need to clean my dishwasher? All it does is clean!

Guys. Guys! I can hear you, you know. This is literally my first dishwasher. Cut me some slack.

So I got some dishwasher cleaning solution, and I cleaned my dishwasher, and low and behold, it's no longer stinky. But I still rinse the dishes before I load the dishwasher so there's no food particle build up on the filter I can't remove because how gross would that be. Food just hanging around in your dishwasher for a million years, all rotting just under where your dishes are sitting even after they're clean. EW!

ANYway, the whole point of this post was to tell you that I'm on the ball today. I've already loaded and run the dishwasher, washed the pans, unloaded the dishwasher and put in the few items that were leftover when I filled it. I've folded the laundry that was left from all of our clean clothes sitting in a laundry basket for a month and washed and folded one load. There's another load in the washer, and one in the dryer. When I'm finished this post, I'm going to clean the litter box and sweep and vacuum the hall. And then I'm going to fiddle with a piece of IACDTZ that I've already started to change the point of view. I think. I don't know. Writing is hard. I'm probably not going to make 1000 words today, but I'm actually working on it, so I'm calling it good.

Hope you're being as productive as I am! Or not. Whatever, do you, boo. 💜