I have written before about my dislike of vacuuming.  It’s not just dislike, it’s a visceral hatred that suffuses all of me and makes my hair stand on end.  Inevitably, the machine will clog, the belt will break, and I will end up cursing.  Every time.  Every single time.  For now, and always and forever.  This is true.  I no longer fight it.  I try to roll with the flow.

I am also not fond of putting laundry away.  I don’t mind doing laundry so much, but right outside my laundry room door is an 11-foot old oak church pew.  Fresh from the dryer clothes seem to end up there.  And even if I do fold them, they tend to stay there.  I often dress from the church pew in the hallway that is right in front of my windowed kitchen door.  This is flirting with disaster.  I am someday going to flash somebody.

Dusting also annoys me.  I live on a dirt road.  I have 3 dogs.  I have laundry sitting on the church pew.  I have dust.  And it accumulates at warp speed.  I often say I’m running a retirement for dust.  Just as soon as I carry some of it out to the bin, a new crop arrives to take its place.  It’s maddening.  I can wield a can of Pledge for hours and admire my sparkling furniture and shelves, but by the next morning, it looks as if weeks have passed since anything has seen a dust rag.

Suffice it to say there is not much I like in the vein of housecleaning aside from making up a bed with clean linen sheets and a freshly aired duvet.

But of all the household chores, though, of all of them, I think I hate pulling cold, wet pasta out of the kitchen drain the most.  Well aside from vacuuming.  Nothing is ever going to touch that level of loathing.

No matter how careful you are with the colander, some escapes and ends up clogging the drain.  Spaghetti twines around the opening, rigatoni gets stuck in the holes. Those tiny shell things are really a pain. Some people claim it’s like pulling worms.  No. It’s not.  I have dissected worms in biology class.  They are not slimy.  They are ridged and sense the world through their skin.  All along their little bodies are tastebuds.  When they crawl through the compost, it’s a gustatory delight for them…

I digress.

It’s like pulling greasy, grimy, gopher guts from the sink.  Not that I have direct experience with gophers in my kitchen.  I do have experience with turkey innards, and I’d rather pull those out of a turkey than cold, slimy, wet, droopy, dripping pasta out of the sink.

I tried wearing gloves to pull out the pasta, but I couldn’t grasp it well enough.  And I’ve bought every manner of colander to keep those strays from ending up in the sink.  All to no avail. 

I sometimes go weeks without pasta I’m craving because of this problem.

When I was married, I used to make the ex-husband do it.  He usually did the dishes, so it wasn’t like I had to plead or anything, but if for some reason pasta was clogging the strainer when I was fixing to do something, I would holler, “If you love me, you will get this disgusting stuff out of the sink.”  And he would. 

He was a good guy.  He’s an even better guy now that we’re not married.

But I live alone now.  And have for 18 years. 

It just now occurred to me that I could place a small black dachshund in the sink to rid me of the pasta!  Eureka! 

Oh, wait.  No.  It’s dirty and has been there a while and not edible even for a dachshund who wiggles with delight any time table food is offered to her.

And you know what’s just as gross as the pasta?  Chunks of stewed tomatoes.  The ex and my son always wanted goulash which was guaranteed to leave elbow macaroni and stewed tomatoes in the strainer.  You can bet the farm the ex did the dishes on those nights.

First world problems, right?  I am not carrying water in a jug on my head.  I am not living in a cardboard box underneath a freeway overpass.  I am not trying to feed three young children with no food.

I have a house, I have a washer and dryer, I have food and the means to keep it fresh until I can cook it.  I have beautiful furniture to dust, and carpet that has served me well to vacuum.  Indoor plumbing and even trash to take out.  I don’t need to save every bit of everything in the event I might need it.

And yet I whine. 

Somebody should slap me.