It's a Drive-by Shooting! We're being shot at!!

Marcus was about 48 seconds from blowing a fuse because there was, as he so dramatically put it, “NOT a single clean dish in the house!!”  To which my response was “False!! The dog’s water bowl is very clean and that’s a DISH that happens to be in this HOUSE…” I don’t know if something in my husband snapped at that moment or if he was truly rendered speechless by my ever so keen observation, because all he did was tilt his head slightly and started washing the dishes.  This is usually how the dishes get done in our house.  It starts with some exaggerated proclamation of no more “clean” dishes, followed by my clever retort to negate his observation.  My favorite is “False!  There is a clean punch bowl above the refrigerator!  It is perfectly acceptable to eat ramen noodles out of a punch bowl!  Emily Post never said otherwise!”

I do not like doing dishes, well, truth be told, I don’t like cleaning, anything, ever.  I don’t know why.  I don’t think I have some obscure psychosis or dyslexic type of germaphobia or “non-clean freak” disorder.  I just don’t like cleaning.  Don’t get me wrong, I like having clean clothes, a clean house, I just don’t like to do all the work.  Every once in a while, like after staying at a clean hotel, I do have a sudden urge to go home and make my home just as clean (well, all hotels we stay in are clean.  We don’t ever stay in the bedbug infested, dirt ring in the tub, type hotels.  As a matter of fact, I do have an odd phobia when it comes to hotels, I can ONLY stay in the ones that have the doors to the rooms on the inside, where you have to go in the hotel, walk down a hallway to get to your room type places.  I can’t stay in the type of hotels where you park your car about 14 inches from the door to the room.  No, no “doors on the outside” hotels for me.)  But, when I get home and see how much it would take to get it “doors inside, nice hotel” type of clean, the motivation and desire fade away…but back to the drive by shooting, and I promise this is all true and seriously happened!

Marcus was taught to do dishes old school style, and by this, I mean he fills up one side of the sink with soapy water, places everything in the water, hand washes them and THEN puts them in the dishwasher, except the pots & pans…(IF, on the off chance I’m compelled to clean the kitchen – it’s “everybody in the pool after a slight rinsing off” which means I rinse everything and PILE everything in the dishwasher…) With the pots & pans, he places them on the stove burners and turns on the burners for just a few minutes, to heat dry the pots & pans before putting them away.

Marcus’ phone rings and it’s a friend of ours from high school, who I think was congratulating us on getting married or something like that.  Marcus hadn’t talked to him in a while, so they start catching up on what the other has been doing and life and just the typical guy talk.  I think the whole conversation lasted maybe 7 minutes.  Marcus hangs up the phone and comes in to the living room to tell me how our friend was doing and how he heard this and this about so & so, and can you believe what’s-her-name is actually dating this yahoo…just the normal, small town gossip making its way to us.

“KAAAHHHH-----BBBLLLLOOOOOMMMM!!!!!”  Something just exploded in our house!  I looked at my husband with sheer panic, “WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK. WAS. THAT???” Was all I could say…as we both walk in the kitchen to investigate the explosion.  There is shattered glass EVERYWHERE!!  “MARCUS!!  Are we being shot at???”

“KAAAHHHH-----BBBLLLLOOOOOMMMM!!!!!”  The 2nd Pyrex baking dish exploded off the stove burner and sprayed more glass everywhere.  At least that’s what I saw on my way down to the ground, taking the immediate “lay as flat on the floor as humanly possible” plan of action to avoid taking a bullet to the knee or boob or throat.  “Marcus, what the hell is going on??? WHY WOULD ANYONE DO A DRIVE-BY on US?????”  Let me explain here, in this moment of terror I was experiencing, what I saw was a Pyrex dish not just cracked and broken, but the dish exploded, THE DISH EXPLODED, THE. DISH. EXPLODED!!!! like a pyro-techno, wired for special effects in a blockbuster, Bruce Willis movie, explosion!!  Now, knowing my frame of mind, you must surely understand why I am splayed out on the dining room floor, trying to become one with the wood floor boards. 

After the last of the shattered glass had landed all over the kitchen and dining room and I’m sure my hair was covered with shattered shards that would certainly scalp me every time I washed my hair for a week.  Picture a nuclear fall-out depiction in a post-apocalyptic movie, with the dust and ashes blanketing everything in the area…That’s what I’m expecting to open my eyes to…

Nope, I look up to see my darling husband, the love of my life, my soul mate, bent over at the waist, laughing so hard there are tears streaming down his face.  He’s laughing so hard, no sound is coming out of him and he’s slapping his leg like some sort of retarded seal (thanks Pinterest for this line…I just had to use it here because that’s exactly how he looked..)

“ARE YOU HIT???  ARE YOU IN SHOCK SO YOU ARE LAUGHING BECAUSE YOU’VE BEEN HIT??”  We are completely enthralled with Sons of Anarchy, so I had to use the bad ass, devil may care, lingo I’ve picked up from that show.  I mean, hello! We're being shot at for God's sake!  "Marcus, look at me, where are you hit??  Do I need to get a belt to be used as a tourniquet?”  I’m slowly pulling myself up, dusting the fall-out off my shirt and shorts (It wasn’t really “fall-out dust” it was just regular dust, since I hadn’t swept or mopped the floor in a spell….) I’m extremely cautious, whoever has a “hit out on us” might try again…so I go to look out the window, which for some reason is completely intact..hmmm…”that’s odd – I don’t see any bullet holes...Honey, where are the bul……WHAT is so damn funny??  This is NOT a known drive-by neighborhood.”  That’s when I realized, the window I just looked out to check for the “perp” was the window to our back yard…unless a road had miraculously appeared in our back yard, this was not a drive-by shooting.  This was my husband’s way of drying off two Pyrex pans, by placing them on the lit burners, to dry off all the water.  Unfortunately for the Pyrex and my blood pressure and heart rate, my husband “forgot” the burners were on when he was on the phone…All he could say was “I don’t think you would move that fast, even for free Wendy’s fries or Reese’s peanut butter cups…”  Who knew Pyrex EXPLODES when heated to about 2067 degrees…..That little incident happened about 6-8 months ago and every now and then, I still find shards of Pyrex in the strangest damn places, like on the mantle above the fireplace…seriously!  Who knew Pyrex explodes??  Not me, I just cook with Pyrex, I certainly don’t clean then heat dry it on the burners..thankfully, neither does Marcus anymore.  Although I think he secretly wants to.