Washing dishes

After spending some hours in the library on Saturday (fortunately I didn’t have a hangover) I went to JJ’s place for dinner (and staying over). When I arrived there I found him finishing cooking (steak, fries, boiled vegetables and butternut squash soup for starter). I could see from the very first minute that he was in a weird state and that something was bothering him. His eyes had a bizarre sparkle on them.

I thought about if for a minute. I tried to remember if I had forgotten something important (birthday, anniversary, groceries etc) and I was to blame for his obvious bad mood. I couldn’t think of something, so I asked him what was up. He told me he had a fight with both his housemates. After feeling slightly relieved I wasn’t the cause of this, I asked him about what happened.

One of the housemates almost burnt the house. She was cooking and left the toaster on ‘reheat’ with an old kitchen towel on top! When JJ arrived home from work the towel of course was extremely hot and slightly smoking. He wasn’t very happy about it (I wonder why) so he told that housemate off. That whole incident put him in an annoyed mood that became an angry mood towards the other housemate who hadn’t cleaned anything in ages! Next to the burning toaster a big pile of dirty dishes welcomed a tired JJ from work, who was thinking about having a nice quiet dinner with me later that evening. All that made him quite cross with both of them. Needless to say that both housemates were retired to their rooms when I arrived and while staying there for the whole evening I didn’t see any of them.

Anyway, after a while, he relaxed and was his normal happy self. I helped him set the table and cleaned the dishes we made (it’s only fair that one cooks, the other cleans). After dinner (it was amazing by the way), when I was relaxing with JJ I asked him about the whole thing. My exact words were: “In 25 years, when we will be living together, will you be so mad at me like that when I leave the dishes dirty?” That question of course started negotiations about when we might be living together. You know how it goes. I said 25 years, he said 25 days. I said 10 years, he said 10 months. We finally left it to about 2 years… I implied we will discuss it in 2 years, he believes that we will live together in two years.

Anyway, what I really meant was the fact that in the future, when we will be living together, our everyday lives will be catching up. It will not be all ‘roses’ and ‘pedals’ (you know what I mean) and that minor things happening (dirty dishes) will not be dealt always nicely. That is what I sometimes think and worry about: everyday friction changing the way we treat one another. I know that now he will happily be washing dishes without complaining. What about in two - three years? (You know that the dishes are only a metaphor, right?)