Dishes and the 405

There's nothing that says good morning quite like a pile of dirty dishes filling up the sink and spilling out on all countertops and even on the stove. I was too hungry to do dishes, so I ate breakfast and added a bowl and a spoon to the collection only to walk back upstairs to do who-knows-what. Why did I put it off? Why didn't I just do them after breakfast? I think I wanted to believe that I had more important things to do, even though I didn't. Not just more important things to do, but I wanted to be more important than that. Turns out, I'm not.

Come lunch time and the dishes still weren't done. After adding a plate and a fork to the pile, I began my work. I actually do enjoy washing dishes*, and I will often ask if I can do them, even after cooking. For the most part, this task gets a bad rap, and it is often used as a punishment for children
(or maybe it is thought of as a punishment by grown-up children whose mothers or grandmothers made them wash the dishes for misbehaving at the table. And I bet those grandmother's mothers made it a
punishment for them and so on. Who was the first one to assign dish duty for bad behavior? I'm telling you, this cycle needs to stop). However, once you embrace the fact that you are doing dishes by your own choice, it's really not that bad at all; it can actually be a blessing toward somebody who doesn't have the time or who still thinks it's a daunting chore. 

Same with traffic**. For two years I commuted to grad school from Encinitas to Northridge at least once a week, sometimes twice. I have vivid memories of skateboarding out of class, diving into my car, racing down the 405 hoping to beat traffic hour, only to hit a dead wall of brake lights, steel, exhaust, and sizzling pavement. At the beginning I was like, "I got this," and threw on the radio or music. I even rented an "Intermediate French" CD to try to learn a new language. But I quickly tired of the same ads, songs, and je ne sais quoi blaring in my ears, dictating my thoughts and my time. After a while I began to turn the stereo off, to sit in the traffic and just be. I admit it can be inconvenient, but for all the rage expressed toward traffic, it's not so bad when you actually accept it. I would sing to myself, pray, think, invent things, remember something funny and laugh out-loud. I would think of people I loved and call them to tell them so. I would dream about my life and what I desire. I remember many nights getting out of my car after coming through hellish traffic conditions and actually feeling energized from my drive. Because I had met God in the traffic, as funny as that sounds. In "spiritual" contexts, I have a tendency to dress God up and dress myself up to have pretend tea parties in which I imagine Him as I wish He would be. But when my foot is on the brake pedal on the 405 or I am scrubbing grease from a skillet, or any other uninteresting situation, God arrives without pomp or pretense and greets me just as I am.

*The time it takes me to wash dishes is significantly higher than that of a normal human being, statistically speaking. I have my own system that I care a lot about. I have a similar system for brushing my teeth. It involves counting time in my head and a specific order in which each tooth facet is to be brushed. I don't think I'm OCD, but aren't we all?

**Since moving to Michigan my experience of traffic has all but faded into non-existence. Roads here are two lanes everywhere and always flowing at a steady 80 mph. Sometimes I pinch myself.