Reverb 10 December 10--Wisdom

Today's prompt from Reverb 10: What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out? (Author: Susannah Conway)

I know I've made several good choices this year, mostly to do with stepping away from things that were taking too much of my time and energy.  Every one of those decisions has added to me moving closer to living the life I want to have.  They have all been good decisions, even when they were really hard choices becausethey involved stepping away from something that I wasn't completely ready to let go of yet.  But for this year, I don't think those are the wisest in the long run even though they added great things to my life.  The wisest decision this year was one I made with my beloved--we bought a dishwasher.

Don't laugh!  It has changed my life in crazy, huge ways.  I love that old, slightly beat up, noisy thing (it was used).

Here's how things used to be--come home from work exhausted, often in pain, wanting to lie down, needing some food.  Go to the kitchen to see about dinner and become instantly overwhelmed, sometimes to the point of tears.  Too often, decide that I couldn't handle making dinner and get fast food or pizza. 

Why couldn't I handle making dinner?  Besides the fatigue and pain which I still deal with, the kitchen was a disaster.  Both sides of the sink piled with dirty dishes.  The small amount of counter space we do have also piled with dirty dishes.  The stove piled with dirty pots and pans.  A small bench next to the sink stacked with more dirty stuff.  Frequently, every dish in the house was dirty.  I always had to move things around, make a bit of room at the sink, and do a bunch of dishes before I could even think about getting started on making food.  It was too much on too many days.

Now?  I still have days where I can't deal with making dinner--still too many of them for my liking--but now it's only because I'm exhausted and sometimes in pain.  Now, I walk into my kitchen and know that, except for the few things that might be dirty in the dishwasher at the moment, anything I own that I might want to use to make dinner is clean, in its place, and ready for me.  Now, I cook dinner much more often.  I experiment with new recipes.  I make breakfast on the weekends.

So actually, go ahead and laugh if you want.  I don't mind.  My best decision of the year is waiting for me at home to pile in dinner dishes after we've eaten, and all the laughter in the world isn't going to take the shine off of that.