Cleaning the kitchen

Today I'm doing the dishes.

     There really aren't as many as I feel like there are when I pass the kitchen on my way to my room and avoid looking in the sink for fear that the guilt of leaving them there will descend upon me and keep me from being able to slack off in bliss.

     There really aren't that many.

     -_-

     In fact, I counted the number of forks, spoons, and knives that I own, because I always feel like I need more (and not just because I dirty them up and don't wash them). Man, I look bad in that picture. Anyway. I counted them and discovered this: 

     Ugh, I don't have an even, consistent number of anything! I texted Alex the results and just said..."So this is...kind of...blegh :p I will enjoy having enough money to properly stock a silverware drawer someday."
     And he agreed...I think he has, like, one fork and a spoon? I feel like he must have more than that, but that's all I remember seeing in his drawer when he moved into his new place a couple weeks ago, and I haven't seen any more since then.
     I'm proud of even having any silverware at all. There's a story to how I acquired such a random assortment of silverware, and it begins with Project Grad, 2015.

     It's not really very dramatic like I seem to be making it. But I wanted to add this picture that we miraculously remembered to take while we were there.
     "Project Graduation" was a tradition at our high school, and was a big lock-in party after the graduation ceremony for the seniors and their friends. Each senior was given a ticket and two friend tickets each, and that was the only way any underclassmen could attend. I picked Alicia and Tori, and while I wanted to invite our fourth friend, Mahliya, who was a freshman like Alicia and my brother Rickey, she wasn't allowed to come, and that was too bad. :/ But those three were my best friends from public HS.
     So this party had lots of fun activities, a buffet of food like pizza, oreos, and brownies, an art table stocked by our school's art teacher (I think, if I remember right), and--biggest of all--a bouncy house obstacle course in the gym. It was pretty sweet.
     Aside from getting to run around all night drinking soda and riding tricycles through the cafeteria and the gym with your best friends, there were also gifts for each of the graduating seniors. Since the party was parent-organized and wasn't school-funded, it depended wholly on the group of moms and dads of that year's seniors to raise money for the bouncy house rental, the food, the tricycles, and the games. They also put as much of the funds as they could into the gift baskets. Thinking back, not only was I blessed to be a senior when Miss Pam was on the Project Grad planning team, but I was also lucky (blessed!) to be at that small town school where everybody was somebody, and each student was personally thought of when they graduated and given such a wonderful graduation present.
     That year, the "baskets" for the gifts were these black duffle bags, and they were filled with things a kid might need once they moved out, either on their own to start a career or into a dorm at college. I brought almost everything that I got in that gift basket with me to Liberty, and the few things that I didn't need (like a discounted laptop that had half the capabilities and features of the Mac that I bought later that summer) were easily exchanged at Walmart for in-store credit. I sold that credit to my parents and put that couple hundred toward my own computer purchase, and it's been a magnificent deal. I'll never forget how incredibly I was gifted on my graduation. Thank you to anyone reading who made that celebration happen.
     These are some of the treasures that I found waiting inside my very own duffle bag:

• a big plastic turquoise bowl (my favorite color at the time!) that I would definitely use as a popcorn bowl
• a little bottle of Tide laundry detergent (I was going to need to have my own at the dorm)
• a set of Ziploc-brand plastic containers with lids (great for organizing things in my desk, as well as saving leftovers in the fridge)
• a drawstring net laundry bag (I also got a couple other net laundry hampers, including a three-section one from my grandma that makes it easy to organize clothes by color)
• Other things that I can't remember right now
• Silverware from the dollar store (the ones where a set of 4 forks is taped together and sells for $1) including:
• 4 knives
• 3 forks, tape cut open to remove one of the original 4
• 3 tea spoons, also with tape removed
• 3 dinner spoons, also with tape removed

     It turned out that they only had enough for each student to get 3 of each utensil, and there wasn't an even number, so some people got to have the full set of 4. 

     That's the story of how I got some of my silverware. But the whole story continues a year later in the summer of 2016.

     I couldn't find a picture from the wedding itself without going on Facebook, and I mostly want to post pics from my own photos, but this is from a wedding in Wisconsin that my friend and I (pictured above) were bridesmaids in. We flew up with her mom and stayed in the bible school's dorm, which was in the same building as the reception and was right up the hill from the chapel where the ceremony would be located. However, since it was a dorm we were staying in, and we came up a few days early to help prepare for the wedding, we needed to be able to prepare our own food while we stayed there. I don't think we knew that when we were packing, because we ended up buying pots and pans and cheap dishes to eat from while we were up there. Her mom actually carried a cast-iron dutch oven back on the plane. I contributed on this shopping trip by getting a cute yellow coffee mug from the dollar store and some silverware: knives, teaspoons, and forks, all sets of 4 that were almost the same as the ones I already owned.

     Now that I think about it, I should have another fork somewhere... I know I got 3 when I graduated and I'm pretty sure I bought 4 in Wisconsin, but I don't know where the other one is. Maybe it's lost in my apartment, or maybe while I was at Liberty, it got swept up with someone else's belongings when we were dividing everything up as we moved. Who knows.

     Anyway. I dropped everything an hour ago to count my silverware and then write about it, aaand now I've been blogging and haven't finished the dishes. I can put away the ones that have dried, though, and I won't have to dry them with a towel. 😀I would always rather let them drip-dry than have to dry them off. It's because I'm lazy. But anyway.
     I'm going to get back to doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen and throwing away expired food from the fridge and taking out the trash. I'll see you the next time I get excited about a memory, or how my day is turning out, and just have to share it.

—ACS, August 8, 2018