The End (of the corn)

The End is the title of last night's episode of LOST. The Last Episode Ever. But I'm far too numb in that regard to ruminate on it here. I just needed to get that out of my system; this post is really about the corn.

Over a year ago we attended a birthday party for one of our little friends. We got to leave with a 50 lb. 'goody bag' of dried corn. Since then I'd kept it on the deck and used it as a texture bin for Sabine.










I left the bin on the deck for the winter, underneath something else protective, but at some point during the frigid winter the box cracked and water leaked in. I didn't know this until we went to use the corn for some project earlier this spring and saw that the bin was half full of water. I tried to salvage some of it but quickly realized most of the corn was green.

I've been doing my fair share of the yard work this year but the 50 lbs + whatever the water weighed was too much for me. Zach told me to leave the dirty job to him. He kept telling me he was going to do it, but then would forget. A couple months went by and we had a couple very hot streaks. Can you imagine what that crap would look like trapped inside a plastic bin in the hot, hot sun for weeks on end? Well, lucky for you I took a picture, so you don't have to imagine it.

Normally in a case like this I would have just kept on leaving it, but this past weekend I hosted the spring party for my moms' group. We had 14 families coming over, some of whom had never been here before. I couldn't go and let this be their first impression of my home. I would have called it my Third Annual Husband Experiment in any other circumstance, and I'm sort of sad that I didn't get to see where this would go, but at least that stank is out of my yard! Seriously, the smell was getting really bad. I couldn't open a couple windows on the back side of the house because when the wind blew the smell came right in. When I took the top off to take these photos I had to hold my breath, it was that bad. I thought it might be crawling with maggots and half expected it to take form and swallow me whole.

So Zach did fulfill his long-ago promise and he dumped it in the woods behind our neighbor's house where we always take our clean fill, though there's nothing clean about this fill. Anyway, I had had plans for that bin that it was in, but in the end there is only so much to the claim Plastic makes it possible. There was no saving that thing. After the garbage gets collected in a couple days I'm just going to toss it right in there - to hell with recycling. I don't want to be the cause of one of those recycling people to be rushed to the hospital.

Day Eight: Who's the Traitor?

Well I didn't post anything for two days because there was nothing new to report. The friggin crock pot is still in the sink. I've done sink-full after sink-full of dishes, each time leaving the dish in question behind. At this point I'm convinced that someone has tipped Zach off because not only has he not washed it, but he hasn't even said anything. Who is it? I thought for sure he'd have done it by now, at least out of guilt for having been doing so many side jobs lately.

Nor have I take any pictures of it because I've grown apathetic about the whole thing. I doubt anyone else is enjoying reading about it anymore, maybe nobody else thought it was funny to begin with.

The only thing that has changed is that the stagnant water in the crock has grown cloudy. It really smells too. Not like a big emanating smell, but if you stick your face in there a little bit of your nose hair seems to get burnt off. Yesterday for some reason I was like a butterfingers doing the dishes and things kept falling off the drying rack into the schmaltz water. And today Jacob was throwing around one of Sabine's toys like it was a baseball. Into the water it went.

This morning before he left for his current paint job, Zach told me the faucet in the kitchen is really acting up (because it is only six years old and leaks like crazy) and that I should try not to use it today. Is he kidding me? Is he trying to get a rise out of me, daring me to not wash the crock pot?

I may have just done myself in though. I promised to make this a completely natural experiment, with no prompting of Zach to do the dishes or anything like that. No mentioning of it at all. I just wanted to see how many days it would take my husband to wash a dish that is just SITTING THERE, growing things.

Well we were both just standing there in the kitchen, right next to the sink, I was off the the left cleaning something up from dinner and there were just a shit ton of dishes. The absurdity of the situation struck me. There is this nasty dish sitting in the sink and I'm trying to ignore it. Zach knows I am as anal as they come, how can he not notice this dish in the sink and not realize it must be bugging the shit out of me?? We're both standing there not mentioning the elephant in the room. Does he really not see this?

I really, really just wanted to sit down and type this out so I sort of asked Zach if he would do some dishes. "You know, just some of these around here on the counter, just to get some of them out of the way." I tried to cover. If Zach washed the crock because of what I said, then I will have to admit defeat by a technicality. I will not have been the one to wash it, but I cracked nevertheless.

My urging might have been the thing to throw him over the edge. When I walked into the living room to hang out with Jacob I heard the kitchen faucet start to run. Will this be the conclusion? We'll see...

Day Six: Baby Steps

Here we are at day 6. There is much to report on.

Yesterday morning all four of us were up before Zach left for work (a rarity). Things were happening in the kitchen, breakfasts were being prepared, messes were being made, so much was going on that I didn't notice the crock had been moved.
Upon further investigation I saw that the 'schmaltz', as I have been informed is the technical word for what's going on in that dish (thanks Pegeen, and yes, it was cream of mushroom), had been dumped.
Where could it be? A quick search produced the answer. Zach had dumped it into an empty cereal bag. We use these bags for compost, so I guess that's what he had in mind for the schmaltz? I don't think the stuff is appropriate for the compost, not unless we want our children's children growing a fifth limb (considering we use the compost on our vegetable garden); not to mention the fact that you can't compost meat waste anyway. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt though because that bag was probably the best option as we wouldn't want any leakage into the garbage.
The thing is, this mess was just sitting on a kiddie table in the middle of the kitchen. Did he think it was it was going to get up and walk itself to the garbage? Actually, I'm inclined to believe that might be true - take a look at the close-up, I'm pretty sure the schmaltz is about to grow legs.
I'm sorry for that picture. I hope you weren't planning to eat for the rest of the day.

Zach came home at lunchtime yesterday and so we were all in the kitchen again. I was making lunch and he was playing with the kids. At one point he was fiddling around with something near the crock. He pointed out the crock and said, "Look Pookie, I emptied that out for you." My brain was screaming expletives but I had to keep my cool and responded in a neutral tone, "Oh, thanks." For ME? How does he figure that was for me? It was his chicken and his job to clean it up.

That evening I cooked a pretty involved dinner which produced many dishes. I was working hard to knock them off when Zach came downstairs from getting Sabine ready for bed. He informed me she was ready to nurse and could I please take her right away? He would finish the dishes.

I guess what he meant was some dishes because it appears that when the drying rack was full, Zach stopped washing dishes. I didn't realize this until this morning. I'm ashamed that I often go to bed with the kitchen left in shambles. It never used to be that way - I wouldn't be able to sleep unless everything was clean. Now I guess I'm just so exhausted all the time that falling asleep isn't as much of a problem as it used to be.

At some point this morning after the kids were fed and I had time to address the situation forming in and around the kitchen sink, I suddenly noticed the crock was gone. I actually looked in the box for it before realizing it was just in the sink. Soaking, apparently.
Oh good. Some of my cooking utensils are in there soaking as well. Soaking up some nice chicken ooze. Those were fun to clean. Halfway through doing the dishes I needed my little plastic scraper to get some gunk off of last night's casserole dish. I couldn't find it where it's usually kept and I got the feeling in my gut that it was at the bottom of this:
Yup, I had to reach in there and pull it out.

Anyway, here's where it stands: I've done dishes a couple times today, leaving only the crock pot behind. I know Zach's been in the kitchen several times today. In fact, he even washed his paint brushes out in the sink. Everyone else is in bed for the night, so I know it's not getting done today. Zach has to leave early to paint again. We'll see what the status is when I get up.

Day Five: Game On

Welp. The Yanks won last night.

Jacob requested we get Chinese food last night, which is a rare treat, so I said yes because Zach was going to be working late, again. This means there wasn't much dinner cleanup. In fact, I have gotten so lazy in this recent wave of Zach working late that I didn't bother doing any dishes last night and the kitchen is a mess. You know, now that I'm thinking about it, it's almost like I left the kitchen a mess on purpose to disguise the chicken gook (yeah, that's what I'll call it) because I was afraid Zach might actually clean it up.

I needn't have worried. There was never any mention of it. The reason I thought it might happen is because Zach couldn't sit down for most of the game. I kept urging him to and he'd just look at me, a little wild-eyed, and say, "I can't, I have to stand up." Poor thing was so nervous. It was around this point he told me he might actually not go to bed at all. I think it came up because I said something about the rabbit cages and he told me he'd do them after the game. Say what?

Understandably, I thought the kitchen might get cleaned. Like I said, I was dreaming.

Below are the pictures. One I took yesterday when I thought it might be my last photo op. I cheated though, I moved it from the counter in order to get a better shot. I put it right back though, I mean, after I tested its reaction to gravity. Guess what. It didn't budge. I held it completely perpendicular to the ground and the only thing that happened is a little bit of unsolidified juices ran from the center. I'm assuming this is just what's left of the water. or maybe some kind of oil that remains liquid at room temperature?

** Fun fact - It jiggles! Like Jello! Hm, what does that say about what's in Jello?

Here is the picture I took this morning. It's not very good because Zach was just in the other room and I didn't dare draw attention to the counter area by moving things around. Notice the line of delineation on the top, a little to the right. Is it just me, or has it receded a little more?

Look at all the pretty colors! To be fair, I have to mention that this is not all just from the chicken. What I did was I cooked it in mushroom soup. Being a vegetarian, I'm not sure if that is an appropriate thing to do with chicken? I thought it might infuse some yummy taste into the chicken...but what it really seems to have done is add more life to the gook by way of colors and fun texture. Let me ask you this, knowing now that there's mushroom in there, does that answer some questions about the nastiness, or does it just make it that much worse?

More Fun with The Husband Experiment

Remember The Great Husband Experiment of 2008? That was some good, clean fun. Well The Husband Experiment is baaAAaack, compliments of our latest kitchen appliance: The Slow Cooker.

Here's the synopsis: I purchased a slow cooker earlier this year and have been really enjoying the fact that I can cook more meals for Zach that include meat (in our otherwise vegetarian household) without me actually having to handle it. The deal is that I do most of the cooking of it, but if there's any sort of action that included prolonged handling of the rotting animal flesh, Zach has to take care of that. I'd cooked these chicken parts that had bones in them, not sure what kind, I tried not to look. Zach ate them for dinner and the rest stayed in there while he went to watch Game 4 of the World Series.

I am not a Yankees fan, as are the boys of the house, so I decided I was too tired to make it through the whole game awake. I cleaned up the kitchen and told Zach that I was going to bed so could he please remember to strip the chicken off the bones per our agreement? I'd told him earlier that I'd like him to strip the bones so that I could freeze the chicken bits and later make chicken pot pie from scratch for him. I left a container out for him to put the chicken in and went to bed.

The next morning I was pleased to find that Zach had remembered to take care of the chicken and did not let it sit out all night to rot. However, the 'juices' were still sitting in the slow cooker. This is not out of the ordinary. Often times Zach will leave the juices of something cooked to solidify in order to more easily clean it up later on. He also has more energy for tasks like this in the morning. I assumed that after the coffee was brewed and he was fully awake, he'd probably get rid of the now-hardened chicken slime.

Funny, after Zach left for work and I was back downstairs getting everyone breakfast, I noticed the slow cooker was still as I had previously seen it. Hm. This is the first indication of trouble. We'll call this day 2.

Later that night Zach remarked that we should have dumped the chicken juices over the dogs' food when we fed them the night prior. "Oh yeah, they would have loved that last night. Too bad it's infested with bacteria by now," I remarked. I didn't give the stuff anymore thought that night. Again, the Yankees were playing and everyone was distracted, our routine still being messed up because of the World Series.

When I got up to run pre-dawn the next morning, I couldn't believe my eyes that the stuff was still there. I was all bleary-eyed though, so I rubbed them a little and tried to refocus. Nope. Well, the Yankees had lost the night before so maybe that was Zach's excuse for not cleaning up. But if that's so, they'd won the night before so common sense would dictate that he would have cleaned it up the night he was in a good mood, right? So begins Day 3.

Later on that day while I was making lunch I had to clear some space so I took the inner crock out of the clow cooker and put the larger electrical parts back in the box and onto the shelf where they are stored. I was going to clean up the chicken mess, but upon further investigation I just decided my stomach couldn't take it. The kids and I left the house after lunch for Jacob's gym class.

I expected Zach to be working late so Jacob, Sabine and I went to my mom's house to hang out for a while. Zach actually beat us home so on the phone we talked about him cleaning out the rabbit cages and getting other stuff done around the house while waiting for me and the kids to pick him up to go vote.

Back at home after a quick trip to the polling place, I started dinner. Funny, the crock pot was still there. Oh well, it will get taken care of after dinner because there's no Yankees game on, I thought to myself.

After a late dinner when Zach had started talking 'going to bed early', I was about to ask him to clean up the chicken stuff before he retired for the night. But instead of doing so, I saw an opportunity and grabbed my camera:

This is the scene of the investigation.
The sink is just to the right, you know,
the place where someone might clean out
something like this. The coffee maker (i.e, the
thing Zach and I both use a couple times a day,
is just to the left.

Exhibit A: You can see from that upper film,
which is separated from the hardened juice by
black (we'll call this the line of delineation), where
the stuff once came to. Over the course of 48
hours much of it has evaporated.

Exhibit B: This picture is shown to demonstrate
the detail and texture of the stuff.

Now here we are beginning Day 4. I think it is time to give the 'stuff' an official name. I'll think on that today and get back to you. Feel free to leave your suggestions. As for my prediction: Tonight is game 6...if the Yankees win, there's actually a good chance Zach may clean this thing up. Part of me will be disappointed, but then again, I'll be able to use the slow cooker at long last so there's an up side either way. If the Yankees lose, there's no chance of it being cleaned up.