what's that thing?

Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things

24. Clean kitchens. I just love 'em.

We're down in LA to visit, just around my loveliest's ma Allison's birthday. I roasted a leg of lamb with some potatoes for a belated birthday dinner tonight, and just spent a few minutes scouring the roasting pan. Cleaning a kitchen is satisfying work, for me, because I spend a lot of time making kitchens need to be cleaned. But mainly, I love a clean kitchen.

The roasting pan in question I had propped up in the sink to soak several hours ago. While generally tidying up after our 6th pinochle game of the weekend, I decided to clean the last of the dinner stuff, including the roasting pan. I needn't have. But sitting there on the edge of the sink, it gave me a look that said "Tomorrow morning, I'll be sitting in this sink, and someone waking up - maybe you - will see me sitting here, and I will look so forlorn, so filthy, so recalcitrantly in the way of the faucet, that you'll regret ever having roasted that so-called leg of lamb in me." So I Brilloed the heck outta that roasting pan, leaving the sink, if not clean, at least emptied of dirty dishes and pans.

I especially love a clean kitchen as a thing to walk into in the morning, in search of some form of caffeinated beverage and some form of bread product to call breakfast. Things in place, things clean, things ready to go - this is a special kind of bliss.