day #7 of the chicken dish

This is the story of a high school boy who will do anything to get out of cleaning one lousy dish.

Day #1: Last Tuesday we had a lovely chicken meal. Tuesday is Ben's day for kitchen duty, which means cleaning up. Of course that translates to "Kristen did 97% of the clean up." I asked Ben just to finish up the last two or three things. The so called lovely chicken dish needed some soaking after baking and sticking and all that jazz. Ben filled the dish with soapy water and said he'd clean it up after it had a chance to soak. No problem.

Day #2: I wake up Wednesday morning and the chicken dish is still sitting there with not-so-sudsy water. Ben comes upstairs to the kitchen to make breakfast, and I remind of the dish. As usual, they are running super late to school, so he says he'll take care of it when he gets home. I remind a couple more times after school and later that night when I get home from ELI.

Day #3: Thursday morning greets me in the kitchen with a now yucky-water filled chicken dish...with dead bugs floating in it. I don't see Ben in the morning to remind him. But Erzse comes to clean, sees the dish, and is grossed out by it. I tell her not to touch it because that is Ben's job. She agrees and laughs. Andrea comes over that afternoon to help get some things ready for Bible study and then babysits the kids for the study. She is cleaning up afterwards, and has the same reaction as Erzse. I tell her the same thing. She thinks it's funny and totally disgusting. Ben comes home from school, and I remind him of the dish, which is now filled with various small pools of dead floating bugs. Ben's reaction: "Mrs. Yaiko! My mom would have done it by now!" My response: "I'm not your mom. Clean it up." (Ha ha, he thought he could beat me!) He is practically barfing at the thought and decides to dump the gross water out and fill it now with new, clean sudsy water. He'll clean it up later. Kevin declares later that night that if it's not cleaned up by Friday that it's going in his bed.

Day #4: You can guess...no clean up of the chicken dish. Ben calls after school and is at a friend's house. Later that night Kevin dumps out 90% of the water in the chicken dish down the drain but puts the dish with the rest of the water in his bed.

Day #5: Ben comes up the stairs Saturday morning (mind you, "morning" is a loose term as far as high school boys are concerned...it was almost noon) looking all groggy and whatnot. He stares me down in utter discontent. He then proceeds to tell me how mad he is because he got home really late last night and jumped into bed, only to be thoroughly disgusted because he ended up sitting in the dish and getting the grossness all over his bed. I was trying SO hard not to laugh as he is telling me this. It was better than I had hoped for! He was mad, and I told him it wasn't me who did it. He said his sheets smell super funky now. Yada, yada, yada. That totally made my day. :)

Day #6: Getting ready to leave for church, and Ben says he's not going because he has to do a lot of cleaning of his room, emphasizing to us that he has to wash his sheets because of what we did. (By the way, not certain that he actually did wash the sheets.)

Day #7: The dish is still downstairs. It still hasn't been cleaned. It's already been way more work than had he cleaned it in the first place. And the best part...he now has another nasty pork dish to clean!

My guess is that he is waiting until his mom gets back on Thursday. It has been rather entertaining and fun to bother him so much. :)

And side note: Several people asked about the recipes from the weekend. I went back and linked yesterday's post to the recipe page, so you can have them if you like!