By Kathy Miele
The sun, streaming into my bedroom window, was what woke me that weekend morning. I stretched and yawned then hopped out of bed to look out the window. Yup, it was going to be another beautiful day. With a smile on my face I headed to the kitchen to make my first cup of tea and try to decide what I was going to do on my day off.
The smile quickly left my face as I looked at the overflowing kitchen sink. Whatever didn’t fit in the sink was sitting on the countertop waiting for the old food to be chiseled off before entering the dishwasher.
Steven came out of his office to greet me. “Good morning!” he said.
“Did you have any part in this?” I asked as I held up a pot with linguine still stuck to the side.
“Nope.” He looked at the empty butter dish and the plates still stuck with parmesan cheese. “The boys must have been doing some cooking last night.”
“I know,” I complained as I opened the dishwasher and began unloading the clean dishes. “The second dinner all of you talk about.” I was stacking the clean cups in the cabinet. “I just don’t understand why they can’t clean up after themselves!”
“The dishwasher was clean.” Steven explained. “They probably didn’t want to risk waking you up by making a lot of noise unloading it.”
“If I can’t hear them banging pots around making the linguine why would they think unloading the dishwasher would be too much noise?”
Steven thought for a minute. “You’ve got me there.” He agreed.
“I also don’t understand why any of you need a second dinner at all.” I began putting away the silverware.
“Why do you need linguine when we had a full dinner of meatloaf, mashed potatoes and a salad?”
“First of all, I had nothing to do with this second dinner,” Steven said as he handed me a stack of clean plates. “Second, you served the meatloaf dinner at five. So around nine they got hungry again.”
“So why not eat some leftover meatloaf?” I asked.
“We’ve already had meatloaf.” Steven explained. “No one’s in the mood for that again. At least not on the same night we had it.”
“That’s another thing I don’t understand. You’ll eat leftovers but just not on the same night?” I asked.
“That’s what second dinner’s all about.” Steven said. “It’s eating another entirely different meal.”
By now the dishwasher was unloaded and I began reloading it with dirty glasses filling the top rack with what was on the counter. As I went to scrape off the pasta-crusted dishes into the garbage I opened the drawer with the garbage can in it and couldn’t believe what I saw. “Who went and got the Taco Bell?” I asked as I pulled the empty bag out of the trash.
“That was third dinner.” Steven said as he shrugged his shoulders. “I might have had something to do with that one.”
