The Half-Rumpused Hick

I swear, sometimes Farmer H is just a half-rumpused hick. Oh, who are we kidding. MOST of the time, he's a half-rumpused hick. Just like my best old ex-teaching buddy Mabel's husband, who leaves a single drop of ice cream on the counter every night. Every. Night. As she's said, Mabel being a former math teacher: "You'd think that just by the law of averages, he'd clean it up once every blue moon."

For the past several days, Farmer H has been enjoying poor man's chicken and dumplings. More commonly called Six Can Chicken and Dumplings. It's fast, except for the cleanup. You just boil two cans of chicken broth, two cans of cream of chicken soup, and add one package of cut-up large flour tortillas. Boil for EXACTLY five minutes. Then stir in two cans of canned white meat chicken. I also add black pepper. 

Anyhoo... this meal is tasty and filling. The worst part is the cleanup, because the residue will harden like glue if you don't rinse out the pan and bowl, or wash them immediately.

Farmer H brings his bowl to the kitchen when he's good and ready. He even wipes out any little particles, if he hasn't sopped them up with a Hawaiian Roll. Then he sets his bowl in the sink and runs water in it, as I have instructed many times before. Here's the problem.

Farmer H only fills the bowl HALF FULL! What a half-rumpused way of doing things!

What good is filling a bowl HALF full of water? The residue above the water line still hardens. We don't have a water shortage here. Plenty of water in the well. Of course rather than just DO IT when I remind him, Farmer H must argue.

"I put it in the sink. I put water in it."

"ALL THE WAY. So the whole bowl can soak, not just the bottom half."

So in retaliation (I am sure), Farmer H set the glass bowl in the sink drain. Right in the middle of the sink. Balanced on the drain plug thingy. It's just awkward, in case I want to put something else in the sink.

Farmer H has an excuse for doing that, too.

"There ain't no other place to put it, to get it full."

"Yes there is. Any corner would be fine. There's very little slant. No more would pour out than how you have it on the sink plug."

"Well you always say I put it in the wrong place when I put it in the corner."

"No. I say not to leave the faucet where it drips in. Because you never turn it off all the way, and I don't want to hear it."

"Whatever..."

In the baby steps department, for the past several days, Farmer H has been putting his paper plate ALL THE WAY DOWN in the side of the wastebasket, letting them nest and take up minimum room.

I might need to get some gold stars for that. But he's only getting a green one for his sink bowls.