Just when I think slow progress is being made in the kitchen-training of Farmer H... I am slapped in the face by reality. In this most recent case, I was slapped with liver and cornbread. From the Liver and Onion dinner Farmer H brought us home from the Senior Center.
He was too full of lunch to eat his dinner that night, when I was ready to warm it. So his was saved for the next evening. It was a warm day, and Farmer H was out on the porch with Jack and Pepper. It was only 4:00. He usually eats around 5:30 or 6:00. I was planning to change clothes and sit down with my scratchers.
"I guess you're okay to warm up your own supper when you're ready?"
"Uh. Yeah. I guess so."
The look on Farmer H's face showed that he felt put-upon by my assumption. Too bad, so sad. He's an adult. Capable of putting food from a container in FRIG II onto a plate to microwave. It's not like I asked him to prepare a 7-course gourmet feast. If he'd been ready to eat right then, I would have put his liver in the oven to warm up while I was changing clothes, before sitting down with my scratchers routine. It doesn't disrupt my schedule when I do it while squeezing the lime for my Shasta Zero Sugar Cola.
When I came out of the bathroom in my Mansion clothes, Farmer H was in the kitchen warming his food. At 4:30!
I suppose that timing was meant to make me feel guilty. I didn't. I had taken the container out of FRIG II, and it was open on the stove. His blue plastic plate with three sections was right beside it. All he had to do was put the food on the plate, and lift it into the microwave. Which he did. Seemingly without incident.
Later, he brought the plate back to the kitchen, along with the styrofoam container that had held a large slice of lemon meringue pie. Farmer H used his knife to cut the lid off the container, so it would stack under the bottom, and take up less space in the wastebasket. I was proud of this baby step. He remembered the trash protocol.
"Don't you run crumbs into the sink drain!"
"I KNOW, HM. I'm not."
I lost interest then, and went back to my scratching. It was later that I saw the aftermath.
Farmer H had set his plate beside the sink with mashed potato residue in one section, a piece of zucchini from the breaded tomatoes in one section, and the main section littered with crumbly moist flour particles from the liver. He had not even shaken that plate against the sides of the wastebasket, nor used his paper towel to wipe it out. He KNOWS that's how a plate should be returned to the kitchen.
But wait! The cutting block was covered with cornbread crumbs! Because Farmer H had cut the two cornbread squares in half on its surface. Not over a plate. Not on a paper towel. Just left them there, like the cutting block surface was self-cleaning.
I hollered at him about the plate.
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"No. You're not at all sorry. If you're really sorry, you'll clean up this cornbread mess you left on the cutting block!"
Which of course he did not. It was still there after he went to bed. Even though he'd been through the kitchen again, to take one of MY little Drumsticks from the laundry room freezer, despite his slice of pie, and having his own regular Drumsticks well-stocked.
I sense a backslide coming on.
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