another interesting thing happened today. i may have finally gotten Mom to understand why i kept asking her to leave things on the counter instead of piling them all in the sink (and filling them with water, dish soap and/or bleach water).
it saves me a ton of time to not have to do the dishes that way, it saves soap/bleach, it saves energy and it saves me being aggravated (i enjoy doing dishes, i do not enjoy cleaning up messes that became bigger messes because someone would not listen to me

). i was so happy i told her thanks a bunch of times. i also told her that i appreciated her listening and that it made me feel great to be heard - like i actually mattered... (of course i have to make it more dramatic than that for extra laughs

)...
we'll see if this sticks, but it will be a nice change if we can even keep it partially going.
one part of the putting all the stuff in the sink thing is that if you take something that is almost completely clean (where it needs very little scrubbing at all or just a quick wipe) in with the grungy and greasy (or meat related) stuff (that in some cases i may do a post wash soak with a little bleach water to deoderize it) then it adds time to cleaning that item that didn't need to be expended otherwise (along with the soap/bleach). so pretty much it cuts half or more of the time it takes me to wash the dishes if i can just do them in the order i'd do them if it were just me cleaning up the mess. also note though that it isn't just the time but also not having to use more resources than needed and if i can do things my way i'm often very efficient at using hot water and soap and we have a nice sink sprayer that works great for what i need it to do.
ok, well, i've been here almost 20 years... i guess i should not expect things to change... i don't really. nice though if there's even an illusion of a chance...