A New (Dishes) Year*

Tiffany and I still haven't hung anything on the walls of our new apartment. We moved in five months ago. Also, we're still not satisfied with the way some of our very old stuff looks in our new place. In Tiffany's view, we are "not settled." In my view, we are "still settling."

In any case, Tiffany, as I've mentioned, loves to organize. To deal with not being settled, she sometimes just reorganizes everything to see if she can trick herself into feeling settled. Or she talks about buying new things. Very rarely--given my inherent resistance to buying new things--we actually buy new things.

Last night, we bought new dishes. Now, there was nothing wrong with our old dishes, per se. Tiffany's mom Patty gave them to us when we first moved in together. Still, after six years, they've begun to show a little wear-and-tear (but come on, after six years, what relationship... I mean, dish set... hasn't?) Anyway, the coffee mugs have rings around them, and not the red rings that circle the ceramic as part of the dish set's design. I'm talking about brown coffee-stain-rings. Even I could agree it was time to replace them.

So we bought our new dishes, brought them home, and promptly started bickering about what to do with the old ones.

"Okay," Tiffany said, dragging a stool over to the cabinet. "So we'll put these old ones up here, just in case."

"What?" I laughed. "We've never had just-in-case dishes before! Why would we all of a sudden need them now?"

"I don't know," she answered. "How could I know? That's what just in case means."

I stared, incredulous, as she balanced on the stool and raised our old, coffee-stained dishes--the ones she had been complaining about for months--to an empty space at the top of our cabinet.

I laughed again (at her).

"Babe," I said. "Now you've just taken up space we could use for something else. I thought the point of getting new dishes was to get rid of the old dishes."

"What are we going to use this space for?" she returned. "We've never used it before."

"It's just-in-case space!" I said.

Well, we made up--much faster than usual for, by my count, three excellent reasons. First, Tiffany started her weekend chemistry classes today. Which means we won't see each other except in the mornings and evenings every day for the next four months. No time to waste in a fight. Also, we were cooking a really lovely dinner (salmon, polenta and goat cheese salad), which we served on our nice new plates.

Finally, we made up because, guess what, it's a New Year. Let's start over. With new dishes.

And old ones.

Just in case.

*"Congratulations, you've just read a U-Pick blog post! If you know me (as most of my readers do), thank you for reading and feel free to suggest something you'd like me to blog about. If you don't know me, thank you for reading of your own free will and not out of a sense of obligation! Even though you're a stranger, feel free to suggest a topic, perhaps something you'd like to hear more about that you've read on my blog before. All suggestions must be made as comments on my blog (not on Facebook for those of you who find my blog via Facebook). I'll pick my favorite suggestion each week and blog on it within a few days."