Miles has always taken issue with my storing of the baking stone in the cold oven...or the leftover cake in the microwave. I think it creative, and not a little efficient, myself. Where else would a baking stone fit in a sea of right angled bake-ware, after all? And cake...where else are you going to put it? On the cupboard where it will attract an insect audience? In the refrigerator where it will dry out? Or, in the out-of-the-way airtight microwave where it will stay moist and insect free? Besides, we rarely used the microwave.
He berated me from the get-go for these practices. In our very first home together, aside from the bizarre need of mine to scrub the kitchen clean every night, I had to go and store things in the microwave and the oven...what other atrocities would I inflict upon his home life!? In short?—many, but we'll save those nuances for another post.
I was firm on this subject, though. While his mind saw no logic in using the oven, the oven when not in use mind you, as a storage facility, mine saw nothing but. Being that I was in charge of the domesticity of our life, he's managed to live with his discontent for years.
In these years, I've learned that Miles can pick up a programming language just from reading a book. He can supply a fully functional finished product without the slightest inclination of how to start. His intelligence is well noted, even mind boggling. However, his common sense could use a primer...for it is in these years that Miles has never thought to remove the baking stone from the oven before preheating. Never. Not once. His argument begins anew.
And he is frustrated here in Wisconsin, here near my family, because he now sees how it is that I picked up this habit. In my aunts' kitchen, he desires the reheating of his forgotten coffee in the morning, but must set his mug down to pull the cookies or pie from the microwave first. In my mother's kitchen, he sees me lift the stack of cast iron skillets from the top rack before I insert my casserole to heat. He believes it to be madness...he is outnumbered. He is ignored.
I'll never change, being common sensical enough to realize that the day I take organizational advice from the messiest man alive is the day I need to find myself a comfy insane asylum to live out the rest of my days. What he probably doesn't realize, is that his children will grow up thinking that microwaves and ovens are everywhere-accepted as storage facilities in their spare time. He will always be outnumbered and he will never bend. It will be a very long marriage for my very stubborn husband.
