Repairing the happy flow of my morning routine.

Don't ask why but I find it therapeutic to wash dishes. I shouldn't, really. When I was bar tending at a sushi restaurant many years ago I was in charge of cleaning all the glassware and the constant thrusting of my hands in and out of water and then exposing them to the dry Chicago winter air would cause them to crack. They wouldn't heal for months. It was sheer agony. So you would've thought that would drive me away from the sink in later years, but no, it didn't.

In the last few years I've become an early riser. I was never a sleep until noon kind of guy, even when I worked jobs that would allow that schedule, but now I am up ridiculously early on a regular basis. And this quiet time is when I get some work done, start charging through the day's podcasts and settle in front of the sink to clean up the dishes from the night before. I go into a zone and I like it. It helps center me for the day to come.

Until a few months ago.

It was probably December when I noticed the water pressure in our kitchen sink was decreasing. All of the other faucets in the house still operated at full blast, but day after day our kitchen sink would grow weaker and weaker until it fell to little more than a trickle a month ago. I would still gamely try and do the dishes in our main sink since I was NOT reverting to doing them in the tub since that was just too reminiscent of college years when that would be the only receptacle capable of handling weeks worth of unwashed plates, bowls, cutlery and various cooking implements. But what was once a soothing affair began to turn dark, and my mood would worsen as the water's stream grew weaker and doing the dishes became a chore that no longer allowed me to escape to my happy place.

I kept hoping the problem would reverse itself since getting work done on any rental property can be a pain of scheduling and waiting but eventually I could suffer no more. We called our landlord and she told us to call her handyman. We love our handyman but he isn't always the easiest to get a hold of so it took another few weeks before he finally showed up at our door late last night with a brand new faucet. Ten minutes later bliss returned to our household in the form of a full, strong, streaming jet of water shooting out of the faucet of our kitchen sink.

I woke up at 3:30 a.m. today unable to sleep any longer. I just assumed it was because I had some creative stuff in my head from the 9-to-5 that just wouldn't rest until I got it all out. But now, I wonder, was it just because I was eager to finally do a sink full of dirty dishes and have it be a joyful affair instead of one fraught with darkness and despair?

Maybe.