Wishy Washy

When we were kids, my mom used us as her dishwasher. We would have to trade off nights, one kid washing the dishes, one drying, one putting them away. As long as there were four or five of us in rotation it wasn't so bad. Then one day the real dishwasher arrived. I don't remember how it happened, if Dad gave in to Mom's requests or if he just surprised her, but there it was. A lovely Kenmore portable dishwasher. You would have to roll it up to the kitchen sink and connect the hose to the sink faucet, but that was fine with us. I still remember that first load of dishes. I'm not sure who did it, but Mom's decades old cast iron frying pan was put in there. It came out a rusted hunk of iron, useful for nothing other than a boat anchor. There did come a day when young Alan moved out of Mommy and Daddy's house and made his way into the world. A world of cheap apartments, hippie hovels, and other abodes without an automatic dishwasher. It was not until September of 2001, when I remodeled our kitchen in Florida, that I finally got a dishwasher. No more hand washing of the dishes for me. I became the dishwasher expert. I knew exactly how to load it. I knew what was needed to keep it happy. And, I knew that I could never live without one again. What I didn't understand was that there are different grades of dishwashers. The more you spend, the better the appliance. So three and a half years ago we installed a nice new dishwasher in our newly remodeled kitchen in Chicago. Unfortunately, I went with the cheaper model. It has turned out to be a piece of shit. I first noticed the bits of food and grease on what should have been clean dishes a couple of weeks ago. Something was wrong. So I took all the racks out and stuck my head inside the thing. I could see the problem almost immediately. The plastic parts inside the machine had degraded and the upper rotator thingy wasn't rotating. It wasn't even getting any water up there. So now I'm debating. Have somebody fix this crappy machine, or buy a new one? While I figure that out I am using only the lower rack to wash dishes. It sort of works. God forbid that I actually stick my hands back into a sink full of suds like I used to do when I was a kid.