I’d like to introduce you to my new best friend, Mariano Rivera, who entered our game today as the greatest reliever of all time.

We recruited him today to close the dishwashing deal for us, and he’s doing an amazing job so far. Look closely at those dishes. Can you see them? They are clean. CLEAN. And, if you were able to peer even more closely into the bottom of the dishwasher, you would notice that there is not one drop of pooling water working its way up to recreate Niagara Falls in our kitchen. Wall-E, the Shop Vac, has been retired of his valiant attempt to act like a kitchen sink drain.

For the moment, our kitchen looks and is acting like a proper kitchen should (with the exception of the 50 pound box of soy wax I still haven’t figured out how to melt properly into lovely fall-scented candles). But I can’t blame that on the kitchen.

A toast to the new dishwasher (clink!). May we serve one another well over these next years. I promise not to put anything into you that you have no taste for, and in exchange, I’d like it if you would do what your manual says you were made to do.