Woe be to the one with a small kitchen...

Last night as I doing the endless shuffling of things around in order to cook, I couldn't help but wonder what my life would be like if I had a kitchen I could actually move around in.  Let me clarify, I love my apartment.  True, it is older and not the most, er... modern.  But for the two of us it is just the right size.  Big enough that we can house all of the things we have and people who come to visit while being small enough that I can plug the vacuum into the bathroom and reach the whole house in one trip.  Perfect.  I may not have a big back yard, but I do have a porch that overlooks a creek and all you can see out of every window is trees.  And squirrels.  (The squirrels, however, deserve a post of their own.)  Once again, perfect.  I can honestly say that I would rather live in this apartment than any others I have visited in the area.

But if I could change one thing...

About the same size as our kitchen.  This one, however,
is slightly newer.

No, I don't mind that I do not have a dishwasher.  We don't really need one as we have Paulo and myself (usually Paulo, since we have the "he/she that cooks should not do the dishes policy", and as you can all tell, I do the cooking 95% of the time). 

I have even learned to live without a garbage disposal, although I did not know there were actually houses in America that didn't have one.  (We have the switch to turn it on/off and all the other things to make it happen, but when we asked the landlord about it they told us we could not install one... something about them being afraid our house will burn down.  Huh?)  I do still, once in a great while, forget that I do not have a garbage disposal and then have the unfortunate task of having to scoop a bunch of stinking, old food out of the sink.  Yuck.  But most of the time I remember and all is well.

The thing that I find challenging is the lack of counter space. 

Not our kitchen, but might as well be...

It is so limited that when the dishes are drying in the dish rack (remember -- no dishwasher) there is no space except the little bit right in front of the microwave.  Which means I have to find very creative ways of making my kitchen work for me.  A bowl of chopped onions precariously balances on the middle divider of the sink; the cutting board wobbles on top of an unused burner as I cut up a potato.  And Heaven help us if there are more than two cooks in the kitchen... no, wait, two is too many.

As you can imagine, I do daydream often about having a kitchen that I can spread out in, unaware of what items I am stacking on top of one another.  Those daydreams quite frequently look something like this...

I imagine this kitchen, yet I am that lady there, with my perfectly done hair, my adorable and oh-so-clean child, the house spotless and the aroma of sweet cakes and sauteing onions filling the air.  All the burners on the stove work all the time and I can paint the walls whatever color I choose.  Of course, there is counter space galore, and even a garbage disposal and dishwasher.

Really, it is a beautiful image, right?

But for now I must listen to the ever wise words of Aerosmith and "Dream on."