Rise against the Machine

As I await with some trepidation my next (and supposedly/hopefully) final physical evaluation by the company doc in order to return to full duty, I am taking it easy with the physical aspects of trying to help keep up with the chores that never seem to all get done here around Pendragon Hold.  The floors have been swept, cleaned, and shined after some neglect, clothes and dishes have been washed, and five hungry goats tended to, as well as "Greyson", this ancient cat belonging to neighbors visiting England that I agreed to look in on.  The trepidation arises from the fact that a sore spot continues to plague me right in the middle of my back along my spine that seems separate from the shoulder injury I sustained and from which I am recovering.  Thus, I move through the day in a paranoid sort of way, trying VERY hard to rest it and not doing anything that I think would aggravate it.  Each day it SEEMS to get better but I need it to get better by Thursday to the point that I don't have to fear injuring myself again if maximum progress has been judged to have been made.
In that vein I have been performing one chore in a fashion I NEVER thought I'd do if I could reasonably avoid it........washing dishes by hand.  We DO have a dishwasher, which works reasonably well, although it's as old as this house.  It's just that the machine is of late been leaving these white deposits all over the dishes no matter what detergent I use and even occurs with the use of a rinse aid.  So, in frustration I've begun to wash them in the sink much like we all did back in the day when a dish washing machine was a newfangled and very expensive luxury that most people couldn't afford.  As a result, in return for a small investment of TIME, I get dishes much cleaner than the machine has been able to produce, without those ghastly white smears on the glasses and silverware, and I get a few moments of peaceful, slow time to spend listening to music, watching the back forty of Pendragon Hold through the portal of my kitchen window, and enjoying my time much like in meditation, without tying myself into a knot and trying to block out the myriad distractions this modern world produces.  It's like moments of Zen I always had available to me and just was living to fast to notice.
I AM using a little more hot water, I think, than the machine was using, but that's been more than offset by the amount of electricity this monster sucks down to do it's a job, a job it more often than not has done badly.  PLUS, I have the added bonus of not having to curse under my breath each time I have to go back in and reshuffle the dishes after theWife has loaded them in ways physics INSURES they cannot come out clean.  And yes, darling wives, we husbands know full well that those of you who absolutely refuse to load a dish washing machine properly, no matter HOW many times we try to explain the rationale behind it, do it simply that way to get US to do it ourselves.  Not all of your reverse psychological warfare is that opaque.....hehe.......
If someone gave me a brand new fancy-dancy machine absolutely guaranteed to produce squeaky-clean, spotless and streak-free dishes, would I use it?  Funny, but in light of these newly discovered moments at my kitchen window, I'm not so sure I would.  Go figure........