a long run
When Leah and I moved into our first ever home together—well, the first one where it was just our names on the lease—a friend gave us a pair of dish towels. They were wonderful examples of the genre: colorfully striped in durable cotton. They served us well for that year in Arlington as I slowly learned to cook, then made the move to this house the following year and continued to do noble duty. None more than the last year when we've been getting by without a dishwasher, for no reason other than a bizarre intersection of ideology and laziness that I can't figure my way around. But alas, after 11 years of hard service their race is nearly run and, rent in numerous places, they're destined for the scrap bin or even the trash can. It's a little sad—they were great dish towels—but no towel lives forever.
The colander we got in the same gift, on the other hand, is still going strong—and we got a pair of new towels from my mother for Christmas. So that's ok.