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Wednesday, December 08, 2004Things That Break.....You know those spinning arms that hang underneath the top rack of a dishwasher? Mine fell off. Yes, indeed. I opened the dishwasher one afternoon, in order to start unloading it. And there, lying on top of the plates and pots, was the spinning arm. Obviously it had spun itself into a frenzy, and flew off. It wasn't a case of a loose screw, either (I've got plenty of those, at any rate). The thing broke -- actually snapped off. The most fortuitous part of this is that fact that it happened exactly two days before the five-year warranty on our house ran out. (Read: We didn't have to pay for the repair.) After three attempts at making a repair request, a man who completely lacked any semblage of a personality phoned me to ask what we needed. And quite a number of days later, a repairman showed up -- and fixed the severed dishwasher limb with a few spins of his electric screwdriver. Now, you may be thinking, goodness me! She had to do dishes by hand for how long? Nope. I don't do dishes by hand. It's not in my job description. What I did do was crawl halfway into the dishwasher twice a day and jam the broken arm onto the feed pipe in the back so that I could run the dishes through. It always flew off at some point during the wash cycle, but my dishes were coming out clean, so I didn't care much. Anyway, I've got a working dishwasher now. This morning, though, I entered my laundry room to discover that my nifty little ironing board hanger had decided to dive off of the wall for no apparent reason, leaving my ironing board and iron lying on the floor. So I spent a few minutes today refastening it to the wall, and was feeling mighty proud of myself when I seemed to have achieved my goal. A few short minutes ago, I discovered my ironing board lying on the floor again. And you know what? My iron is probably completely dead after what, to an iron, was a several-story fall -- twice. I don't even want to know. I didn't even check. I will pull it out next Tuesday (ironing day) and wonder why it's not working. Two weeks before Christmas is not a good time to buy a new iron. If my husband starts showing up at work with wrinkly pants, you'll know why. Wednesday, December 01, 2004Too Big for my BritchesYou're not going to believe what I just did. (Well, then again, if you know me fairly well, you will most certainly believe it.) I just walked up the street -- up a hill, that is -- carrying an extremely large box which contained an unassembled plastic dollhouse. Silly me for thinking that a plastic dollhouse would come in a flat, moderately light-weight package. Silly me for thinking I could handle something like this on my own! Are you wondering yet why I was walking up the street with a 3-by-3 cardboard cube that weighed about thirty pounds? Well, you see, I knew if I had the dollhouses delivered here that my daughters would quickly figure out what their big Christmas surprise was. So I asked my neighbor if I could, instead, have the boxes delivered to her house, and she graciously complied. Her husband called this morning and -- get this -- he left a message about the arrival of the boxes on our answering machine! Now, considering the fact that I almost always screen my calls, it's a darn good thing that the upstairs phone wasn't in its usual place, or the entire thing might have been ruined from the start. As if that wasn't bad enough, the guy (honestly, I like him a lot -- I really do!) caught me at my mailbox this afternoon and literally yelled up the street, "Jiiiiiiiiiiill! I've got your boxes down here!" Obviously his wife didn't quite get the message across that this delivery was supposed to be a secret. So I grabbed the opportunity this evening, after Eric had taken the girls out to deliver about five thousand candles (OK, OK, thirty candles), to call my neighbor and ask her if I could come down really quickly and get the boxes out of her garage. "Um, they're really heavy," she said. Yes, well, I guess I just had to find that one out for myself. I seriously almost died about two-thirds of the way up the hill. And as if that wasn't bad enough, I had to get the thing up the steps and into my closet. Once my heart rate had somewhat stabilized, I called my neighbor back and said, "You can go ahead and close that garage door, sweetheart." There is NO WAY I am going to tote the second box up here! Eric is going to have to come to my rescue; that is, when I figure out where the heck I'm going to hide it. So this has been my December kick-off. Things can only get easier, right? I may just go with gift cards from now on. I could carry a whole pile of gift cards up the hill without even breaking a sweat. I think I need to go to bed. That is, if I can reach around the mammoth box in my closet in order to get to my jammies. Ho ho ho!! |
About Me
I am: Mother to five stunningly individualistic children... Writer of young adult fantasy... Passionate advocate for Women At Home... Madly in love with my husband... In need of Organic Gourmet Chocolate on a regular basis. I've got a Paypal account if you'd like to contribute to the cause....
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