Cool, clear, water…..

Installers showed up at 7:30 a.m. this morning to put in my new dishwasher. Murphy was already busy in my kitchen, as he often is, and at first they couldn’t get the old dishwasher out in order to replace it with the new one. After numerous calls to the “office”, the old dishwasher was at last coaxed out of it’s nesting place, and loaded on the truck. I breathed a small sigh of relief. “It’s happening”, said my brain. “Not so fast chickie”, says Murphy, “I’m not done with you quite yet”. The new dishwasher was brought in, and relieved of it’s wrapping. The two men installing it could be heard in the kitchen talking and grunting, then grunting and talking. Oh-oh. Pretty soon, the one gentleman who seemed to be in charge, showed up in the living room where I was sitting. From the look on his face, this was not going to be the “Thanks for shopping at Lowe’s. Let us know if there are any problems in the future.” speech he usually gave on his way out the door. Turns out, the new dishwasher was 2″ too large and would not fit in the hole. A call was put into my landlord, who lives directly across the street. Three men now stood in the kitchen pulling off their hats and scratching their heads, replacing their hats and huddling in a circle, looking in the hole, then inspecting the appliance, and repeat. International peace talks have been less involved.

The two men from the store were absolutely wonderful, I have to say. I pick on bad service quite often in my blog, because it is a pet peeve of mine. Conversely, I try to say something positive when the opposite is true. The “in charge” gentleman looked as if he was going to get teary at not being able to make this work for me. Before leaving, he gave me several hints on how to redeem some money (or my landlord’s money) which was very nice of him. My landlord had to now spend the morning in the kitchen drills whirring and hammers banging restructuring my shelves. Ah well, at least he is capable of doing the revisions that need to be made.

It’s not like I have to have a dishwasher. Homes all over the world have survived without them for years. However, I have gotten spoiled, and like the idea of having one for convenience sake, water conservation, and sanitary reasons. When Rick and I were living in our house on the lake, we installed three dishwashers in the eleven years that we lived there. Murphy really had his way with us in that house. It was such a gorgeous place to live, but it could really play with your mind and your pocketbook from time to time. One weekend, I filled the dishwasher as usual, plopped a cube of soap in the dispenser and pushed start. I was on a spring cleaning tear so the racks were stacked with containers and glass candle holders that hadn’t been spit and polished over the winter season. Among the items I’d included were the soap dispensers from each bathroom, of which there were three bathrooms two dispensers each. I had rinsed them well, but apparently not well enough. The kitchen cleaned, Rick and I sat at the counter enjoying our second cup of coffee. He was facing me with the dishwasher chugging away behind me when suddenly he stood up and said, “what is that”? Well, he said more than that, but this is a family blog so I can’t include the remainder of the dialog. “What”, I said, turning around in the direction he was pointing? Oh-oh. Soap bubbles were oozing out of the top, bottom and sides of the dishwasher. Really it was kind of pretty had the bubbly cloud not been growing at such an alarming rate. Apparently, the residue soap remaining in the dispensers was having quite a party in there. Who knew? Rick pushed pause, and opened the door. Ummmm, perhaps not the best idea he’d had that day. Like The Blob, the mass of soapy goo stretched out of it’s tight enclosure and wrapped around Rick like snake curling around a tree branch. Even his glasses had bubbles. Wish I’d thought to take a picture. Would have definitely won on America’s Funniest Home Videos. Unfortunately he was not 1/4 as amused as I was. What a mess that was. It took me weeks to get the dishwasher back to normal. Don’t try this at home.

We had a number of water related disasters while living in that home. One, particularly costly, was started by a leak in the copper tubing connecting our ice maker to the water source. It was a small leak, which drip, drip, dripped it’s way undetected for God knows how long. When it finally couldn’t remain behind the scenes anymore, it made an impressive leap right onto the front page. The first indication something was amiss were two panels of wood flooring buckling slightly in front of the refrigerator. I mentioned this to Rick several times. We owned our restaurant at the time and with everything else going on, the observations went on our “we’ll worry about this later” list and didn’t get addressed. On this particular day, I went down to the spare bedroom on the second floor located directly under our kitchen. Walking into the room my eyes were drawn immediately to this huge bubble looming down from the ceiling overhead. Seriously, it looked like an elephant had fallen through into a sling. You could say it was “the elephant in the room”. Drops of water had formed on the lower surface of the bulge, with a drizzle steadily falling on the carpet and furniture below. Turning to run up to tell Rick, I heard before I saw the tear begin to rip open in the bubble. I don’t know how long that small leak had been accumulating, but it felt like half the ocean was cascading down on me. When it had completely emptied, there was a massive gaping hole overhead with exposed framework and rotted drywall. For months, we had to have huge drying fans going down there to prevent mold from growing, and next hire a crew for mold abatement to get rid of any existing mold. It was somewhat of a nightmare. Well over a year later, or more, we finally closed the hole again and had a new ceiling. I used to lie in bed sometimes late at night until the repairs were done, wondering what critters now had access through that entrance to our universe. I had nightmares of opening my eyes and finding two beady little red ones staring back at me. Insert shiver here.

Water is on my mind because there were actually rain drops in our weather forecast for tomorrow. Been awhile. The last rain predicted a week or so ago, distributed about five drops on my windshield when I headed out for the morning. Not exactly a downpour. The west coast is painfully dry as we head into the summer months. It’s getting so summer brings dread to my mind rather than thoughts of sandy beaches, backyard barbecues and the smell of suntan lotion. I do love spring, however, and am trying to stay in the moment as the flowers begin to stick their lovely heads out to catch some rays and my yard once again becomes the backdrop for colorful blooms and buzzing insects. My bunnies and spring arrangements have replaced my winter decor. Last week when the weather was in the eighties I actually allowed my white legs out to get a light sprinkling of healthy color so as not to blind passersby when I venture out in shorts again. Life, at the moment, is holding and feeling rather glorious. Yay

Yesterday was my mother’s birthday. We have added another candle to her cake, and celebrated as a family we were all together. Hope your weekend brought a fresh breath of spring to your life. Have a great Sunday!!