My Heroes this Week

Have you ever had one of those days? You know when everything seems to start out fine but somewhere in the middle of it something goes awry and then all of a sudden you are in the midst of a crisis that you are not prepared to meet. (NOTE: No one in my family is in dire circumstance or emergency medical care... We just had a crisis of a different sort this week! A home related crisis!)

The crisis - Washing Machine Flood.

On Monday, the young man who works for our landlord came out and fixed the washer and dryer connections so washing my first load of laundry came around Noon that day. I loaded up the washer with our much needed supply of towels and put it on large load, long cycle... Here we go.

The Laundry Area is in the garage as our home was built at a time when that was the appropriate place for laundry. I wonder, however, if they ever considered the exhausting nature of 100 degree weather days we have here in Texas most every Summer.

Also in the garage is the remnants of our move. Stacks of boxes on top of a couple of dressers we need to empty and send to the dump (in pieces, I might add). As well as ceiling fans, tools of various types and in various storage containers and ... Then there are the items I instructed my oldest child to leave in boxes stored in the garage since she will be making a move of her own to Denton in August for school. Add some Christmas ornaments and bagged laundry and you are getting the idea that we have about a half a garage of odds and ends that need a home.

About 2:20 PM I went out to check on the load I had started and found one half of our garage was about and 1-1/2 inches deep in water. I felt panic hit my heart as I looked at the towering stack of cardboard boxes and plastic bags with miscellaneous furniture thrown in for good measure. "OH LORD! Please show me what Your plan is for all of this." I rushed to the washing machine that was hemorrhaging water and opened it to find it had overflowed. I shut it off, somewhat relieved the plumbing had not burst, but frustrated that I still was not able to do laundry and now it appeared we needed a new machine.

So Eldest Daughter and I got out in the garage and started slooping the water out into the driveway with brooms and I was using all manner of what we would later term "Old Lady Phrases..." I think I said, "Good Grief" at least 50 times. And a couple of "Goodness Gracious," and "Heaven's to Betsy" came out as well.

We slooped and sloshed water until there was only a wet surface in the garage and then eldest began to investigate the mountain of stacked boxes and furniture to see if she could find her stereo and CD box which she feared had experienced the worst. Oh yes, there were many boxes there. So we began to unpack and repack her stuff as she shimmied in and out of the narrow path she made back to her stuff. We had to recover a ceiling fan and began moving the laundry items we could get to...

I called my husband, flustered and overwhelmed by the tremendous mess I was standing in. I was also a bit angry that he had elected to leave all that mess stacked in the garage when I had specifically asked him not to do so. Oh, the joy of it.

Then I closed the door on our rapidly drying garage and headed out to pick up one child from work and drop the other off. I had earlier advised my husband he might want to pick up something to translate our four inch dryer vent opening to the two and a half to three inch opening in the wall. He did so. He called me back to let me know he was on his way.

On my way home from picking up the Younger Girl, I called to check on hubs' progress with our laundry disaster. He said, "I've given up." I can't figure out why it keeps overfilling the tub.

I was now frustrated and angry. I vowed to get home and get online to find out what part we needed or what thing we could do ourselves to fix this problem. He said, "See you later."

And we hung up. When I arrived home I learned that he also had not been able to fix the dryer problem either. The item he purchased was not a proper fit on either end so now we did not know what to do.

I told him I was going to leave him with the dryer while I looked up a way to fix our washing machine. He followed me to the computer and after about 80 searches we found a website that explained how to resolve the most common causes for our overfilling problem. We had to check the little tube that runs from the washer tub to the "Water Level Control" switch on our machine and see if it had a hole in it or had become disconnected. And, that is exactly what happened - the tube was loose from the switch. My hubs replaced the tube and tightened it to the switch with a security tie. Put the machine back together and we filled the tub... And, it worked. I threw my hands up in the air like we had scored a touchdown and said, "We did it, and we did it together!"

At that point I was thinking we totally would have won the couples challenge on the "Here Comes the Newlyweds" show if they took couples who had been married 11 years. :)

Our dryer dilemma however was not resolved. We went to Home Depot and found a small PVC piece of pipe that would work perfectly. It cost $1.97. He was a bit disappointed and made a dismayed noise when he founde the item. The $6.00 piece of metal extension he had purchased earlier only served to demonstrate the cheaper piece was just what we needed. We kept it just in case we have to do this again in the future.

Once home he put on the PVC piece and it worked perfectly. Our laundry crisis was completely averted and overcome. Though we are still recovering waterlogged items from the garage. HMMM.

This makes my eldest child and my husband totally my heroes for the week! They stepped in high fashion and did what I could not do! WHOO HOO!