Wash Wash Wash

Our washing machine broke almost six weeks ago. I had just finished 8 loads maybe 9 and was about to begin the kids clothes when it decided it was done. Granted our washing machine has been a state of broken since we moved into the house in July 2008. The middle agitator just comes out. Which isn’t really ideal. But I just pop it back in and move along with my business.

Well that is until mid-January when it decided to pop out and break into tiny pieces of pointy plastic. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about throwing my clothes into a shredder.

Magically we have had enough clothes that its been okay. I apparently could open a Victoria Secret with all the free underwear I have. I have re-worn pants a slightly unsanitary amount of times and have thus also purchased new pants to accommodate this (and my waistline).

The kids clothes we’ve been washing at either The H’s mother’s or grandmother’s. So we’ve been okay. We’ve (correction: I’ve) also been researching like crazy. If I’m going to buy something that’s going to be around for a long time I want the best. I don’t want a $200 washer I can buy off some guy on craigslist. I want a beautiful obnoxiously expensive one with lots of buttons. Buttons are key.

This is going to be my washing machine until I move out. This is going to be the washing machine I try to sell my house with. I’m going to wash bazillions of loads in it. And Goddammit I want to feel fancy while I do it. I want a special button for my towels, and my kids clothes, and my clothes that should be hand washed but I don’t do that. And finally after being convinced that front load is best I’ve been to Home Depot and Sears a stalkerish amount of times. I go. I look at the buttons, I spin the basket around, I faint at the price and I leave.

But finally I found (online) not only an amazing washing machine (with great reviews) but for an amazing deal. And I’m a sucker for a deal. So much so that I convinced the H that we needed the matching dryer because its too much of a freaking good deal not to get the set. Plus they talk to each other. Who else can say that their washing machine tells the dryer how wet the clothes are going to be and what kind they are?

So I bit the bullet and I tried to buy the muthafuckas. I walked into Home Depot with the plastic burning my hand and tried to fork it over only to be told our dryer was sold out. “Say whaaat?” After all of this planning and debating! Why do they show it online if you can’t actually buy it??

Back to Square 1. We decide to hit up Warner Stellian and discover a beautiful Electrolux washer and dryer for a reasonable price with rebate (not the price in link from the manufacturer website). And it says “welcome” to me. What more do I need from a machine that spins my dirty clothes into cleanliness? We buy it right then and there and expect (are told) next day delivery only to find out the next day that the shipments are on backorder and they don’t know when it will be here.

OMG I JUST WANT A FUCKING WASHING MACHINE.

So then they offered us the floor model…. which we declined. Time passes. Then it was going to come on Wednesday, but they couldn’t guarantee that delivery wouldn’t happen between 2-3pm in which I was in a meeting I couldn’t miss. So now finally 6 weeks later there are two burly men in my house taking down doors and putting in my washer and dryer. I may do some loads and get loaded.

I couldn’t be more ecstatic. I can finally stop wearing thongs.

And…. Fail.

For the last two (three, four?) weeks I’ve just dropped the ball. On a lot. Mostly I’ve been frantically busy at work thus not giving me the time to balance my checkbook anally like a normally do. And there was Easter which interrupted my recording of what I eat, and exercising. Or did I stop the latter before that?

Either way what happened is simple. It’s what always happens. I’ve eaten too much, exercised none and spent lots. New news? Hardly. Theme that’s lost it charm? Definitely.

Ugh, even I don’t care anymore. I’m sick of writing the same old news, the same old failures. I’m bored with it. I’m over it. I can’t imagine how you feel about it.

I’m trying to be on the whole, “today is a new day” bandwagon, but I”m not feeling it. Fundamentally, I sort of don’t care.

I don’t care if I can’t afford to buy it.

I don’t care if I shouldn’t eat it.

I don’t care if I should exercise, my clothes don’t fit, I’m going to be a contestant on the Biggest Loser instead of watching it.

It’s not a priority for me.

I realize that I should really rearrange that sentence to say, I’m not a priority.

A part of me wonders if the reason I was so successful the last time I tried to lose weight and was so successful saving money and paying off debt before is that both occurred while I was in therapy. And both stopped occurring when I stopped therapy (well and also had a baby). I didn’t feel like I was getting anything out of therapy. I could talk to a friend for a $25 co-pay a month. There was nothing wrong, everything was fine, it was just talking about my day. But maybe on some level something else was happening? Something else was working on my sub conscious?

I’m self-sufficient (right word?) enough to believe that I should be able to do this on my own. Which is why all those years that I should have been in therapy because there was something wrong I wasn’t. So why go when everything is honky dory? I think its the plague of all mothers that we always put ourselves last. There are so many other things, there are the kids, and the house and the husband, and the school forms, and the yard, and the dogs, and the dishwasher, and the garage door is broken, and we need diapers and we’re out of milk, the bike tires need air, have you called the plumber, when is there time for me amongst all that? (Also, all of the above sentences are true things I’ve got currently floating in my head.)

I can’t justify spending time exercising when there is so much that needs to be done around the house. I can’t justify not buying something for my kids because I know they would love it so much and/or need it. (Though while I needed a new stroller, I probably didn’t need to buy a Maclaren this weekend! But it provides me a very large amount of joy!) I can’t stop myself from going out to lunch because I love spending time with my co-workers and need out of this super hostile environment.

Sigh. I’m going to try again. Because like I’m always telling Bear, you have to at least try. So I will try and start small again. Not look back at the times I’ve failed or even when I succeeded, but focus instead on now and not then. (Also, remember Now & Then? What a great movie.) So as I drink my 240 calorie coke that I just bought for a dollar I will focus instead on good things I’ll do after I finish my coke.

There’s a lot of Laundry in Motherhood

Sure I’ve seen the ads and movies with frantic moms doing loads of never ending laundry but somehow I didn’t really foresee this being something that could happen to me. But it has. I have to admit until today I still felt a somewhat novelty in doing laundry even though I’ve been doing laundry on my own for like six years now. Until today, when it’s 10:53 pm and I’m still doing laundry, not only am I still doing laundry I had to stay up so I’d be able to flip the next load so the laundry wouldn’t be wet overnight just getting stinky. My whole family, dogs included, have been snoozing for some time. Honestly, if it wasn’t so late I’d probably put redo the load because I can’t quite get Bella’s car seat cover clean.

But it is this late. So once I finish this little tidbit I’m going to sleep. For like three hours before Bella awakes and wants to eat again.

Perhaps my method of waiting until I’ve run out of hampers (which I have 5 of) until I do laundry is a bad idea. Because that means when I finally do laundry its like at least 10 loads. Both kids had two loads each. God only knows how many we had total because the H did a majority of it on Friday. I just folded it all today and did the four kids loads and two loads of whites, oh and a load of “should be dry cleaned, but I can’t afford that so I’m going to wash it and let it air dry. ” So I did 7 loads today. Jesus Christ.

We also do in fact have that many clothes that we can go this long. In fact I could easily keep going in the underwear and shirt department, unfortunately given the fact that I weigh a ridiculous amount I have long run out of pants that fit me and in fact wore my maternity jeans to work on Thursday. Yeah, my baby turned four months yesterday but I’m still wearing maternity clothes. Awesome.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Here’s a photo of me and copious amounts of laundry from my freshman year at college when I discovered this technique of doing laundry once a semester.

I should also point out that in college I would in fact febreeze my two favorite pairs of going out pants because they weren’t laundered. In retrospect that’s kind of nasty. But the places that those pants went were kind of nasty too.

And also here’s a photo of me being able to fit into a dryer. Because I was in fact once that small.

Oh yeah the Basement

I realize I completely forgot to mention something in last night’s post — the basement. While we were at the hospital (having the baby) my basement was flooding. So the day we got back from the hospital we came home to this:

I choose to be in complete denial about it.

What needs to be done is to buy new padding for the main part of the basement (done) and have that installed and the existing carpet which wasn’t too damaged stapled back into place. Then we need to get the wooden panels replaced that looked so wonderfully rotted. Then we need to buy new padding and carpet for the office and hire someone to install it. Or buy the tools and figure out how to do it ourselves. Then we need to pay to haul away all of the old carpeting and padding to the dumpster.

Awesometown.

Clean House

Every time we go over to our best friends’ house I’m struck by how clean their house is. Granted they don’t have two dogs or kids and she’s not currently working so has more time available, but still I just wish I had the energy. It seems like no matter what I do its always not really clean. After my parents visit the house is usually at its cleanest because my mother seems to always be cleaning if she’s not running around playing with Bear. But this past weekend, it wasn’t really any cleaner than when I do it perhaps because there was little non-Bear time.

Earlier in June I spent $300 getting the carpet’s cleaned. Which was WAY more than I was quoted on the phone when I was initially considering it. I suddenly decided to clean the carpets after we moved all the stuff from the office/guest room out of the nursery in order to paint and discovered a giant color difference in the carpet between where the bed was and the rest of the carpet. So looking at MERSC once again I found a carpet cleaner with a 20% discount that I decided to go with except when the guy got there and saw the stains in the basement from Elia’s accidents and then the general dirt of the basement stairs he said everything was going to need to be “deep scrubbed” and there was an extra $125 “urine removal charge”. Because I’m myself and don’t know what else to do and the man in standing right in front of me I agreed to everything. I kept thinking to myself this carpet better be fucking clean when he gets done for $300.

And I have to say, I totally notice it in the basement. The stairs are actually white again and not grayish black. And the smell of the basement has certainly decreased (mostly to the addition of the inlaws dehumidifier) and most of the dog stains are gone. He said it takes a few tries to get the yellowish color out and left us with a little of the solution and instructions for further removal. The thing is the upstairs looks the same to me because we have a berber carpet (which I hate) and you couldn’t really see any dirt in it because of the closed loops and colors. There is definitely still a giant rectangle where the bed used to be in the nursery, but its certainly less of a giant rectangle. And he couldn’t remotely get out where I dropped the black eyeshadow by my bedroom mirror. I just really wish I could have seen the black water when he finished. Just so I could have gone, “Ah yes, he did clean something. That water is black.” And I’m certain it would be because last year when I borrowed a friends rug doctor the water was black. I just keep thinking to myself that this really wasn’t worth $300. Also online it says that apparently you’re supposed to clean your carpets every 6 months if you have dogs & kids. Are you effin kidding?

We also bought a new vacuum in June because ours pretty much exploded from all of the Elia hair. I sort of have a love/hate relationship with the one we got. On one hand I love that its bagless and super easy to clean, after every time I vacuum I need to empty and clean everything out sometimes even the filter because there is so much damn Elia hair everywhere (I do not recommend getting a lab/border collie mix unless you intend to brush her all the fucking time). She is cute though:

But I also hate that its an upright vacuum meaning that in order to really get under anything or clean the kitchen remotely I’m always having to use the attachments which is a PAIN. And its unbelievably hot and sort of heavy, and the cord is always getting tangled up so I’m always having to hold it and not try to run it over. A plus is that its really great on carpet though (but sucky on hardwood) and the attachments are really nice for the stairs.

I just hate that I have to vacuum like every freaking day, possibly even twice to really get rid of all the damn dog hair. Even after brushing her for like 20 minutes she still sheds like a maniac. And Bear runs around leaving his toys everywhere and the H is always leaving dishes and socks and dirty tissues around the house and sometimes I’m pretty certain I live in a zoo.

It just seems like keeping the house costs so much money and time. Two investments I’m really not too keen on making and after spending so much money on outdoor stuff in May and indoor stuff in June I don’t want to spend any more money except apparently on a dehumidifier because I don’t think I can go back to the musty smell of the basement without one. So there goes $200.