Have you ever noticed how the perfect plans you make so often fall apart? Go straight to hell in a handbasket? Turn quiet to chaos?
The end of June seemed perfect for two home projects:
- installing new carpet in the MBR
- painting all the woodwork throughout the house.
Tricky to get the timing of each job right—painting first, carpet second. Packing and repurposing required a lot of planning and our sweat. But we pulled off both jobs pretty much as planned.
Thought we were home free. Paid contractors. Moved on.
- Started making sure we grasped all the details about our trip to Oregon to view the total solar eclipse with our son and DIL.
- Confirmed our reservation in Bend—handled totally by our wonderful DIL.
- Double checked our airline reservations.
- Reconfirmed time of pickup at PDX..
Feeling good. Good enough to think about getting our house back in order after the painting and carpet installation.
Then, wham! The washing machine turned on me. Died three days before July 4.The tea towels and table cloths and napkins started breeding in the laundry room. Opening the door put us at peril.
My husband’s back also went out the same day—meaning boxes of stacked books sat here, there and everywhere but on the shelves.
Yes, every appliance store had the stackable units we wanted in stock—somewhere in Outer Mongolia, requiring ten days shipping to Northern Cal. Call after call, online search after online search, confirmed this fact.
In the meantime, the laundry was rumbling against the door trying to erupt from the laundry room and take over our house like lava.
Our tempers … simmered. We gave in to a rant or two. We lived in a huge metro-area. Yes, July 4th loomed two days away. But …
What was happening? Was it the planets converging for the upcoming eclipse? How the heck does goat yoga fit in here?
Somewhere in between Internet searches for washer/dryer combos that fit in our space and didn’t require additional plumbing and/or electrical updates, a link to a YouTube video distracted my scattered attention. Watching it once, then twice more in the same setting, I laughed enough I finally corralled my “downer.”
Goats in a yoga class did the trick.
Just like in the movies, the next place I called did, in fact, honestly, truthfully, have the washer and dryer we wanted in their local warehouse. Yes, they would, absolutely on the head of the salesman’s first-born son, deliver said purchase to our home on July 4!
Uh-huh. Riiight. Yeah. I swallowed the impulse to demand the salesman’s home address.
July 4. Zoom in on me doing the happy dance when two young men arrived at 8:00 AM, installed the new appliances, gave us a demo, loaded the dead washer and companion dryer on their truck, and left by 9:15.
Whistling, I immediately loaded the washer. While it purred away, I turned on my computer, fired up the goat yoga video, and laughed through three re-runs.
The solar eclipse was still on track (as if it wouldn’t be), and my husband’s back was better. What more could I wish for—except my books magically back on the shelves? I'd then have time for goat yoga!
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When AB's not shelving books or washing clothes or watching goat yoga videos, she writes dark, gritty psychological thrillers. Unless the roof falls in, she plans to release in mid-August The Lost Days, Book 2 in The MisFit Series.
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