…but this is a picture of a washing machine that is [gasp] washing clothes!

 

Yep, 14 days after I ordered and paid for a new washer (and 4 separate repair visits, countless hours needing to be home during the repair window, innumerable phone calls to various personnel, 2 machines later), I can do laundry in my own laundry room again.  Phew!

Piper finds lots of ways of being truly useful, not just “kid-useful”. 

 

This is what they were helping me with.  Three areas barked, a dozen more to go!  But at least the garden is planted.

This kid causes me untold grief sometimes, but he’s kinda cute.

 

Not only did he decide to wear a tie to preschool today (after all, how does one improve upon a knight’s costume?), but all his clothes are on the right way! 

I took the kids to the cabin this weekend and Dwayne decided to work all day and finish the stairs!

Cool, huh?

 

Meanwhile, the kids and I hit 4 beaches in three day.

Mama:  Hey, kids, we’re about to get onto the ferry.  Back to your seats, please!

Kids: [giggle, giggle] Okay, Mama!

 

Beach #1.  (I left my camera in the car at Beach #2 & #3.)

Yay!  My friends came up to give me some company and we skipped church to have time at Beach #4.

 

And the kite came along!

This is what Wesley looks like when it’s not his turn any more. 

 

And what could be better than it being the weekend that thousands of caterpillars hatched and started crawling around on everything?  Piper loves all animals, and has three of these pests crawling on her arm.

 

Over a month ago, someone cut down the rope swing! (The green rope is what remains.) I finally got the new rope up and a bit of a knot tied in.  Let me know if you come across a disk to make this into a new swing!

I forgot my camera in the car, but the pix on www.zoo.org are better anyway.  The sloth cubs were out and riding on mama’s back, which is about as cute as the new Asian otters in the half-complete tiger/sloth bear/otter.  There’s a new play area (like my kids needed another one to distract them from actually seeing the animals) with a  mini-zip line.  It’s high enough up that even my tall Kyla needed my help grapping the handle.  Wesley loved riding the line, crashing in the tire, bouncing back, and then dropping down a distance greater than his own height.  He’d say, “I’m alright,” brush himself off, and run back the starting platform. 

 

And we finally found the secret of the 3-banded armadillo!  They are nocturnal animals so we’ve only seen it when we go right before closing and the zookeeper is feeding them.  In the middle of the exhibit is a fake rock, all but surrounded by real rocks and logs.  There’s a tiny hole in the back of the rock and it sleeps in there complete undetectable all day long.  The zookeep has to tickle it with a stick to wake it up for feeding time.  The four of us are oddly fascinated by this little guy and spend a disproportionate amount of time watching the animal bowling ball scamper around harassing the tortoises and iguana.

…but I have such great friends that I can’t pout forever.  I know that a true friend “will lay down his life”—but that’s usually theoretical.  How about Marcie who came over to my house, grabbed three bags of dirty laundry, brought them home and washed and folded them by noon the next day? And then taught me how to make wheat-, corn- and potato-free pancakes that are so yummy that  my kids ate a dozen between them…right after eating lunch?  Wish I had a picture of my lovely friend, but at least I can wish her Happy Birthday once again. 

PS  The washer will really, truly be fixed on Saturday afternoon, I’m told.  Which is why Dwayne is staying home and I’m heading to the cabin this weekend. 

Unless Fredrick’s Appliance in Redmond decides to give me a voucher for a load of laundry at a local place that will wash, dry, and fold for every day my new washer sits in the laundry room actively not washing clothes (or the sheets that a child wet last night or the clothes that have another child’s vomit on from sorry-it’s-not-the-zoo McDonalds Playland we went to this afternoon), I will give this experience a huge thumbs down.  I have had to call at least twice for every eventually return call I got.  Okay, I wouldn’t want to deal with me, either, but truly, don’t take away Mama’s machine that is mostly broken and replace it with a fully broken one, and then keep her home with her children waiting for return calls and mythical service people instead of going to the zoo like said mother promised her now very disappointed children.  A service person would come out tomorrow if there wasn’t an all-day training scheduled, but they could come during a three hour window Thursday afternoon—which was my back up Zoo day.  If the parts will take too long to come in or the repair isn’t feasible, they can bring me a new washer on Saturday. 

 

Let’s see….that will be 8 vouchers for folded laundry and $10 worth of quarters for last Sunday’s laundromat adventure.  Not quite even yet, I’d say.

 

And, yes, my sentences do become nearly impossible to diagram when I’m this irritated.

—————————————-

*Remember that as a place to avoid, apparently.  Fredricks.  Not of Hollywood.

I have known Dwayne for 14 or 15 years.  Over time, his hair has gotten a little grayer (not as gray as mine), and he annually goes from crew cut to Mohawk to cue ball.  Recently, he’s grown his perpetual goatee (technically, a Van Dyke) into a full beard. 

This morning, he shaved it all off. 

I told him from the start that when he shaved off his beard, he would look years younger. 

When he shaved off his goat, too, I suddenly became a cougar, preying on a man a generation younger than me. Before an hour ago, I had never seen him without his goatee.

Sorry, Taylor Swift, you can’t have him.  He’s still mine.

Deliver her new washer on a Saturday afternoon, tell her it is all set up and ready to go, and then that night, after showers, she starts the backlog of laundry and it doesn’t work.  No water.  I read the manual, I play with faucets, I check the manual again, and then I leave a very detailed message for each department: sales, service, and delivery.  However, they are closed on Sunday and for the holiday Monday.

I am typing this at a Laundromat that has free wi-fi on Sunday morning when the rest of my family is in church. 

Last October, Dwayne & CO completed this wall, Step 1 of my future garden.

 

It looks done, yes? 

Well, if you don’t count needing to build up behind the wall with with 2 yards of  drainage rock and 2 yards of  dirt (has to be done together with boards so that the rock is right up next to the wall—bucket by bucket, foot by foot).  Then another 6 yards of dirt hauled down in 5 gallon buckets to bring up the dirt level to match the walls.  Then haul down about 3 dozen cinder blocks and built a little wall 2’ inside the big wall.  THEN, I get to plant.  That’s why is Memorial Day weekend and I’m just getting my planting done.

But look at it—I planted everything I wanted (and I wanted a lot), and I still have a little area left to plant something new.  

 

Using the cinder blocks gave me a lot of unique planting areas—squash are planted there so they have space to grow on the other side of the block.  The blocks and the wall make the most of what sun we do get through all those trees.  I’ve also planted strawberry plants on some of the cinders to see how they do—I’m keeping my fingers crossed for making strawberry-rhubarb jam with all home-grown fruit!

And check out the stairs that Dwayne started building today!  He had four steps done by dinner.  He rocks.

Yeah!  I am off to grow my first $1000 spinach leaf!