I promise that it won’t be long before the school year and writing deadlines and meetings and apple picking (and a lot of applesauce making) will overtake but here at the tip end of summer with a couple of kids plus a husband away, I am trying to chip away at chaos and I can’t stop writing about it.
Did I mention (I know I didn’t) that over the weekend our dishwasher quite suddenly died?
This was our second dishwasher (although to confuse things, we acquired it first). We have two. When we were adding on the dining room, mudroom and side porch eight years ago, we put another counter (almost an island) in to separate the kitchen and dining areas. A second dishwasher and a second oven seemed smart, given that we were about to become parents of three kids. While my math is terrible, I get this much: two families with three kids each for supper makes six kids plus four parents. That equals ten people at the table. An ambitious meal for ten could spill over, easily, into two dishwashers. Anyway, however necessary or unnecessary, this is what we have and while we don’t use that second (acquired first) dishwasher all that often, we do rely upon its presence. Every time we host a party, we appreciate having the extra.
The second oven in the kitchen hasn’t worked for a couple of years, an electrical issue that Edwin—the adept, cheery and kind repairperson from the appliance store—has tried to address. We’ve kind abandoned the notion of fixing it or replacing it at present. Generally, one does us fine.
Anyway, I’d been waiting to call the appliance store about the dishwasher being busted until I got measurements for the stove-plus-oven we need to replace in our top floor flat. The one up there is old (as in, here long before we moved in thirteen years ago) and the oven doesn’t work and a baker (day job: pastries at Bread Euphoria) moved in, so an oven seems totally necessary (as if it wasn’t before; the oven conked out this past winter).
That’s when the refrigerator died.
Although I’d never thought about it before, appliances do have a pecking order. Fridge is top of the heap, followed by washing machine.
I rang the appliance store just after eight and three phone calls later was told they’d send Edwin Monday (this was Wednesday morning). I tend to be patient in such situations (like that first grade adage you get what you get) but I pleaded: That seems a long time away to even look at it. I have four kids. I need the refrigerator*. She promised to call me right back. She did, saying she’d try to get him in that day and if not then on Friday. She’d call back to confirm either way.
She never called back.
This no-fridge-in-the-kitchen thing is a big pain in the rump. Fortunately, there’s one in the basement. Fortunately, the amount of food and the demands of cooking when it’s the younger kids and me are drastically diminished from the full house. Unfortunately, it’s in the basement, it’s small, and it’s not terribly nice. And unfortunately, I had a lot of running food up and down the stairs and a clingy toddler unsettled by my walking away with hands too full to ferry her along.
I will call to complain as soon as the store opens**.
I am trying not to think about what this will cost, having already repaired the oven we use a month ago.
**
Meantime, as I toss junk out that accumulated atop a bookshelf, and shelve books and go through more papers and things in bathrooms (ditching very old, almost-empty sunscreen tubes), I realize that my constant state is to feel I am not measuring up.
Rather than acknowledging the positives—I’m a hard worker, I pay attention to my bright, vivacious, funny, happy kids and my delightful husband (although never enough) and have fantastic friends and am anchored in a really strong community—I worry that things in the house are falling apart, the teenager has just one pair of shoes and doesn’t brush his teeth enough plus probably needs braces I won’t get him until the teeth brushing happens more consistently and that the kids don’t pick up either and no one seriously pursues an instrument and in fact the youngest of the boys tells me he doesn’t like to read and I could go on and on. In short, I feel woefully inadequate every single day. I should not eat chocolate. I should exercise more and harder. I should be a better volunteer. I should be published in more places. I should get more comments on my blog. I should figure so much more out and do it far better than I do.
True confession: every day is like this. As the dear husband says to me: “It’s not easy being you.”
Fortunately, every day I do notice and take note of all I am grateful for, which is so very much, from my pleasure with the work I do, the way my legs carry me all over town, my friends so dear, kids so fabulous, beloved husband I’m so fortunate to be growing up with and the house so lovely (if perpetually too messy).
*We put an extra—obtained by converting our house from a three-family to a two-family dwelling—in the basement, for overflow (freezer mostly).
**Frustration: Edwin was in my neighborhood and the office never told him about our broken fridge (so I spent an additional 24 hours with it broken). Silver lining: it took Edwin’s know-how and our hair dryer (which we own for guests—and, I guess, fixing fridges) to repair it. The repair wasn’t free (cough-cough) yet no parts required ordering and no more waiting was involved and the refrigerator’s prognosis remains good.
