I've got the suds

We've been living without a working dishwasher for the most part of the last 7 months. Even after we repaired the dishwasher and cleaned out all the hard water deposits, the dishes were still coming out dirty.

And just when I finally broke down and bought a new dishwasher, hand washing the dishes became fun.

dirty jobs

On Sunday Steven and Carmen were doing the dishes (the new dishwasher was bought, but not yet delivered). Steven grabbed the next dish in line, a colander, and pressed it upside down into the dishwater. Bubbles came popping through the holes of the colander, bursting into his face. That was entertaining, so he did it again and again.

As the suds built up higher and higher in the sink Carmen begged for a turn washing the colander.

Carmen worked the bubbles till they were overflowing all over the counter, and soaking her pajamas. She said, "Look Mom! I've got the suds!"

But as fun as Sunday dishes were, all the kids were very excited when I gave them the good news on Monday that the dishwasher installation was booked for Thursday.

Then I gave them the bad news:

The clothes washer has come down with a case of "the suds" (won't drain the water). Carmen asked, "Does this mean now we have to wash our clothes by hand???" No dear, I'll take care of this one right away.

sheesh

Paper or Plastic?

My dishwasher broke this week. It has an electronic control panel that's been collecting some humidity, and now the control panel isn't working at all. Of course I didn't realize the dishwasher wasn't working till I had a full load of dirty dishes and I tried to turn it on. It took 5 days of just washing dishes as we used them before we got to washing the dirty dishes sitting in the dishwasher. I've now turned to paper plates and plastic cups and cutlery. The recycler inside of me is not happy about it, but I'm not listening to her. My husband thought I was brilliant when I came home from the store with the picnic supplies. He'd happily eat off Royal Chinet the rest of our lives, which I think is very much a guy thing.

I'm going to have to wait till February 26th before the repairman can come. It's not all his fault, part of the problem is we're going away on a family ski trip for a week, so between his schedule and our vacation our dishwasher will be out of commission for a couple more weeks. Luckily, the cabin at the ski resort has a dishwasher!