In Which I Tried to not Complain

I'm really tired of hearing myself bitch about the crappy weather, but not making a note about what happened over the weekend would totally be nuts. Last week our washing machine, which was located in the basement, just quit working mid rinse cycle. I discovered this little unpleasant fact nearly midnight when the temperature outside had dipped way below freezing already, so imagine my joy when I had to stick my hands in frigid water and hand wring a load of very wet clothes. When I started to feel like frost bite was coming on, I yelled at Wil to come down and join in on all the fun I was having in the basement. I called FMO first thing in the morning (FYI: FMO = Furniture Management Office, who loans us all major 220V appliances here since we weren't allowed to bring ours), and a sweetest lady apologetically informed me that they were so booked up during the holidays already and couldn't send a mechanic to our house until the 29th, which at the time was about 2 weeks away. I tried my best not to simultaneously laugh and cry before thanking her and hanging up. The greatest gifts my husband has ever given me, beside that Little Mutt, hands down, were our washer and dryer, because he knew how much I hated doing laundry and how much more I hated lugging our dirty laundry to the laundrymat. And there we were--five dirty laundry creators, two of whom have four paws a piece that tend to be covered in mutt and snow. I procrastinated the dreaded trip with the toddler and the gimpy husband long enough that we accrued 10 loads of laundry by Sunday when we experienced the first bad snow storm of the season (the storm didn't reach our area until we got to the laundrymat, isn't that convenient?). Couldn't postponed the trip any longer either since most of us were already out of clean socks and underwear. To my husband's credit, he singlehandedly tackled the laundry, while I drove around post looking for a place to change a poopy diaper, a task simple enough had the said child not been in a pair of snow boots, tights, a bodysuit, a snowsuit, a hat, and a pair of mittens. Do you know how hard it is to change a BAD poopy diaper on a tiny changing table in a very small public restroom with one hand while trying to keep all those article of clothing away from the crabby and hungry child's hands so she didn't shove them in poop in protest? If I had access to Wil's meds, I would have dumped the whole thing in my mouth right then. After we came out of the bathroom, we found that Santa was visiting the commissary. Chase got another picture taken with him with little fuss mainly because she was on the verge of passing out from exhaustion and hunger. I carried my baby out of the store on my shoulder, in heavy snow fall, like a sack of potatoes, and she was out cold even before I got through the drive-thru window in an attempt to feed her something other than snow. Since she was sleeping so peacefully, Wil told me to wait with Chase in the car with the heater running while he finished up the laundry. In just under an hour that I was sitting there quietly singing karaoke and looking up our moon roof, nearly 3 inches of snow quickly turned most things that were already white from the last snow even whiter and fluffier. I get it--snow is pretty to look at--but if and only if you are warm and inside. Driving back home was beyond nerve-wrecking. Having been born and raised just above the equator, I, most of all, had no business or the skill necessary to drive in red road condition. The snow was coming down so fast that the autobahn looked like it wasn't plowed at all. I ended up driving at about 25 mph the whole way home because at any higher speed our SUV would fishtail wildly. It didn't matter that we had 4-wheel drive. I could have been riding in a horse drawn buggy, and we would have spun out just the same if I was going any faster. It was a very long way home to say the least, but what ended up to be 11 loads of laundry was done! Today brought good news from the nice lady at FMO, who took pity on me after hearing about our adventurous laundry trip over the weekend, and magically found us a mechanic that could come to our house tomorrow! Maybe a working washer is our Christmas miracle this year.

I'm going to leave you with a couple of videos that probably will not be interesting to anyone besides our immediate family members, but, of course, you are more than welcome to watch these of our cute kid. Seriously, I don't think anyone can make them more precious than us. Yes, my kid is cuter than yours, and I'm not even sorry I said that. Ok, maybe very little.

Will Work for Gummies from UMA STEINHAUER on Vimeo.

And We Didn't Forget the Rest of You! from UMA STEINHAUER on Vimeo.