Sunday Miscellany

Well, it's been quite a week around here. On Monday evening I attempted a group creative playwriting activity for FHE. For an upcoming family reunion our family will be portraying, in a 3-5 minute skit, an event in my grandfather's life: a near-fatal lead mining explosion in the Oquirrh Mountains. Sounds perfect for boys, right? Well, that was an interesting experiment. We did settle on O. handling sound effects, E. and L. being my grandfather and his mining buddy Andy, and B. doing the narration. Everyone is happy with their part except B. who doesn't want to do the narration (too much reading maybe?) and she wants to do sound effects instead. Oh well. We also had dramatic improvisation going on too. After I read the kids the story about my grandfather having to wriggle in and out of tunnels only large enough to crawl commando-style (at least, that's what I told them), the kids all had to demonstrate what this must have looked like. My living room floor looked like the Well of Souls from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Anyway, after more animated, sometimes unhappy discussion, I finally gave up on having the kids help me with writing the skit and told them they would get their parts later.

On Wednesday morning a good friend and neighbor called me and asked if I wanted to accompany her on an appliance shopping adventure. I eagerly jumped at the chance. Shopping? You bet! She was needing to find a dishwasher (the current model was broken and they couldn't turn on the sink water until they got a new one in) and a stove. When she mentioned dishwasher, I decided that I was done trying to teach my children to hand wash dishes.

Sidetrack Note: Our own dishwasher has been broken since last August, and I had made the conscious, purposeful decision to not get a new one for awhile because I wanted my children to know how to wash dishes well by hand. The boys will be going on missions where there aren't dishwashers and I thought they needed to know what makes a clean plate. I also figured that if they had to help wash the dishes by hand that perhaps they would use fewer dishes. Ha. I ended up still being the Main Dishwasher. O. can do well with washing the dishes, so that's something. E. still needs to work on what makes a clean dish or utensil, and B. does a very nice, if very lengthy job. L. just likes to play in the water. Anyway, the Grand Experiment didn't quite yield the results I'd hoped (no decrease in dish quantity, and I was still doing the majority), so anyway, all of that was to tell you that I went ahead and purchased a new dishwasher. End of Sidetrack.

Sherie and I both found dishwashers we liked. When we found out how much installation was, we both said no thanks. She had brought her pick-up truck anyway, so we hauled home two dishwashers from Sears (the stove wasn't in stock at the moment). I decided that I could install the dishwasher myself, especially after I looked at my Home Depot DIY book I have. And even better, the new dishwasher came with instructions! What's impossible about that? An afternoon and one trip to the plumbing store later (at the beginning of the project, mind you!), I had gotten out the old dishwasher and gotten the new one in. I can't believe I almost paid $100 to have someone come out to disconnect three wires and two tubes from one dishwasher and reconnect those to the new one. Good grief. Anyway, it's not rocket science. I did have some leaking to deal with. Half way through I noticed there was a growing puddle of water on my floor and when I opened the sink cupboards there was quite a bit of water there from the shut-off valves. I got it mopped up, turned the valves enough to slow the leak to a slow drip, and then when I was done with the dishwasher I turned back to that and tried to figure out what to do. My Home Depot book said you should probably replace them when they start leaking, but I don't want to do that right now. I think I have them turned right so that two of them don't drip at all any more, and one the cold water valve just "sweats" a bit. So I'm going to just keep a towel under there for a bit. And the dishwasher runs great. I've run two loads now! Woohoo!