Dirty Laundry

Little boy underwear caught in the dryer door.
Picture taken by Oscar.

I am going to write about some dirty laundry of mine. Don't get too excited. I am, quite literally, going to tell you about my family's dirty laundry.

My dryer broke on Monday. It would turn on, rotate the clothes, and keep them nice and cold and wet. That baby was producing no heat. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Not really ideal when it comes to doing laundry well. 

We are a family that functions on doing at least one load of laundry a day. If we don't, we begin to drown in soiled cloth mighty fast. While we have been trouble-shooting how to fix the dryer, our laundry pile has continued to grow. In 4 days it is nearly up to my armpits, I swear. How on earth did women keep everyone clean and smelling nice before the invention of washers and dryers? My goodness! Our laundry "work" must be nothing compared to what their laundry work was.

Yesterday I unhooked the dryer heating element (or coil) and took it to Renew Appliance. The owner there is super helpful and said he would test it for free. Long story short, I have been to that store 4 times in two days trying to figure out the issue and I still have a dryer that won't work. We have figured out that either we have a bad receptacle (the place the dryer cord plugs into), or we need to get a "new" dryer.

To add to this "fun" my oldest child has decided to leave some very substantial skid marks in his underwear. Twice today, twice yesterday, twice the day before. This kid has been fully potty trained for nearly 3 years, and picks the week I can't do laundry easily to have a flashback?! No more poop in underwear, please!

I needed to take my mind off of this stuff for a while, so I ran to Costco this evening. I felt that a new plant for my yard and some delicious buttery croissants for my taste buds (and inevitably later on, my butt) would ease my current frustrations. I picked out a beautiful peony plant, and was feeling a bit better. Unfortunately I could not find the croissants anywhere because they had sold out for the day. I am not joking you that when the lady told me this news, my eyes began to well up with tears. Don't judge me! Sometimes you just really need some flaky goodness to lift your spirits.

I know all this may not sound like that big of a deal, but it has actually been a trying few days. My patience has continually been tested as each potential dryer solution has failed, and as each pair of poopy underwear has had to be washed by hand and stacked in the ever growing pile of clothes.

It is so much easier to be happy, kind, patient, and loving when all is going well and everything is working in your favor. In those situations we hardly have to make a choice to be happy. We just are.

When solutions don't really solve anything, when things we can't control go poorly, when all our trying just brings us to the point where we must try some more, these, yes these are the times that we must make the choice to be happy. For it is the times in our lives when things don't run smoothly that truly test the strength of our character.

I fall short in this area often, but I keep on trying to make the better choice. Even when it seems that every fiber in my being is fighting my efforts to do so. I keep on trying, and I am pretty sure that counts for something.