When it rains…

It pours.

I’m not normally a negative or pessimistic person.  I’m  normally a very hopeful, joyful, and optimistic person, but recently, there have been a lot of issues popping up at the same time around here and it’s enough to make a person a little down.   Here is a list of all the things breaking (or have broken) in our lives right now:

Our garage door opener has finally died. It’s been dying a slow death over the past year, but it finally busted two weeks ago.  While it’s not a big deal, we’re manually opening and closing our door now.  Even in the rain.  Since we don’t have a key that locks the door, we have to close and lock  it from the inside, walk back through the house, lock the front door, then get back in the van.  That’s getting a little old.  Oh, and the door needs replaced as well, since it’s disintegrating daily.  There’s a small hole in the bottom portion that is slowly getting bigger.

Rick’s pick up truck, his baby, has been in a fender bender.  His fender bended.  It’s been in the shop for two weeks, but it’s been three and a half weeks since his accident.  I’m guessing it’s going to be at least another week before we get it back.  Since we’re not getting a rental car for now, we’ve been using one vehicle to get us all to work and playdates.  That means Jack and I are ripped out of bed at 5:45 in the mornings to take Daddy to work every day.  We also get to pick him up after work in the afternoons.  Not being a morning person, I hate this.  But I don’t mind spending the extra time with Rick while we carpool, so I guess it has it’s perks.

My poopy cloth diapers weren’t coming clean recently.  I was pulling out still-poopy diapers from my washing machine after FOUR cycles.  I’ll be guest posting later this month and sharing more on this topic then.

Though it really has been too hot to play outside a ton, we haven’t had access to our sandbox in 3 weeks because of our baby mice.  I haven’t looked too recently, but I’m guessing they’re just about gone now, since the last time we looked, one baby mouse was running around without it’s mama chasing him down.  He actually ran out of the sandbox and through our fence.  Part of me hopes the little guy doesn’t make  it (who wants MORE mice around?), but the compassionate side of me felt really bad that I caused it to possibly leave it’s nest too soon. I’m not losing sleep over it though.

My laptop has issues.  It may just be simple fixes like getting an external keyboard, always sitting next to a plug, and finding a new cord that will actually charge my battery, but they’re still issues.  In the pile of broken things in my life, this is the least of my worries – as long as it keeps working I’m fine.

Our microwave broke about 6 months ago.  (we only just put it in 5 years ago!) One day it just went POP and a horrible smell and some smoke came out of it.   We haven’t fixed it or bought a new one, so it’s skillet and oven reheating for us!

Our vacuum cleaner busted a belt last weekend.  I thought we were going to have to buy a whole new vacuum, but fixing the belt ended up being all it needed.  Whew!  We’re super cheap and don’t like to buy new things if we can help it. Can you tell?

Our refrigerator is on it’s last leg I’m sure. The unit that keeps the freezer freezing is broken. Maybe.  We turned our dials to a new position and it seemed to help.  There is frost build up in the icebox area, which I can’t figure out why, but it’s only keeping us from using the ice maker on the door.  Which, by the way, decided that no one should ever have anything other than crushed ice, no matter that they hit the ‘cubed ice’ button. So, we weren’t using the door often for our ice needs anyway. 

Whew!  I’m overwhelmed all over again just writing this post.  Most of these issues are just small things and would be no big deal by themselves, but when they pile on top of each other, it seems like our whole world is crumbling. While that’s not exactly how I feel, sometimes I do get overwhelmed with how much is on our plate at one time.  Rick on the other hand is probably glad that these things are breaking.  It’s giving me practice for when we eventually live in the middle of nowhere with no electricity or running water.  I can’t wait!