I spuddle.

I woke up today — oh, wait, that part’s not even true! I’m starting this post with a terrible lie! Because if I say “I woke up” then that would mean I’d been asleep. But I had not. Nope. Not me. That was YOU. You.. you… you… SLEEPER.

The poor Birdy is sick and sick translates loosely to “inconsolable” if you speak toddler, which luckily I do. Well, sort of. Not well enough to know what she was screaming about all night, but enough to know that she wasn’t feeling well. The fact that holding her was giving me second-degree burns was also a bit of a giveaway. I medicated her and sang to her and whispered stories about ponies (OK, they weren’t so much “stories” but lists of different colours that ponies could conceivably be. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before how this soothes her. She likes ponies, what can I tell you?) This basically filled all those boring hours between “bedtime” and “waking up” when one normally nods off due to lack of better things to do. “Pink ponies, green ponies, yellow ponies, blue ponies,” I whispered. “Rainbow coloured ponies.” I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking, “Rainbow coloured ponies! That’s wicked!” Or you’re perhaps thinking, “Rainbow coloured ponies? No wonder that poor kid was screaming.” Either way, it amounts to the same thing: regardless of the different manifestations of ponies I could conjure up in her imagination, she preferred to cry and occasionally scream random words like “MONKEY” and “PEN” (both a large part of her vocabulary, to be true) in a sort of baby-version of Tourette’s, while I seethed with visceral, slimy green envy towards all who may be sleeping anywhere in the world for any reason whatsoever. Occasionally, if I started to drift off, lulled into happy dreams by my own Little Pony imagery, she’d kick me really really hard in the sternum or the eye, which made it a bit tricky to be sympathetic, if I’m being honest. Eventually, I gave up and we just lay beside each other and cried, one of those mother-daughter things that brings us closer together.

Needless to say, at 6:30 a.m., I rose fresh and alert, looking like a daisy dipped in gentle morning dew, with a spring in my step and a twinkle in my eye. No, that’s a lie, too! I actually got up, dropped the screaming Birdy and the also-feverish-and-woke-up-too-soon Bun on Clayton and I went back to bed. It’s approximately the first time in this decade that I’ve gone back to bed after everyone else is up and frankly it was the most awesome thing ever. EVER. Remember your first Caribbean vacation? The one where you had your own private plunge pool? It was like that but even more fantastic. I’m not making it up. Sleep = nirvana. Period.

So the second time I woke up (overlooking the fact that I didn’t actually “wake up” the first time), I awoke feeling optimistic and less like I was paralyzed below the waist. (Due to a strange disc issue the details of which I will bore you with later, my limbs go sporadically numb, particularly when I’m tired). I was optimistic because today, dear reader, is delivery day of the washer/dryer/Fairy Godmother combo that we sacrificed our children’s future college education fund to purchase last week. Laundry! Machines!

Needless to say, these things never go as you plan. For example, the delivery guy was supposed to arrive between noon and five. So it made nothing but sense that at 11:00 a.m., the phone rang and the delivery guy cheerfully announced that he was early. Which was terrific for him, no doubt, but we had not yet cleared the area for the washer and dryer to land. Clayton got right to work while I sat blankly on the couch, ignoring the children, and fantasized about doing laundry — or rather, having my new Kenmore Fairy Godmother doing my laundry while I turned the appliance box into a garden cottage for the kids to play in — clutching my life-giving coffee in my hand. Eventually, I heard the loud clattering sound that indicates that a large truck is discharging an appliance on our front lawn and peered out the front door to see the delivery guys hunkered down beside what I assumed was meant to be our dryer, but actually looked like a CSI murder victim that should really have been cordoned off behind yellow police tape.

“You don’t want this,” the delivery driver accurately stated.

“Did you drop her, I mean, it?” I said, aghast, and also ready to start pinning blame right away because that is what I do.

“No,” he denied. “It was clearly a forklift! Look at the diameter of the dent and the DNA analysis of the chipped paint! It is Sears’ fault!” As obviously correct as his analysis was, this did not prevent me from giving him the steely glare of a wronged customer. Hey, I only slept for two hours. I can’t be nice all the time.

“Hmm,” I said, in a voice intended to convey Grave Displeasure, because that is what I was feeling.

Which really pretty much killed the conversation. What else can you say? The Fairy Godmother was gone. There was no use belabouring the point.

They proceeded to deliver the washer with no actual damage being incurred, which is a good thing and perhaps the silver lining to this story. I feel like this would be a better post if they’d brought the wrong one or dropped it on the way in or SOMETHING, but the didn’t. It looks fine. They brought it inside, removed the box, and took the box.

Took the box?

TOOK THE BOX.

What about my kids’ country garden cottage? I wanted that box.

“Can I please have the box?” I asked politely.

“Sure,” said Guy A.

They all disappeared. I stepped out the front door to receive my box.

“Sorry, you can’t have it,” said Guy B. “I need it to store my cardboard.”

“Uh?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “That sucks, doesn’t it? I know how kids love them.”

“?” I said. “????” It was like a whole flock of question marks was circling my head, randomly pooping in my eye. I blinked. “?”

“Maybe when they bring your dryer, you can have that one,” he said helpfully, if by “helpfully” I mean “not helpfully”.

And the zoomed off. With my box. My box! Basically my plan was to use the box to entertain the children for the duration of the week (don’t laugh, it would have worked, kids love boxes), so now our calendar is wide-open. If you’re looking for a playdate, call me. We won’t be busy playing in the backyard with the box, that I can guarantee. Actually, we won’t be doing laundry either, so I guess I have to worry less about what to do to entertain the kids while I’m catching up on clothes washing. Maybe it all balances out in the end.

We now are the proud owners of two washers and zero dryers and zero boxes, but I suppose that’s better than having no large appliances filling up the basement gym area and having all the gym equipment jammed into my office, which is giving me anxiety because it’s really really important to my general state of mind to have at least one room that is relatively tidy and not crammed full with items that do not belong in said room.

Apparently, another dryer/Fairy Godmother will be kept in a Safe House for its own protection until the 16th, whereupon it will be given a new identity and transported to our house in the dead of night in an unmarked car. We’ll see how that goes. Stay tuned.

Filed under: Laundry, Shopping