Everyday Life

We are a cloth diapering family. Cloth diapers generate a lot of laundry. I do at least one load of laundry daily.

So when, on a Thursday night, I went to pull the wash out of the washing machine and discovered that it was still sopping wet?

Not good. Not good at all.

A little Googling suggested that it was the motor coupling – and a quick visual inspection under the machine confirmed it.

Sears Parts Direct had the part for just under $20, and it happened to be in stock at our local store. We put in an order to pick it up in store in the morning.

So Friday morning, I picked up the part. Then I went to Walmart to get a new pair of jammie pants since both my pairs were dirty in the wash and there was no way I could get the washing machine fixed and the jammie pants washed and dried before my friend was coming to pick me up for my church’s ladies retreat.

Sunday after church, the time was right for me to get the machine fixed (especially since I’d put Louis’s last pair of clean pants on him that morning!)

I started at 2:45, following the instructions in this video:

I was washing the grease from my hands by 3:45.

By 4:00, the first (of many) loads of laundry was in the washing machine.

Thursday evening, when this all began, I wrote the following on Facebook:

Have you ever tried your hand at a six-word story? Here’s one:

“Cloth diapering family’s washing machine breaks.”

I later commented with the sequel:

“$20 part. In stock. I’ll try!”

And here, at last, it’s time to complete the trilogy:

“Mama fixes the washing machine. Hooray!”

When we were designing our current home, I read about front porches extensively.

Social commentaries wrote of the decline of front porches as a metaphor for loss of community. Design folks talked about how so many homes have inadequate front porches – large enough to add expense, too small to actually live on. Go big or go home, they seemed to say. Yet they cautioned that plenty of people dream of a front porch, even build a usable one, only to find that their lives don’t match their aspirations.

I was, and am, determined to avoid that terrible fate.

We spent last summer putting a railing on the porch, made a gate for the front steps right before we licensed for foster care this year. Daniel got us a porch swing for Christmas and I used saved up gift money to buy a table and chairs.

Whenever the weather warms to sixty degrees or so, Daniel and I will move “couch time” out to the porch swing, swinging and talking about our days while the kids play in the yard. The wind chime Daniel gave me for my birthday a couple years ago jingles merrily behind us.

I get up to make dinner, and when the time comes to set the table, I tell Daniel that I think I’d like to eat on the porch today.

“I’m shocked,” he replies. “Shocked.”

If you were to ask my children where toys come from, I’m almost certain they’d say “Mama.”

Press further, and you’d discover that my kids think mama makes all toys.

I know this because I get the Constructive Playthings catalog, and, like children have been doing for at least a century, my children use it as a “dream book.”

But while other children might recognize the catalog for what it is and might ask their mother to buy them the toys found within, my children come running to me:

“You should make THIS (pointing at one toy) and THIS.” And then they’re flipping through the catalog like mad, pointing at virtually everything, singing together: “THIS and THIS and THIS.”

They have limitless faith in my abilities.

Now that it’s the beginning of February and everyone has gotten us our tax documents, it’s time for the Garcia household to do taxes.

So Louis and Papa sat down this morning to plug the numbers into Turbo Tax.

It got me reminiscing about tax time in my family growing up.

Growing up, Dad did the taxes with a paper form (when did electronic filing and tax software start? He probably started using TurboTax sometime in my teen years).

April 15 meant papers spread across the kitchen table as dad crunched numbers and filled out the form.

Why April 15? Well, no need to give the government your money any sooner than necessary. Let it sit in your own bank account earning you money. (Of course, this logic only applies if you’ll be paying taxes versus getting a refund for taxes already withheld.)

Around 11, it’d be time to slide the completed form into its envelope and carefully affix the stamp, flag flying upside down as a sign of distress.

Then to the car, to drive to the downtown post office, where uniformed employees stood beside the big blue mailboxes collecting tax forms from all of us to-the-wire filers. (Is that memory correct? Were there really people there collecting tax documents? Or were we so late that they were there counting down the time until midnight when they’d empty the mailbox and ding everyone after us as a late filer? Or am I just imagining the person in uniform standing beside the mailbox during those late night visits?)

Let’s just say that our children will have a very different experience of doing taxes than I did.