These ordinary days...

I'm in a remarkably good mood, all things considered.

I'd planned only a few things for today, such as taking a nap with Isaac after church and going to the gym later. After lunch, I changed and nursed the baby and planned to lie down with him during Suzannah's daily quiet time. Matt cleaned up the kitchen and started the dishwasher. And then we heard the most horrible sounds coming from the kitchen -- popping and grinding and something that sounded vaguely like sparks. Coming from the dishwasher. I also thought I smelled something burning.

I ran into the kitchen and found my husband gaping at the dishwasher. "Turn it off!" I cried. That snapped him out of his little trance long enough for him to do that, and then we both just stood there gaping for a moment.

"Well," I said. "I guess we need a new one."

This is not unexpected, as it was one of the appliances that came with the house. It's old, it's hardly fancy, it's not terribly attractive. It worked, though, and we had no intentions of replacing it until we had to. Well, obviously, that day was TODAY. (And seriously, no, it's not worth fixing. I don't even know if it can be fixed. It has sounded horrible for a long time, although I secretly love our noisy dishwasher -- it's like cozy white noise for me, and I love lying down in the next room and pulling a blanket up around me and drifting off to sleep with the dishwasher running in the background. But today it didn't just sound horrible, it sounded like FIERY DISHWASHER DEATH RAGE.)

Anyway, we bought a new one. It's nice, I guess. I was almost surprised at how utterly un-opinionated I was about it. Matt wanted an efficient one that didn't use too much energy or water. I wanted stainless steel, and I said nylon dish racks might be nice (although I don't know if our dishes are so fancy that we have to worry about any new dishwasher scratching them up). But mostly I said, "Whatever you think is best is cool," and then I chatted with a couple of sales associates who noticed my fat, happy baby and wanted to make faces at him and talk about their own grandbabies. And also, suddenly I really just wanted a latte, so I was much more interested in that.

Then we went to Trader Joe's and the car battery died. That was also due, I guess, and it's not a big tragedy, except that it was a bit of an inconvenience to try to get someone to give us a jump. We have jumper cables, but we sat there for awhile before anyone came out to the parking lot. Matt asked a guy who just mumbled something about not wanting to mess up his car, and I was like, COME ON, CAN'T YOU SEE THE WIFE AND BABIES OVER HERE? Whatever. Finally, a security officer wandered over and offered right away to go get his car to give us a jump, which restored my faith in nice people a tiny bit.

And then we came home and washed all of our dirty dishes by hand and I started on supper. We're going to have to wash everything by hand for a few days until our new dishwasher is delivered, but I'm trying not to feel sorry for myself since I've lived without one before -- and also, I don't really mind washing dishes.

Somewhere in there we gave Suzannah a bath, which I started and Matt finished. I was halfway through scrubbing one of the pans in the kitchen sink when I heard Suzannah sobbing in the bathroom -- well, not even sobbing, but wailing hysterically, incoherently, because she had gotten the band-aid on her pinky finger wet. She loves her band-aids, like many children do, and this one is for a LEGITIMATE INJURY (something like a tiny paper-cut on her finger). Also, it's not like band-aids are REPLACEABLE or anything.

It took awhile to get everyone calmed down after that. I'm tired. I've been tired for days, but each night, I seem to be too stupid to go to bed at a decent hour even when I can. Right now it's after 10:30 and all I can think about is how appealing my bed is, but also, I can't turn off my brain because Suzannah's fourth birthday is on Friday and Isaac's baptism is one week from today and family starts arriving in a few days and there is just so, so much to do even though we've all agreed that we want to keep things relatively simple.

(And also, four years. My baby girl. She is four. I have so many things to write about this, but I cannot begin to cram that into the same entry in which I write about a dishwasher and a car battery.)

"I guess this was kind of an 'off' Sunday," Matt said a little while ago. He seemed apologetic, although of course none of it was his fault. It was just these little things that interfered with the ordinary little plans we make -- a nap, the gym, a timely dinner, a reasonable bedtime. But strangely enough, I haven't felt particularly bothered by any of it today. In a way, it was almost nice, although I can't say why. I just felt so content to just let the day happen, to just shrug and say, "Okay, then, this is what's happening -- and let's get some coffee." To just be with my family, wherever we were, even if Suzannah was restless and Isaac was tired because he missed his nap. Even if Matt and I ate our dinner standing up in the kitchen tonight. It was an ordinary, unexpected blessing -- just to be totally content, to not want to be anywhere else, or need anything else. To just appreciate, I guess, being exactly where I am, whatever that looks like.