Mess of the Week: The Appliance Edition

Perhaps its the first time on this blog that the mess of the week was not created by a toddler.  It was not created by a preschooler.  It was not even created by a kindergartener.  This edition of Mess of the Week comes to you courtesy of the preteen in residence.

This week our regular babysitters are away on spring break.  Luckily for me, however, Dr. Peds has not been working during my teaching hours this week, so he’s been superdad, large and in charge, and has been an amazing taskmasker.  Today I finished with my last student before supper, and walked into the family room and was greeted by kidlets that were all finished with their homework!  Before supper! Plus, some of them had already even finished their evening work (such as picking up their bedrooms)  I was so happy!  I quickly made some scrambled eggs to go with the rice that Dr. Peds had already cooked, and thought to myself, this is going to be an easy peasy, calm night!  Hooray!

It was YaYa’s turn to unload and load the dishwasher after supper tonight, and to her credit, it isn’t something she has had to do for a few weeks, because one of her younger siblings is usually given that job so that she can work on her homework, since she has more of it.  Tonight, knowing that she was already done with her homework, I thought it would be a good task for her.  YaYa had forgotten the reasons why certain things have to go in certain places in the dishwasher, and she was pretty grouchy with me when I reviewed that information with her, and then told her not to start the dishwasher, since it wasn’t full.  She thought the dishwasher should run anyway.  I said, “Wait until it’s full. The soap is expensive.  I don’t want to waste it.”  Then I stopped the dishwasher.  To make a long story short, various things at various times over the next 20 minutes needed to be added to the dishwasher.  YaYa kept starting the dishwasher, and three times did I stop the dishwasher.  By that time, I was a bit grouchy.

I went to the cabin room to help The Banana pick up, because it was really a mess, and because on Thursday evening I have a group of students all from the same family with a preschool sibling who hang out in the cabin room with their mom or dad while I teach each student individually in the living room.  This translates into “WE NEED TO CLEAN UP ON THURSDAY NIGHTS!”  I get a little panicky about that most Thursday nights.

About five minutes later, halfway through vacuuming the cabin floor, I glanced into the kitchen and stopped dead in my tracks.  The dishwasher was spitting out soap suds at an alarming rate.  Upon a frantic investigation with the preteen in residence, it became evident that YaYa had filled the soap dispenser with regular Seventh Generation liquid dish soap, instead of the cute little somewhat expensive packets of dishwasher detergent that I buy especially so that my kids can load and start the dishwasher.

I wish I could tell you that I was that kind of perfectly cool, calm mom who takes everything in stride.  Or, at least the kind of mom who immediately sees the humor of the dishwasher flooding the kitchen floor with soap suds.  But I am not that kind of mom.  I am especially not that kind of mom during the witching hour between supper and bed.  This, added to the fact that we have hardwood floors with a terrible, ineffective finish on them allowing easy water damage, led to a teansy meltdown on my part.  It was more panic than anger, but I was pretty irritated that

A.  The dishwasher was running AGAIN when I was pretty clear it should not be, and

B.  I was pretty convinced that EVERYONE knew they were supposed to use the expensive little packets of detergent.

And also, the students were coming!  The students were coming!  And the kitchen floor was covered in soapy water.

I also very much wish that at the time I had the presence of mind to take a photograph of the overflowing dishwasher, but I did not.  I only thought to take a picture of Dr. Peds using the shop vac to suck up all the soap suds, foam and soapy water out of the dishwasher.  During the moment of overflow, he had been upstairs giving Mr. TOF an evening bath.  The Banana came to my rescue with a heap of dishtowels to try and mop up the foamy liquid as best as we could.  Even after we pushed the cancel and drain button, the soap just kept coming.  And coming.  And coming.

When Dr. Peds came downstairs he had the presence to send me out of the kitchen and back to vacuuming in the dry cabin room.  He went to ready the shop vac,  and after a few minutes I was a lot calmer.

Now I think the whole affair is really very, very funny.

I thought things like this only happened in books.  Apparently they happen to real people too.  It’s just like all those books that have an overflowing second floor bathtub that leaks through the ceiling, flooding the first floor.  That has also happened in this house.

Whenever you expect a dull moment, the dull moment decides to be incredibly elusive.