Relative Something

We are dancing with glee and banging gongs over our good fortune! Yesterday we traded in our 27-year-old clothes washing machine for a new model with the latest in high efficiency technology. The old one has given us everything it possibly could. Our Service Plus plan paid off more than once to extend the life of the old beast, once even installing a new motor that was reportedly a very rare component to still exist, but the guy had one in his truck that day.

But lately, the old machine was starting to fall to pieces, literally. One day recently, as I was pulling clean, wet laundry out of the tub, I heard a clank and figured it was some coin or metal button that had come from the clothes. To my surprise, I picked up a rusty chunk of metal that had come from somewhere within the machine itself! The wash tub did seem to have gotten kind of wobbly lately. We didn’t have a problem accepting that it was time.

I am a bit embarrassed over how gleeful we get over this stuff. Hours before it was scheduled to be delivered, we were preparing a path and cleaning for the new arrival. We cleaned up that laundry room like we were setting up a baby’s new room. Jake and Tish, I don’t know what the communication was that you maybe didn’t receive, but I found the envelope with your address looking ready to be mailed, but lost for who knows how long, tangled in the dust bunnies under the old machine.

Between how incredibly prepared we were and the fact that our laundry room is on the main floor, the installers must have been in and out in 5 minutes, even with running through a quick tutorial on the fancy electronic control panel. (Don’t tell their boss, I think they deserved to take advantage and use any spare time for a long lunch.)

I’m not proud of this extreme adulation for an appliance, but Cyndie and I seem to feed off of each other and together we somehow end up becoming overly exhilarated. For example, we jointly plotted for an anniversary present to each other one year and came out with a vacuum cleaner. But it was a Dyson! We felt it a grand way to say, “I love you!”

I wonder if the new machine will still maintain its energy efficiency rating if we keep finding something else to wash every few hours, just so we can use it again?