“I’d rather be dry, but, at least I’m ali-ive!” I sang slightly off key with Lady GaGa as I wiggled my hips in the center of my kitchen. I held a nostalgic Bomb Pop in one hand and was loading the dishwasher with the other. I took a lick of patriotic flavored ice between verses.
“Nananana lala bop bop innoce-e-ent!” I belted with Arianna, using the Bomb Pop as a microphone. I loaded the final plate into the dishwasher, tossed in the soap pod, then slammed the door. I danced in a circle a few beats before pressing the “start” button and moonwalking away.
The song on my stereo ended as I licked my popsicle stick clean. The silence between tracks was unexpectedly filled with a mechanical growl.
“What the…” I muttered, muting the stereo and cautiously returning to the kitchen. It sounded like a blender, then like unlubricated gears grinding together inside my dishwasher. I studied it a while, stained popsicle stick hanging from my mouth, eyes squinting as I assessed the situation.
“Oh, shit,” I cursed as the sound grew louder and angrier. I leapt forward and tore open the dishwasher, expecting to see dripping water and steam.
It was bone dry inside.
The popsicle stick fell from my lips and clattered on the ceramic tile as I realized the appliance was broken.
One minute I’m a care-free child, dancing to Rain on Me with a Bomb Pop, and the next I’m adulting, dealing with a broken appliance and a shit ton of nasty dishes from last night’s dinner.
Well, crap.
There are two kinds of adults. The ones who crawl into the dishwasher and fix it, and the ones who stomp over to the laptop and start dumping new appliances into a virtual shopping cart.
You can probably guess which one I am.
Thankfully, my husband is the former of the two and balances out my clicker finger.
Broken appliances are certainly on the “annoying list” of things that mean adulting. I’m thankful it was just the dishwasher, and not the massive water heater (we fixed that last month by hitting it with a hammer). Fixing or replacing broken things is just part of homeownership, and it’s something I’ve gotten used to after owning a home for seven years.
Doesn’t make it any less annoying, though.
Things break. Adults fix. It’s this unbreakable cycle, just something we have to do.
Meanwhile, I just set my burgers on fire and overcooked the macaroni while I was trying to type this out.
Apparently, I have yet to master the multi-tasking part of adulting.
I’ll work on that.
Anyway. Not really sure what the moral of this story is… but my gut says it’s that it’s okay to sing into a Bomb Pop like a microphone when you’re 29 and breaking the dishwasher.
Let’s go with that.
#adulting 