Housewife to Handyman

     I had piles upon piles of laundry that had to be handled.  I started a load right before bed on Friday night.  Maci woke me for a bottle at a little after 5am.  I headed downstairs and figured while the water was warming I could switch over a load.  When I opened the the wash there was still water in it.  I thought it weird and restarted the cycle and headed back to bed.  I then got up again at 6am to shower and start my day before the boys.  Not waking before them can throw of an entire day.  I ran back ddownstairs to do some more laundry but still the wash was left with water.  At this point I knew we had a problem, but avoided it for the time being and got readt for Ikea.  After a long day at Ikea and a crazy ride home (I had to keep pulling over to put the boys in time out for throwing rasins at me while I was driving, never again will I bring raisins), we were back.

     It was time to start on the washer.  It's just Sara and I so we knew we would have to figure this out.  Sara jumped onto Google to get step by step instructions to fix this thing.  At one point we were stuck so I gave my Dad a call.  My Mom awnsered and Dad wasn't available.  She said, "You might need to just get a repair man."  We're military wives.  We don't have the money or the time to get a repair man.  That's one of our many jobs.  i grabed a screw driver and went to town after getting to the draining pump I could feel a sock clogging it.  What luck!  I've been searching for the match to this sock for quite some time!  I got the tube apart and the sock free.  It was all put back together and time to get on this laundry.  We trew in a load and went about my business.  I was standing at the kitchen table packing when I realized, "I'm wearing boot, so why are my feet wet?"  The kitchen had flooded with an inch of water.

     Emergency!!!!  I ran and unplugged the washer turned on the steam vac to start sucking up water.  Sara grabbed every towel in the house and a comforter to soak up the water.  Now on top of the public pool being in the house we had even more laundry to do!  I realized that I could fix the problem but didn't have near enough strength to get the metal collar back onto the tube.  So we looked for a friendly neighbor to help but to no avail.  So we got the kids out of the swimming pool and put them to bed.  Sara and I were at a loss as to what to do.  There was no way to get the clothes done, the kitchen was dry again, and the kids were sleeping.  There was nothing left to do but open a bottle of wine.