Wrinkly

Is what my hands are after the past two days. Our dishwasher finally bit the dust, so I've been washing all our dishes by hand. It had been acting up since right around the time the washing machine exploded. Not draining, not washing anything, just filling with water, getting stuck on various cycles. It was about eight years old and I've been told that's pretty typical for the age of the appliance, but it's still annoying. I guess I should be happy it lasted this much longer.

It's hard to feel like we can afford to spend at least $300 on a new one after the past few months (new washing machine, new vacuum, new mattress - why is everything breaking?). But things seem to be in our favor here. An internet friend of mine (we've "known" each other since early in my pregnancy with Nathan - we became friends off of a pregnancy message board for ladies due in January of 2008, so her son is just a few days younger than Nathan) is remodeling her kitchen and has offered up her old dishwasher, which still works. We just have to wait a week or two until they demo their kitchen and then we have to go pick it up in Washington around Longview. Hopefully it will work out to go get it. I'll have to think of something nice to do for her. It's so generous of her and I can't even tell you how much stress it takes off of the finances for this month if we don't have to buy a new one.

For now, the dishwasher is just a built-in drying rack, although a less effective one after this afternoon. The top rack broke off on one side as I was putting dishes in it. Cruddy thing. I'm definitely not cut out for manual dishwashing - I feel like I've been doing nothing but washing dishes for two days and there's still a bunch stacked up on the counter! The old break in my wrist makes for very slow going since I have limited range of motion and it starts hurting after just a little while. I just have to make it through another week or two! And maybe I'll start using up our huge stock of leftover paper plates and cups...