a month of loss

Late last night, after we were in bed, we heard laughter outside, followed by the sound of a car accelerating away from our house. We looked out front, figuring at first that we'd been TPed, but we hadn't (and we don't really have the trees to make that worthwhile anyway). As I stood at the front door and looked for evidence of anything, I finally realized that something was actually gone. Dear friends back in North Carolina had given us a simple, solid wooden bench as a housewarming present, and someone stole it last night! It seems pretty crazy since the bench is nearly ten years old, and sad, too. I loved that bench; it was a great place to sit while the kids played on their scooters out front.

As I looked back over the past month, I realized that it's just another loss in the list right now. A week ago Monday, I was frantically shopping for a new washing machine as our faithful servant had given up (actually, it was our second washer to die, but when our first one went two years ago, our awesome neighbor Martie just happened to be getting rid of his old one, so we got it). That loss was actually pretty expensive because washing machines aren't cheap, plus we decided that with as much laundry as I do, it made sense to get a front loader (get this: a top loading machine uses an average of 40-50 gallons of water PER LOAD of laundry; a front loader uses and average of 13-16! No wonder we have been using so much water as a family! Just amazing!). With the laundry piling up rapidly, I was in a hurry to replace it, so didn't have much time for price comparisons... thankfully it was President's Day weekend so everyone was running a bit of a sale. I freak out when I think about the cost of the machine but I am hopeful that we'll really start to see a difference in our water bill (and electricity, too, a little bit, because this thing is supposed to reduce the drying time needed because it spins like an airliner).

The first loss of the month was our patio table out back. We just had a really windy day and the wind took out the umbrella (yes, in retrospect we should have taken it down before the wind) and just shattered the table. Andy got it all cleaned up, but enough fell between the boards that he is swearing to never go under the deck again. So now we don't have a table to eat at outside, which is sad because this is the perfect time of year for it (down here, sorry Rabia). The table and the bench are pretty low priorities for replacements right now as we are entering a transitional employment period. Thankfully neither are critical to our health and well being, but we are sad to lose them all the same.

The table shattered and I just had to take some pictures.




Thankfully we have only lost minor things (well, except for the washer but hooray for Lowe's (sorry Josh, but we did try Home Depot first) next day delivery!). And if you can't laugh about things like this, well then you are pretty far gone. So we are just laughing instead.