Barefoot, pregnant, and washing dishes by hand.

   Could this statement get any more cliche? But that is exactly what I was doing last night before I went to bed. Why was I doing this? Well, since our dishwasher broke yesterday I had to wash up a day's (and a half) of dishes by hand. I know, there are millions of people out there who never even had a dishwasher to begin with, and here I am complaining about doing something that they have to do every day. It's not even that I hate washing dishes by hand. It's all about timing! This "wonderful" dishwasher surprise comes only a bit over a week after Daddy crashed his truck. And on top of it half of my oven broke too. How is that possible to have only half of an oven. Well, my top heating element is not working now, so I am running my oven on bottom heating element only. My last bread came out too brown on the bottom and not browned on top. Plus it wasn't baked in the middle.And all of this only few weeks before Monkey In-Waiting is supposed to arrive. The timing is just really off!


   So last night, when Daddy got home from work he attempted to fix the dishwasher. He tried for over 2 hours and nothing. We ended up having to go out and grab some food because it was starting to get really late and I had not a clean dish in the whole house. I didn't want to, but Monkeys were hungry, plus Girly Monkey has been sick with a fever all day long, plus I was sore and tired from the whole day. Daddy gave it his best shot at fixing the dishwasher, but this evil thing would not be fixed. We have contemplated what do do next at dinner.

   We have 2 options: buy a new dishwasher (apparently they have went up in price and are now 500 dollars+ for stainless steal ones) or call appliance repair company to come and fix it. I really don't have the money to buy a new dishwasher now. I was really leaning towards the second option. My only worry is that the repairman is going to come, charge us 400 dollars to repair our 5 year old dishwasher and that dishwasher will not last much longer where we could have paid 100 dollars more and got a new, better model that will last for few more years. I am really hoping that the repairman is going to come in and say, "Oh, it's easy, you just need this little part and it's going to be 100 dollars for the whole repair". Maybe it's wishful thinking?

   It's sad that we live in a world where buying new things is often cheaper than fixing old ones. I have learned that when our video camera broke 7 years ago. I phoned few repair places and they all said that it will be 600+ dollars to fix it. We ended up buying a new one at the time for 499! I am really hoping that it's not the same case with the dishwasher. But maybe it will be better to get the repairman in since Daddy mentioned that he will have him look at my oven too. With family of five, it's really hard not to have a functioning kitchen. My kitchen is really tiny, I think it is 9'x10' in size with few cupboards, and very little counter-space. But it's where I prepare food to feed my family, so I need it to be in working order. And the past few days it hasn't been working at all. . With only half oven working, foods take longer to bake or roast. With the dishwasher acting up the last few days, and not washing dishes properly (and that's why there was more than just a day's worth of dishes), and then dying all together yesterday, it's making it much harder on me to prepare meals. But I am hoping that the repairman will fix that and we can go back to our usual crazy life!

   I was lucky to have help washing all those dishes last night. Girly Monkey was really sick, so I didn't bother asking her. But Daddy and Funky Monkey were great at helping me with the dishes. I washed, Daddy dried, and Funky Monkey put the dishes away. It still took us over an hour to do them all. It made me feel like we were in a cabin, out in the woods, washing all our dishes by hand. Daddy laughed that it was too funny that I stood there, barefoot, pregnant, and washing dishes in the sink. I would have found that funny too if not for the swollen feet and cranky mood. I would just like to request NO MORE SURPRISES, please! Unless it's a good one (like winning lottery!)