Girls Rock

Being a single parent and Navy wife is, to me, a boot camp I just don't ever want to go through again. I'm not dissing it, but I am so glad for it to be OVER.

There is a popular saying amongst military wives, and it goes something like:

"As soon as your spouse leaves? The whole house falls apart. Appliances break and vehicles fall apart."

I've heard it modified for the submarine wives in that, "When they pull up the anchor, all things breakable tune in to that sound and break."

I can vouch for this. It's happened to me a few times. A few times too many for my liking.

Now, my husband isn't out to sea (Thank You, Lord!), but he's not here. He's been 300 miles away during the week since the end of September.

I've taken the Tahoe in to the dealership THREE TIMES (for regular maintenance and such) and done all running around concerning family members.

The other night, I guess God had to get one more thing in.

My washing machine quit working. Are you kidding me? I had mountains of laundry and no one had clean jeans for the next day.

Are you kidding me? I even looked up and asked the Big Guy this...but didn't really expect an answer back.

I was just done, Internets. I was beyond huffy and put out with the whole shabang. I just did NOT have time to mess with this. Sure, we got the warranty and such, but I did not have time to call for repairs, for the repairman to take his sweet time...like A WEEK....to get it fixed. Just DANGIT.

I got my trusty little stool and I sat down in front of that washing machine to study that bad boy. Surely, there was something I could do to make that hunk of metal start washing my clothes again. Surely.

I got the book out that I made sure I saved when we bought the washer. There was a troubleshooting section. How about that? I started reading and mentally crossing off what I knew for a fact wasn't the issue. Then I saw it...the section that might be my issue. A clogged water line. Hmmmmm......

Well, I decided to see what that was all about. I have a front loading washer so I was all bunked over the top of it trying to get to the back. The younger ones were already in bed, but that Paige? Was laughing so hard at my big butt up in the air, she could hardly stand up. Little did I know she had a squirt bottle and was wetting my butt. Teenagers. I sent her on her merry way because I had work to do.

I got the water line off and lo and behold, it was clogged with sand. Gotta love living so close to the coast. It looked like beach sand to me. I put that sucker back on and tried a cycle. No go. Argh. I took the line off again and there was another clot (for lack of a better term) of sand. I had to clean that line four times before I got water in that machine!!!

But, guess what? It's working. A few skinned knuckles later and two broken nails, and I had a machine washing some clothes.

Whew.

Now, I know why guys drop by the bar and drink a beer. There's something really cool about fixing something that wasn't working. If I had had a cigar and a beer? I probably would have had to go outside and bask in my accomplishment. I'm just saying.

I'm still feeling ten feet tall and bulletproof over the whole deal a few days later. Men may read this and scoff at me because it was a simple fix. Kiss my butt. I analyzed the problem, used REAL tools, and got that bad boy fixed. All by myself.

While I'm somewhat grateful over the life lessons I've had to learn in the past ten years with being a single parent and Navy wife.....can I just say I'm graduated and not have to do any of that anymore?