This is one of those "real life" kind of posts. Sorry, no cute pictures on this one.
About a month after we were first married and living near Ricks College, I was listening to weekly devotional from home one day. I remember the speaker was telling a story about how his washing machine had broken down and how his wife hadn't been upset or panicked one bit. He said he was so thankful to be married to a woman to whom a broken-down washer wasn't the end of the world. As I said, I was newly married and trying to get a hold on this whole "wife" business. I thought the idea of being that kind of wife sounded so nice and that I should try harder to be like that. The story has always stuck with me.
Only I'm not "that wife."
I'm the kind of wife who's day would
definitely be ruined by a broken washer. I prove my failure in this "perfect wife" characteristic constantly.
Exhibit A: A few weeks ago Utah was having below 0 temperatures at night. We woke one Saturday to discover the hot water in our sink wasn't working. Cold water came out fine and every other faucet worked great, just not the hot water in the sink. I didn't worry too much about it as Dan said he'd talk to Home Depot and figure it out. (See, I was being good at that point!) To skip some of the long story, Dan was told to try replacing the cartridge on the faucet and many, many hours and trips to the store later, it still didn't fix the problem. That's when the "freak out wife" started to come out. Lets just say we got into a nice "disagreement" that night as we realized it was probably a frozen pipe. I was extremely worried about the pipe bursting and researched a ton about it, convincing myself it may be just inevitable. Dan wasn't worried a bit and figured it would work out. The story of the wife who didn't worry over a broken washer kept coming back to me. I was just not that wife no matter how I tried. The pipe ended up unfreezing itself late the next day. No bursting pipe anywhere. The kingdom was saved.
Exhibit B: Yesterday I was taking a nap when I woke to a funny burning smell. I was sooooo tired but my groggy brain managed to think, "Hmmm. That's not normal . . . Oh well, go back to sleep." Then I realized it was accompanied by a loud humming sound. The smell alarmed me more when I realized only Jossy was downstairs. I managed to jump out of bed, and on my way down the stairs could hear the loud sound was coming out of the vents so it must be the furnace. I tried to turn off the thermastat on my way to the basement, but the furnace wasn't shutting off. It was so LOUD and filling the house with a funky smoke smell (and even a bit tuna fishy?) After panicking, I shut the switch off next to the furnace, got Dan home, blah blah blah. He changed the . . . ahem . . . very overdue filter. That seemed to fix it, but that night he called me while I was out to tell me he had to shut it off again. Panic wife was coming back. A friend in the ward came over to try to help us, but the furnace only worked a little while and had to be shut off again. I borrowed space heaters from the friend's house I was at and we kept our 3 bedrooms warm with them all night, dripped water from all the faucets hoping to prevent more freezing, and curled up in bed hoping things would be affordable to fix. Being pregnant, tired, and emotional didn't help things as I cried for a good long time over missing my grandpa who passed away many years ago. He was a furnace repair man.
I did not sleep well at all. Every drip. Every click on and off of heaters. Every cough from the kids. All of it had me up worrying (and that's even with a sleeping pill I take at night!) It was horrible. I got up around 4 to use the bathroom, then had to run around the house making sure no pipes were frozen, children were warm enough, etc. When we woke up at 7, everyone had to put coats on for breakfast (I wish I had a picture of it!) and we moved the space heaters downstairs only to discover that none of them could be put in the same room without tripping a circut breaker. At one point they were all working, but Dan plugged in his cell phone and it tripped it again. We called a repair guy at 8, he got to us around 11:30 at which point we had gotten the main floor from 55 degrees up to 65 thankfully. It wasn't until around 3 that the repairs were all done and in place. I was THRILLED to have a working furnace again. Sadly the whole thing is likely our own fault for a) buying crappy filters that didn't catch anything for a long time and b) not replacing the ones that DID catch things often enough. The motor on our blower fan needed replaced and was the source of the loud sound as well as the smoke smell. Obviously with a baby coming our finances are being stretched even further than they are now, and I told Dan I would be happy if the repairs could come in under $500. Total today? $485. *sigh*
See? I'm just not the "no need to panic" kind of wife. Does that make me a failure? I guess not. Just not the perfect one I'd like to be. But maybe that wife who doesn't worry over broken washing machines also doesn't make chocolate chip cookies as well as I do. It all evens out somewhere I guess.
(And I say all this as if "not panicking" is the only thing keeping me from being a great wife. HAH! Oh the list I could give . . .)
