Thursday, November 19, 2009

A Tale of Two Appliances

When we bought our house 4 years ago, it came with some of the lousiest appliances around. The stove had to be replaced almost immediately since, when you turned the oven on to say 350 degrees the entire oven, inside and out, heated up to 350 degrees. So, after a few months of singing my pregnant belly followed by a few more months of fearing for Kieran's young life, our stove was replaced on my first maternity leave. Then mere days into my second maternity leave, our dryer stopped drying and with a baby due to born any second (seriously I had been on mat leave for such a short time the baby hadn't even been born yet) this was not the time to be running to the laundromat. And, since it's cheaper to buy these units in pairs, in came the new washer/dryer (and the new baby!)

Now, the two remaining large appliances, namely the Dishwasher and the Fridge, have been battling for the title of "worst performing" and "most annoying" for years. In fact, the dryer dying was a complete shock because it was not on the bottom of my most-hated appliance list. But, about a year ago, the dishwasher - ironically called something like the "Whisper 2000" - started to make a loud hour-long buzzing noise during its cycle. Noises which we studiously ignored and instead, just learned that it was best to run the dishwasher while not at home and definitely NOT while trying to watch TV or sleeping.

The fridge, which loves to freeze random items in the fridge part, but which cannot keep ice cream hard in the freezer to save it's pathetic life, has also been on a downhill slide. And here we learned that you had to 1) check if it was closed every time you walked into the kitchen because it doesn't seal properly and 2) to not keep anything that really "needed to be frozen" in the freezer door because they wouldn't freeze (which is why Kieran spend a lot of summer eating liquid freezies.)

Anyway, in recent weeks, the dishwasher's annoyingly loud buzzing noise has started to become increasingly more alarming and now whenever you open the dishwasher door this smell of something akin to animal feces would seep out. (Dinner at our house, come on over!)

However, Eric, aka "the man of-a-million-useful-contacts" has a client who works at a huge appliance company which, once a year, hosts a "friends and family" sale where they sell their appliances at employee pricing, minus 10 per cent. (40 percent off)

Anyway, even with Eric not working, our dying (if not quite 100 percent dead) dishwasher, made us decide to not skip the sale this year. After getting a babysitter and standing in the freezing cold for an hour and a half to get into this sale where we found the dishwasher (crazy cheap!) and figured that while we were there, we might as look at the fridges. Due to space restrictions, our fridge options were few to begin with - we basically had to buy the smallest one they sold - but buy it we did.

So, now since all 5 of our big appliances, all purchased at the worst times imaginable and therefore completely devoid of anything that could ever be called a "bell" or a "whistle", have finally been replaced. (Maybe in some other lifetime I will get my water-dispensing dream fridge
or have a washer with a superfluous "steam" cycle.)

Merry Christmas to me!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Parsley and Crossed Fingers

So, we waited for close to four hours in line yesterday to get our H1N1 vaccinations. I am annoyed? Yes. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.

I'm not so much annoyed that we waited for four hours...I was more annoyed that the municipality's fancy website said the wait would be less than an hour. We could have been prepared for 4 hours but weren't...we were prepared for less than 1.

The plan was for Eric to pick up the kids early from daycare and come get me at work and head out the clinic. I told him to pack drinks and snacks and toys - which he did. We had to make a stop at the garage to pick up our car that was being repaired and while Eric was inside I opened the bag to realize (although I should have known) that my idea of snacks (crackers, granola bars etc) was quite different from Eric's, which was Halloween candy.

Yep...the 18-month old holding a little bag of mini-Doritos and my three-year-old with a Halloween size Pringles with a Twizzler chaser? My kids. (Although they were very happy...so it wasn't all bad.)

Anyway we stood for two hours before being ushered into a waiting room for another half hour. Then we were called to register and ushered to yet another waiting room for another hour. At least the third waiting area was very spacious and even had a supervised play area for kids - complete with volunteers wearing rubber gloves and disinfecting toys every 30 seconds.

After the shot...both my kids screamed as though they were getting their arms cut off...we were ushered to yet another waiting area where we were handed a thimbleful of juice and told to wait for another 15 minutes to make sure we had no adverse reactions.

By the time it was done the kids were fine just plain tired and hungry. Kieran talked about food the entire way home. He wanted pizza, noodles and french fries with ketchup. "And when I get big like a grownup, I want to eat hamburgers, pop and coffee and drive a car." They fought over a single stale rice cake that was kicking around the van. We got home and while I was unbuckling Kaya from her seat, Kieran was standing in the rain on the doorstep eating the parsley that is (inexplicably) still growing in a pot outside the door.

But anyway...it's done (although the kids have to go back in three weeks for a second shot). I know the shot is not going to be everybody's choice. It's surrounded by controversy and mismanagement and some unknown risks...but I do know this. I know that if it was one of my kids who ended up on a ventilator in the ER I would never forgive myself. I do know that the regular seasonal flu that kill hundreds of thousands every year does not kill otherwise healthy 13 year old hockey players. So, I can wait 4 hours for a shot or wait 4 hours in an Emergency waiting room to see a doctor to get Tamiflu when they do get it.

It's a crapshoot and I made my choice. Fingers crossed that it was the right one.