You'll think it's just me bitching, but there's more. Flowers, even.

Geez, where have I been for a week? Oh, right, doing laundry.

You know, you don't really realize how much laundry you do until the damn machine breaks in a fit of ME TOO ME TOO as the fireplace, microwave and car remotes simultaneously call in sick.

And even with the laundry resources available to me by our lovely neighbors and my place of business, I still bitch about having to go out of my way to do laundry because laundry...well...just fuck laundry.

It's so boring and tedious and we thought we'd solved all of the tedium of laundry doing by getting a machine that both washed and dried so that we wouldn't have that annoying Moving Over To The Dryer intermission of laundry doing that sucks the time out of your day like a billion stars into a black hole.

Dramatic? You betcha. I hate dealing with wet clothes, especially in winter when there's GRODY wet wool in there and the house is bordering on sub-50 degrees.

Gah! The feeling of wet wool on the skin. I could just throw up right now thinking about it.

So, yeah, when the machine, which had been performing heroically for two solid years, decided to take a dump (or leak, I should say, since the drain pump gave out onto our laundry room floor as though it was preparing to birth a tiny new washer) and I was left hauling wet woolens and what not over to our neighbors' to dry, I was rapidly approaching my breaking point.

I was ready to put in an illegal clothesline, replace our microwave with a hood vent, throw the fireplace insert on the lawn so I could begin burning superfluous items of furniture the old fashioned way, smash the driver's side window out of my car, thus rendering the remotes' purpose moot and then slap around some passers by just for the fun of it.

But do you know what I did instead that resulted in all of the following:

A fireplace insert that has works
A car whose remotes now unlock the car doors effortlessly
A washer/dryer that washes, drains and dries
A microwave that's still on the bubble because I realized I could use a big monster hood more than a microwave anyway
Zero assault charges filed against yours truly

?

Do you know what it is that I did?

Yeah, even though I was *thisclose* to losing it, I just didn't.

Sounds pretty lame and anti-climatic, I know.

And VERY un-Finny to have four perfect opportunities to lose one's shit and then, just not. Que boring.

I mean, my tantrums are nearly legendary in my family. Second only to my father's, given that he has events in his background as thrilling as throwing pipe wrenches across the kitchen and tearing doors completely off their hinges. (No one has ever been hurt during any of our tantrums. Stop dialing 911.) Me, well, I'm more known for my ability to make holes in walls, whether with my dominant foot or a pair of expertly wielded scissors.

But this time, I didn't do anything that could be categorized as "dangerous", "endangering others" or even "verbal abuse". Even though Home Depot sorely deserved a big helping of all three.

No. Instead, I made a daisy chain, took my Bubba out for sandwiches, watched him play Punk Biker Kid on a funny little rig and served him up a vaguely sound beating at air hockey - all while the laundry was whirling away in three different washers at The Mat.

This is when the idea dawned on me to not be a psycho. Not really. It was just sunny.

Bubba revisiting his roots.

I'll be honest, making a daisy chain was pretty fucking fun.

Do you love air hockey? Me too. It's super fun. Mostly because it's one of the few eye/hand coordination games I can win from time to time.

But in all that, I didn't even raise my voice to a service person or, more significantly since they TOTALLY DESERVED IT, Home Depot's "extended service" team. And I do believe it was this lack of activity that put into motion all the shit getting fixed in my house.

Also, I realized that sometimes it IS good to be a grown-up because then you are more likely to have the proper tools on hand with which to make a super sweet daisy chain.

Yeah. No one was giving me a pocket knife when I was a kid. What with my scissor throwing habit.

 And then, when you want to give your daisy chain to your beloved, he actually drives a real vehicle and not just a bike built for a circus bear even though that's plainly what that was.

So, yeah, had a good, albeit un-Finny like weekend where I spent some good quality fucking around time with Bubba, revisited old childhood hobbies with great success, ate a sandwich that would have been 100% awesome if someone hadn't dunked it in mayo (GAH) and managed to bring all my household appliance woes to a close.

Though I'm sure now that I've said that, something is readying itself to explode. Please let it not be the dishwasher.