Some weeks are calm, productive and suspiciously well-behaved.
Other weeks feel like every appliance, vehicle, animal and bodily function in your household got together and planned a group project.
This was one of those weeks. My husband’s car started leaking gas. The baby had a blowout in the car seat. The washing machine broke. The dog headbutted a hole in the fence. A mystery splatter appeared on the porch and refused to budge, even after I introduced it to acetone and steel wool.
And every night around 9 p.m., just as the baby is supposed to be sleeping, a neighbor fires up the power tools like he is competing on an after-dark home improvement show.
It has been loud, smelly, sticky and expensive. But it has also been a good reminder that most problems are temporary, even when they all decide to show up wearing matching shirts.
The car leaking gasoline was alarming, but we caught it before it became something worse. The baby’s blowout was impressive and cleanup involved the pressure washer, but everyone involved survived.
The fence lost a mountain goat-style stand off with a mutt, but at least the dog’s head appears to be fine, even if it is hollow.
The porch splatter is still there, but maybe I should stop viewing it as a stain and start calling it an outdoor art installation.
And the nightly power tools have given me plenty of time to imagine what the neighbor could possibly be building.
A deck? A shed? A second, quieter house? We may never know. The strange upside to weeks like this? They make normal life feel downright luxurious.
A car that does not leak becomes something to celebrate. A diaper that performs its sole assigned duty feels like a miracle. A washing machine quietly completing a load deserves a standing ovation.
We spend so much time moving from one task to the next that we rarely appreciate the household systems working properly in the background. Then one of them stops, and suddenly we realize how deeply our happiness depends on clean clothes, sturdy fences and fluids remaining where manufacturers intended them to be.
The good news is the car is already fixed. One o-ring replacement a $55 payment to the mechanic later and my husband can once again drive his car.
The fence has been patched, thankfully the former owners left all the spare fence boards in the shed for us, so that one just took a little labor.
The car seat cover is currently hanging from a tree in the backyard, drying in the Oklahoma heat like the saddest flag ever flown.
The baby is clean. The dog is contained. The porch splatter has apparently applied for permanent residency, but can be covered with a slightly askew door mat.
That just leaves the washing machine and the mystery construction project.
Weeks like this are a good reminder that life does not have to be running perfectly to still be good. Sometimes the wins are small. A repaired car, a patched fence, a clean baby and enough sunshine to dry a car seat cover in the backyard.
The chaos may show up all at once, but so do the people, the patience, and the little fixes that keep everything moving forward.
Be kind to your neighbors, Be kind to your pets, And if anyone has recommendations for a good appliance repair tech, let me know.