The best laid plans.....

......usually end up in the crapper by the end of the day. Today was going to be a "calm" day, with not a whole lot to do, other than the usual cleaning and laundry that will plague me until the day I die. With the weather being what it has been, there was some question as to whether or not the youngest two were going to go to school - but although 95% of the schools in the area were closed, ours was not. I did not complain as I loaded them into the She-Beast and took them to their 2-hour preschool this morning - it meant that I had 2 hours all to myself. *gasp*

I came home for that 2 hours and proceeded to clean, load/run the dishwasher, and talk to a friend on the phone. After my 2 hours were up, I went and got the boys from preschool and decided to take them to the library since we had just over an hour to kill before the 4 year old had to be at his afternoon preschool. We went, we returned movies, we got movies, I got books, and we left. We still had some time to kill so we drove around a bit while I made some calls that I needed to make.

I dropped my 4 year old off at school and came home to do laundry. Here's where the day started to fall apart. I tried to start the washer, and it made a really funky noise. I thought the worst, as my dryer had a major seizure the other night and required major surgery and a fuse removal to bring it back to life. As I played around with the knobs on the washer, I began to have a sneaking suspicion as to what was wrong with it.

My laundry room.....is a nightmare. It has been since we moved in. The outlet that my chest freezer was plugged into turned out to be controlled by the light switch so every time I turned the light on and off, I did the same to the freezer for several weeks before I realized it and remedied that situation. The washer hookups - yeah. The water hookups are about 13' from the drain for the washer, so I have long water supply hoses running along the floor to the washer. The laundry room is not heated. It's cold outside. My water supply lines that are INSIDE the house were frozen SOLID. I guess that's better than the actual pipes freezing, but still......really?!?!? Water lines inside the house freezing? I managed to get them thawed out and reconnected everything and put everything back in place with no visible leaks. (Helpful Hint: when moving a washer around, it's best to get out from behind it before partially filling it with water to make sure that nothing leaks. Moving it to get out from behind it when it is partially full is a bit more of a challenge. Just sayin'.)

Once I had everything put back into place, I went redneck on the supply lines. I put 3" long deck screws into the wall and hung the hoses on them, complete with twine and clothesline rope to hold them in place - maybe if they're not on the cold floor, they won't freeze up quite as fast. And when I have a few extra bucks, I'll get some of that insulation stuff to wrap around them.

Two hours after this debacle started, I finally had laundry going again. Then it was time to pick up my son and a friend's daughter from school (different schools, of course) and now we are at home. The kids are watching their new stash of library movies, and I have mountains of laundry to catch up on. I suppose I should feed the kids supper at some point, and give them baths, and work on homework, and scrub the bathroom (ew), and a few other things that I really need to get done tonight.

Glad I bought that case of Red Bull the other day. Something tells me I'm going to need it.