!!@#!%*#!!

I have a whole new appreciation, respect and admiration for plumbers and electricians now. In my opinion, its a wonder they don't need anger management classes and Valium on a daily basis. I say this because last night was the night Tyler decided to "git 'er done" and install the dishwasher. OH. MY. GOD. A miracle, and yet a curse, at the same time.

He decided this last night around 6pm. When it was pitch dark outside. And because we couldn't figure out which breaker was the right one to turn off (you know, so we wouldn't fry ourselves to crisps), he just switched off the main one for upstairs. And may I say that THAT process, of trying to figure out which breaker connected to the dishwasher, was certainly fun. "It's still on!!" How about now? No? What about this one? "Still on!!" Now? "STILL ON!!" ARGH!

So the house was in complete darkness. Scrounged up some flashlights for the kids and ourselves (the kids delighted in tormenting poor Punkin with the light, she was chasing the beam around at warp speed, bumping into walls because it was so dark), Tyler found a nifty headlight like the ones the miners wear. He looked goofy, it was hilarious. Well, until he'd look right at you and you'd be blinded by the light, "Damn it Tyler, quit doing that!" Oh, sorry, *smirk*. ARGH.

What a frickin' fiasco. A process that we thought would take an hour at the most, turned into two, which later turned into three (more on THAT later). You've never heard such filth come out of a man's mouth. I think I learned a whole new swear-word vocabulary. And the kids would not stop coming into the kitchen area, which was cramped to begin with as we had both the old and new dishwashers in there, as well as us two. I felt bad for yelling at them to scram, but you could literally feel the frustration level rising as they all stood there, totally in the way, blocking the pitiful amount of light coming from the flashlights, asking us "Is it done yet? We're bored. We want to watch tv. We're hungry. Is it done yet?" ARGH!

And what a long, drawn-out, complicated process it is, installing a dishwasher. It doesn't help that the instructions are insane, almost over-complicated. Tyler was like, "I don't need those instructions, this is just common sense" so he'd get way ahead of me. I'd be flipping through the manual frantically, making sure he hadn't missed a step and he'd be yelling at me, "Hurry up and figure it out!" ARGH.

At one point, Ty's lying on his side on the floor, struggling mightily to tighten something with a wrench, swearing and panting and growling, and I noticed that like four inches away from his face is a nasty old wrinkled piece of lettuce (where the hell that came from, I have no idea). I got the giggles. He was so frustrated and angry with the whole process, so impatient to just get it over and done with, that I knew if he were to notice the lettuce it would be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I fully expected at any second that he would be like, "WHAT THE FUCK?!" and he'd whip that nasty thing at me. Minutes ticked by. Still no notice of the lettuce. Me still trying to contain the giggles. It was only after he finished whatever he was doing and got back up and took a little breather, that I pointed it out to him ('cause I'm mean like that, lol). There, finally got the fireworks I was waiting for, which allowed me to let loose the giggle fit that I'd been working on. Poor Tyler.

So we get everything connected, the front plate put back on, flipped the thing upright, and went to slide it in. Uh, yeah. Okayyyy. It didn't fit. It would slide easily in about half-way, then wouldn't budge. I kept telling Ty it was because the large sheet of insulation covering the top and sides (to reduce noise, apparently) would start bunching up, we needed to tape it down. He disagreed. He said we needed to adjust the legs, make them shorter. I was adamant about the tape. This went on for a while. FINALLY, the man decided to listen to his much-smarter wife (heh) and find me some tape. Well, that was another piss-off -- we couldn't find any tape besides scotch tape. No duct tape. No black stretchy electrical tape. Not even masking tape. We made do with Gunnar's hockey tape. (Finally it comes in handy!) And sure enough, once the sheet was held in place, the machine slid in quite nicely. At least until it came to that last half inch.

There's two little metal clips attached to the top of the dishwasher, that you screw into the underside of the countertop, and that keeps the machine from moving about when you open the door. Because of that last half inch, a tiny portion of the metal clip stuck out from under the counter. Tyler was in such a state of frustrated rage that he was just like, "Fuck it! So it sticks out? Who cares? We can figure it out some other day, lets just get this done!" Me being me, the perfectionist, just could not allow that. No, it had to be just right. Why go to all this trouble to install it ourselves, if we're not going to do it right, right?

So I came up with the brilliant idea to heighten the front legs just a bit, which pushed the machine up enough that the exposed metal lip slid perfectly into place. Put the screws in, and voila! Done! Tyler got the power back on (the kids were like Hallelujah!) and we followed the instructions for running the first wash cycle, to make it was working correctly, which it was. Whew! What a relief!

About thirty minutes later, Ty and I were playing a computer Scrabble game (I was kicking ass as usual) and he goes into the kitchen to get a pepsi. "FUCKKKK!!!!" There's water on the floor, everywhere! I turned off the machine, we're frantically mopping up water with towels and a mop, Tyler unscrews the metal clips and we pull the dishwasher out. Here the damned drain pipe had disconnected. ARGH!!!

Did a little sleuthing and figured out it was because the seal wasn't tight enough. Ty cut off the bottom inch of the seal thingy on the hose, reattached and tightened it, tested it by trying to pull it back off with all his might -- that thing didn't budge. Yesss! We didn't slide the machine back in because the floor underneath was completely soaked, so we had to set up a fan to try to dry it out. Started a new wash cycle and made sure to check every ten minutes, but miracle of miracles, no leaks! (Of course, having to leave our Scrabble game every ten minutes was intensely frustrating, "Hurry up and get back here or I'm going for you and I'll make a word like "the" for 3 points!")

So the state of my kitchen this morning is a complete disaster. The fan is still going, the dishwasher is still sitting out smack-dab in the middle of my kitchen workspace area, and the sink is completely full of dirty dishes waiting their turn. But at least I can say that my kitchen floor, courtesy of the frantic mop-job last night, is sparkling clean. AND I have one load of clean dishes done and waiting to be put away! Yippee! I am a slave to hand-washing no longer.