Life Lessons From Lou

It all started—well, okay, that’s not actually true. The truth is that who knows when it started. I’m just starting this story when The Incident most inconvenienced me. Because that’s when the best stories seem to begin.

So I’ll start this story and then we can backtrack just a tad to when it may have started.

A few mornings ago, over the kids’ Thanksgiving break, I was laying in bed, still trying to hang onto those last few minutes of slumber before I had to hit the ground running with waffle-making and bed-making and juice-pouring and diaper-changing and such.

Suddenly, footsteps thudded down the stairs from the third floor and the door to our master bedroom flew open.

“What do you want?” I said groggily, rolling over to see which blond head of hair was trotting across the hardwood floors, past the bed, and into the adjoining laundry room.

It was Sam.

“I need pants!” He was in his underwear and a t-shirt. “You never do laundry!”

First of all, I do at least one load of laundry a day. It’s necessary just to stay on top of sports jerseys, school uniforms, masks, hummus stains, Greek yogurt stains, blood, dirt, and dog hair, not to mention the occasional diaper mishap. Also there’s the fact that just as Sam forgets to stop whatever he’s working on to eat, he also forgets to stop and go to the bathroom, which also creates laundry issues.

What Sam’s referring to is the Great 2021 Supply Chain Disruption: Laundry Edition. I’ve been on strike, though not by choice. 

While on the phone with my brother the other morning, two mornings prior to Sam’s wakeup call, I was pacing around the house with a wet paper towel, wiping down smudges and fingerprints and rogue Crayola marker markings. It’s a pretty typical phone call activity for me, multi-tasking at its finest—my brain can’t handle much more.

And it’s very gratifying.

But suddenly I spied water on the new(ish) hardwood floors in Tighe’s office. Not a puddle, but more like a trail of water droplets, a foot long, each droplet about the size of a nickel. 

“That’s odd,” I thought to myself, still listening to my brother and his wife dissect the flavor differences between Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts coffee. Part of me wants to take this blog in that direction—who doesn’t love a good coffee talk?—but I sense that I’m already blathering on and I really need to hurry up if I want to nail the absurdity of the situation we’re currently in before I lose my audience. All two of you.

I know you’re both very busy people with lots to do—like laundry—but I encourage you to stick with me to the end to learn a very valuable life lesson.

I wiped up the water and spun around slowly, my eyes scanning the room for its source, but I saw nothing incriminating. 

Until I directed my gaze upwards. To the ceiling. And noticed some damp drywall and tiny little bubbles pooling in a line parallel to the one I’d just discovered on the floor.

“Uh-oh. I think I gotta go, guys. We have a ceiling leak here.”

I hung up the phone. 

[Who am I kidding? I was talking to Phrank, and both of us are terrible at ending phone calls, so we probably talked for another 20 minutes before one of us actually pushed “end call.”]

Anyway. Eventually I hung up the phone and scurried up the stairs to the room just above Tighe’s office: The Laundry Room. 

The washer had just finished a load and the light was still on, alerting me of its status. 

But just in front of the washer was a puddle of water. Not huge, but definitely big enough to be seeping through the floorboards and through the drywall beneath it. Especially if it happened each time the washer ran for several days. Which it probably had because I’d actually noticed a similar puddle the week before, but hadn’t thought much of it because there’s usually a small mat there and so I hadn’t realized how large the puddle was. I thought it was just a little water dripping from the inside of the door as it swung open, anxious to get those clothes to the dryer. 

A leaky washer is always risky when the washer’s in any location but the basement. I’m no plumber, but I do know that. We’ve had that front-loading washer for 8 (eight!) years now, one of our first purchases when we moved from Baltimore to Kansas City and we’ve never had a problem with it. 

Until now.

After tossing some towels down in front of the washer, I transferred the wet clothes to the dryer and started it, mentally panicking and imagining the devastation—not to mention the financial cost—if the entire ceiling in Tighe’s office collapsed from the deluge of water. Problems are always bigger in my head than they are in reality. That’s basically the definition of anxiety right there. 

And that was it. I didn’t do laundry for two more days to prevent further flooding. It was a nice little vacation actually. But hence Sam being out of pants. I should also point out that he’s super picky about the pants he wears. He’s skinny and relatively tall, so pants are either too loose or too short. He has three pairs he rotates through. Eat something, Sam!

When Tighe got home an hour or so later, we stood in the laundry room and analyzed the situation. Not that it took long to see the problem. 

There was a hole in the gray rubber ring that surrounded the door, thus sealing in the water that cleans the clothes. 

“A hole,” I said, running my finger along the crescent shaped gap. “Tighe, it looks like… uh…. this is weird… a bite mark. Doesn’t it?”

I felt stupid even saying it.

“Did one of our kids try to eat the washer?”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what that is.”

He pulled his phone from his pocket and ordered a tray for the washer to sit on, an accessory we probably should have had all along. Then he got some sealant tape from the hardware store and tried to patch the hole. I mean, the bite mark. 

In two days, Amazon Prime time, we were up and running again. But we couldn’t just run it without supervision. We don’t have the funds or the patience right now to risk a caved-in ceiling. Not to mention the baby grand piano, flat screen TV, and slew of office equipment that currently sits in that room. Also the new stapler that Sam insisted we purchase, but that’s another story for a different day.

So, we sat on the floor of the laundry room and watched a load of laundry get clean.

“Wait until it gets to the rinse cycle, that’ll be the real test,” I said to Tighe, peering up at the screen to see that we were currently in the “washing” stage.

“Erin. It’s Sunday afternoon and we’re watching a wash cycle. All because one of our kids took a bite out of the washer.”

“I’d rather be watching football,” I muttered.

“My mom! You in here?” 

Lou finds me no matter where I go. He stomped into the laundry room with a small plastic dinosaur and positioned himself between us, to also peer at the washer. He was probably hungry.

“Lou, did you bite the washer?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Be-cause!” 

Then immediately changing the subject, he pointed at the washer and shouted, “I see my fire truck pee-jays in there!”  

The three of us watched the red and gray fleece pajamas spin around and around in silence.

That was the end of our interrogation. 

But surely not the end of the problems Lou causes in his lifetime that we’re responsible for.

Lesson learned: teach your kids not to bite the washer.