I have been neglecting this poor website for so long, it seems like I should just close it down and forget about it. However, I realized why I have been absent: I haven’t been living my philosophy. I’ve been too busy, overcommitted, and frankly not enjoying life much. Which is all so against my religion, I should be condemned to an eternity without vodka.

Thankfully, last night, I saved myself. Now I am re-committed to the site and to the philosophy behind it: the good food and drink and enjoying life regardless of what it throws at you.

It’s been a crazy time in our little household. Fall begins in just a week and taking stock of the summer I could easily catalogue everything that went wrong, every unexpected expense, everything that broke, every deadline that wasn’t met, every ugly thing we’ve dealt with . . . But I won’t. Instead, I’ll share an epiphany I experienced last night.

Our washer broke. Which, could be a cause of celebration. I hate doing laundry and any excuse not to do it is generally lauded as a good one by me. But, a week prior, while trying to fix the chemical balance in my daughter’s aquarium, I was toting a 5 gallon bucket of water (that’s 50 pounds, by the way) in one hand and, because apparently I don’t have the body I did 20 years ago, I hurt my rhomboid (a muscle in the back). Now I’m experiencing deep muscle spasms in my back which hurt. Quite a bit. So the laundry went undone for nearly a week.

Now then, I did start making my kids do their own laundry over the summer. However, being 12 and 13, they tend to wait until they have to wear every sock they own more than one time, or for when they take off their jeans and the jeans remain standing, before they throw in a load. In other words, no laundry had been done for a week and Sunday night came and no one had clean underwear, not a fresh-smelling towel could be found, and there was a suspicious odor in the mudroom (where we do the laundry).

The result? My husband asked me if I could train him on the washer and dryer. (He’s a corporate kind of guy, can you tell?) I showed him the print out I made for the kids that explains sorting, water temps, stain removal, etc., and he went to work.

Late Monday afternoon, the washer quit. It just quit. We really couldn’t wait until a repair man could come. Did I mention I thought I saw a T-shirt attempt to crawl out to the garage? And that smell! Ugh.

So I attacked the problem. I went online to the Handy Saves Money Youtube channel and learned how to run the diagnostics on my machine. I learned there was something wrong with the drain pump. I also learned how to replace it.

With tools, rolls of paper towels, and flashlight nearby, I took the front of the machine apart (according to Handy’s directions) and went to town. I also started bitching to myself. I bitched, moaned, and belly-ached until I got sick of hearing it.

And what was I bitching about? About how I had to do everything around here STILL! How, maybe if just one damn person could have thrown one damn towel in the washer instead overloading the damn thing, I wouldn’t be crouched down on the friggin’ floor with a flashlight trying to ignore the f*cking pain in my back!!! I’m NOT FREAKING SUPERMOM!

That’s right. I hung up her cape, didn’t I?

I took a break to re-think the situation and to change clothes because cleaning out the gunk in a washer drain can be pretty disgusting. And that’s when I found my Rosie the Riveter T-shirt.

And read her words: “We can do it.” That’s right, Rosie didn’t need a cape, she needed a team. She actually asked for help. OH MY GOD! Help! Who’d a thunk?

I rallied my team. Together we fixed the washer and we’re now almost completely up to date with the laundry.

Most important, I survived asking for help. No one thought any less of me, everyone was happy to do whatever they needed to. And frankly they were lucky not to express anything negative or they’d get quite the earful from me about how bleeping good I am to them all. Which is where the epiphany came in.

Wouldn’t it be great instead of sinking down into “oh woe is me, I work so hard for a bunch of ungrateful people” or whatever our personal version is, and we thought, “I’m freaking awesome. Look what I can do! And look at what more I can do with a little help from my friends”?

Either way the work gets done, right? But it’s so much more fun when you can have the collaboration and be happy about it.