Rearranging Routines

I now have a dishwasher, or I will on Friday. Theoretically. I think that the configuration is set up so that they will install it, but there's little in my house that would be considered "standard," and the installation info sheet and the way the guy at the Home Depot talked made it sound like the installation guys will get the vapors and run screaming if they have to do anything that looks suspiciously like "thinking" or "work." At least this time I not only got help in the appliance department but got a full lecture on household plumbing, what to look for and what to do about it, and the guy treated me like he thought I was intelligent and competent enough to check things out for myself. And once I explained my situation about just needing a functional dishwasher so I could sell the house, he didn't try to upsell me and skipped past the extended warranty sales pitch. If I were staying in the house, I might have bought something a little nicer, but what I got should do the trick. As I told the sales guy, the kind of person who wants a dishwasher with Internet access that can control space probes probably isn't going to be buying this kind of house. Now I need to clean up my kitchen and living room (to create an easy pathway) and empty a couple of cabinets where the various connections go.

This is going to be a huge change in routine for me. For one thing, the dishwasher hasn't been entirely empty in years, since I've been using it as a large dish drain and I mostly just use the dishes straight from it instead of putting them away in the cabinet. I had to rearrange the cabinets to put things away so I could pull the dishwasher out and check the connections. Then this morning when I was making breakfast, it was weird to have to get dishes out of the cabinet instead of just grabbing them from the dishwasher. But it will be lovely to have the dishes washed with the push of a button, particularly on days when I'm busy (or sick) several days in a row and don't have time for hand washing.

Tonight I get to try some new tricks I learned last weekend on the little imps. I have one game that might just make their heads explode (it requires actually paying attention). There's one thing I want to try that I'm a little afraid of because I can see what will happen, but I may have a way around that consequence. The speaker suggested that a way to focus on the tune of a song and get kids to actually sing was to have them meow, bark or make some other noise to the tune instead of singing the words, then switch to the words once they know the melody. I'm afraid that once my kids get to meow a song, they will forever meow it and never bother with the words. I may experiment with a song we won't be singing in public so that it doesn't matter if they meow the song forever and think of it as the meow song.

Meanwhile, I have a few little things to clear up on the steampunk book, plus some other stuff I need to do to get Fairy Tale book 2 ready. Eventually I'll manage to get back to writing book 3.