Every Day "Miracles"

This morning I got up feeling the same as every day for the last few weeks . . . BLA_A_A_A_AH! I decided that I deserved a treat for just hanging in there and actually making a little progress on some of my cleaning out projects. A very long shower . . . oh did it feel good. As the hot water was running over my aching head, I got to thinking about how we all seem to take so many of our every day conveniences for granted. Do you ever think about how wonderful it is to have a hot water tank that has water running into it, being heated, as you drain it? Half hour, 45 minutes and the water is still hot. Wow! Picture trying to do this with water heated on top of the stove and dumped into a big tub. No comparison!

As I relaxed, my mind started wandering down memory lane, thinking about all the conveniences that I succumbed to over the years. Yes, succumbed. Silly me didn't think I would need all that stuff that cost money to buy, cost money to run, blah, blah, blah.

When we lived in Thatcher, Mariah was a baby and I was using cloth diapers. All I had was a clothes line, but boy were my diapers white! They also smelled great when I put them on my baby girl. One day when hanging them out on the line, my neighbor came out to do the same thing. Orpha was the cutest little thing, had known my mom and her family for years and so I loved talking to her. I asked her if there was anything quite as wonderful as an automatic washer. She laughed and said they were pretty wonderful. I was picturing myself washing those diapers on a scrub board, which she had used while growing up. When Jon & I got married, I refused to quit working until I had my own washer, so tired of laundromats! Orpha had a dryer, but still used her line a lot, so I figured I would also use mine and never bother with a dryer.

A year and half later when we moved to Northern Az in the winter, I found that the clothes froze on the line, but no problem, I washed diapers last thing each night, hung them on a rack over a heat vent and went to bed. The next morning I had to hang them on the line in the sun, or Rob, my new baby would break out. I still saw no reason for a dryer. I ironed everything any way. I know, insane . . . Then we moved to Holbrook . . . boy howdy, does it ever blow up there! The second time I had to cut some clothes off the line because the wind had tangle them so badly, I started to think, hmmm. A friend was getting rid of her dryer, I bought it for $50, bought the parts for $18. I had to cut something off the line one more time before Jon got enough time at home to install the dryer, but I sure enjoyed it! I had no idea how much time ironing was about to be saved, wonderful. I had just had Sarah and was getting busier every day. What's funny is that by that time, disposable diapers were an option, and I used those, but it still stayed very busy.

I still washed my dishes by hand. We had cess pool, not a septic tank, so didn't know how long it would be before we had a problem, might as well not run more water down the drain than we had to. Then I came across a portable dishwasher that someone wanted to sell, and decided, why not? That was a pain, rolling it around, so I raised the counter on one side of the sink, and installed that baby. What a woman . . . yeah, desperate! I really came to appreciate that silly thing and I did find that I could keep germs from spreading from one kid to the next by using it. So my transition from dish drainer to dishwasher was thoroughly enjoyed, though, I still seemed to have that sink full of dishes most of the time. The next summer when I was canning, I really loved it. My hands had thickened from milking goats and would no longer squeeze into the small mouth jars. Lucky Mariah got out of all that jar washing that I had to do when I was young!

Then of course, there is the porcelain wonder. This was mentioned by Orpha the day we were talking while hanging out clothes. If you are washing clothes with a wash board, you are also using the good old outhouse. She did love the closeness of the indoor plumbing, lack of smell and really loved it being handy at night or in bad weather. You never had to dig a new pit to move it when the old pit got full . . . there's an image you wanted, isn't it? I did appreciate this little luxury, however, when we had trouble with our well in Holbrook, several times, and couldn't flush without hauling water, I begged Jon for an out house that we used only when the well went down. I could never talk him into it. He's lucky I was running all over with the kids by that time or he just might have stepped into a big old pit in the dark or run into a strange new out building!