Ok mom, don't write me out of the will. I'm posting!

My mother (who better be reading this) has requested that I update my blog and put up some pics of my kiddo. In the interest of continuing to be her favorite son, and to keep her from driving up here to kick my butt, here is a post.

I'm sure most of you are aware that its been raining here in Texas. Dad told me that droughts always end with a flood, and as usual the man is right. Living out here in the county, in our cardboard box of death, we of course have a septic system. For those of you who don't know what a septic system is and how it works, I'm sure google and wikipedia are only a click away.

Since our lateral lines were full of rain water we were having trouble with water consumption. As in take very short showers only when you have to, only flush the toilet when it asks you to, and of course don't wash any laundry because you'll dump 40 gallons of water into the flooded system. This would create back pressure that would then blow the toilet off the flange and floor our bathroom with all sorts of unpleasant stuff.

Doing laundry wasn't much of an issue anyway because the discharge pump had seized up again, and shredded the drive belt on the washer. We thought about fixing it again, but after 27 years we decided that this pair of washer and dryer were in need of being put out to pasture, or in our case out in the carport. Yes, appliances have moved into the carport again.

So I'm not known for making snap decisions when a chunk of cash is involved. I decided the front load energystar compliant washer would probably be a good idea since it uses only 14 gallons vs 40 gallons of a top loader. That and if we had an energystar washer Al Gore would stop calling us and telling us we needed to flush less, carpool, and turn off our air conditioner.

I was at Home Depot agonizing over what to do. Get a cheap top loader($300), cheap frontloader ($600), or just go to the laundry mat. Mom and Dad were kind enough to help us out, so I've got a budget and I can't decide what to do. Suddenly its like my mom was there in my head. I zoned in on a floor model. They were dented, scratched, discounted $150, discounted another %10, and they were throwing in a $50 HD gift card. The only thing they wouldn't do was deliver for free. They would do that for new ones, but not floor models.

I paid for them on Thursday, and went home to get the trailer out of the back yard so that we could pick them up Friday after work. It hadn't rained on Thursday so I thought I'd be alright to drive across my front yard, through the side yard, into the back yard, hook onto the trailer and park in the driveway.

I was wrong. Very wrong. Very wet, very stuck, very wrong. I didn't make it 20 feet before I came to a stop, stuck in my front yard. Ok, not a problem, I'll use the Jeep to pull out the Kia. Well if my chain was about 5 foot longer I'd have been alright. Instead I had not one but two cars stuck in my front yard. When I screw something up, I don't stop till it is totally screwed up.

Eventually my father inlaw came with his 4WD truck and yanked both my cars out of the mud, and helped me get the trailer out of the backyard. Now for the really sad part. All I had to do to get the trailer out of the back yard was to hook it to my riding mower which wouldn't have gotten stuck since it weighs so little. Yes, little dumb ass strikes again. But the good news is, I have clean laundry, and it hasn't rained since this little incident. But now I can do laundry, so Mary can clean my clothes after I finish filling in the ruts in our yard.

You can thank me for stopping the flood.