McGhie Meanderings: March 2009

Monday, March 16, 2009

Life is Good--er.

We thought it would be appropriate to share with our blog stalkers the follow up to this last post.

Since posting, we had many people offer to help in many ways. We have such great friends, neighbors and family.

We want to especially thank Shawn and Lily for their generous 'donation' to our predicament. It will be nice to be able to wash our clothes and pick which temperature we want to use. That will be a new experience for us as a couple. We are so grateful.

Thanks one and all,
-The McGhies

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Life is Good

Sometimes aspects of life suck. For example, tonight, around 9:00pm, while Steff was at the Relief Society B-day dinner, I was putting Winston to bed and opened the closet to our washer and dryer to get out his pajamas and found about a 1/2 inch standing water on the floor. Our washing machine has given up the ghost. Toss that on the pile with everything else I guess. Whatever.

Now, that wasn't totally unexpected, but the timing sucks. Our washer and dryer were purchased from a guy out of the thrifty nickel ads 6 years ago. He was so hungover when he delivered them to us that he barely made it up the three flights of stairs to our Provo apartment. Once there, he laid on the floor for about 30 minutes trying to get his bearings. It was awesome. Anyways, we love our washer and dryer. They're the old school kind that hold a ton of clothes. I'm pretty sure both of them are older than Steff and I, but that's when they used to make them right. We don't mind that there is really only one temperature that the washer works on. We like it. Plus they were only $45 total for both of them.

Now, as I said, this wasn't totally unexpected, though its always shocking to have a swimming pool in your washroom. Our dryer has been showing its age for the last few months. It's developed a really loud squealing/screeching sound that I've just written off to lack of any lubricant being applied over the last 6 years. We've been expecting that one to just seize up any day, but the washer sorta came out of no where. So, that sucks... but that's not the title of the post.

Here's where life is good. We have the best neighbors in the universe. At 9:45pm, I called my neighbor Luke. He's been in the restoration business for years. He's handled about everything you can imagine and high on his list is floods. Within 15 minutes he was over here and was testing for moisture. We pulled some baseboards and found that the water had gotten further than we hoped. We ended up pulling out the vinyl flooring, the middle board stuff (I can't remember what that's called), all the baseboards, and cutting back the carpet about 2 feet and taking out about 8 sq feet of carpet padding that was soaked. 2 hours later he had all the wet stuff ripped out and a fan on the area drying it. Wow. I am so grateful for good people and how willing to give of their time and their talents.

So, as a gesture of thanks, I thought I'd send Luke this card tomorrow:

Just kidding. We're going to try to do something nice for them, but at the end of the day, this was just really a nice thing to do and he was so happy and nice. I look around our neighborhood and it's so nice to think of all the neighbors and to know that if called on, any of them would jump at the chance to help someone out and do anything that was needed.

So, life is good. There are challenges. There will always be challenges, but we are really, truly grateful for wonderful neighbors and family members that are there for us.

One last thing.... anyone know a good carpet guy and/or washing machine repairman? :-)