Not happy, Jan ...

So far this year (all 46 hrs of it) at my house it's been one step forward, two steps back. I do hope this trend is not going to continue. To nip it in the bud, I've decided to only look at the positives. Today, the positives have been:

1. I have sparkling clean floors on the bottom level of thehouse, I have cleaned out and mopped the bottom of the laundry cupboards, washed my two fabric Esky bags, and washed down my laundry walls. These things were not on my 'to do' list this morning. They became necessary when I got home from an unexpected outing (refer to Positive No 2 below) and found that my new washing machine, which I had stupidly left running through its first load had flooded the laundry big-time. I did check the water hose connection before I turned the machine on, and it seemed OK, and it wasn't leaking when I left the house an hour into the cycle, but apparantly at the end of the cycle the back pressure in the tap caused water to spurt out of the hose/tap connection - a lot of water. Luckily, the entire bottom floor is slate, not carpet.
2. MIL's car battery does not need replacing, despite the fact that she left her car lights on all morning while the car was parked in her driveway. The battery was, however, flat as a pancake, and MIL (who is 85 and not in the best health) was too tired/stressed to take her car for a long drive in the blinding rain to recharge the battery after it was jump-started. As a result, I was away from the house not the 15 minutes I expected it would take to solve this little problem, but an hour and a half. That gave my washing machine plenty of time to create the havoc described above.
3. My Dad is feeling a lot brighter today. So much so that he decided to fix his electric razor, which hasn't been working to his satisfaction lately. Unfortunately, he's not as good a handyman as he once was -he was brilliant in his day - and as a result we now have a lovely mix of a pile of small pieces from two electric razors (the current one, and the previous one which I was silly enough not to throw out when it was replaced last year). I spent about an hour trying to sort the pieces out, but it's way beyond my powers, and it's pretty obvious that neither razor will ever work again. So, I'll be off electric razor shopping tomorrow, I guess. And while I'm at it, I'll buy him a new torch to replace the pile of torch bits (looks like 3 torches in this pile) I found while looking for razor parts ...
4. My washing machine is working beautifully now that the water problem has been fixed. On the basis of a fine day promised for tomorrow by the local TV afternoon news team, I have done 5 full loads of washing, much of which can not be put through the clothes dryer. The local TV late news weather forecaster has just advised that we are now expecting storms and rain tomorrow - lots of rain. I love rain, and we certainly need it, though it has rained here a lot each day since Christmas Day, but I do hope the forecast is wrong this time, and I can get my clothes dry tomorrow. Otherwise, my house is going to be festooned with makeshift racks of hopefully-drying clothes for the forseeable future.

I'm already wondering if 2010 is going to be my best year ...