Laundry Duty

Last night was a pretty terrifying night. As per usual, I was tidying up the house around 5:15pm waiting for my husband to return home from work. Ever since we moved into our new beach house, laundry has been a chore. We have a brand new washer and dryer and the dryer just hates my guts. It doesn't dry. It's brand new and we were so excited to have it... and now... I hate it's guts. It takes two to three drying cycles to actually dry clothing and it's messing with my daily productivity. So as I was putting the house back together after a long day of play and having two kids home all day on holiday break, I went back into the laundry room for yet another check of the dryer to find damp clothes again. I restarted the dryer and took a look at my now frustrating laundry room that had several loads of clothes and beach towels to wash. Trying anything to make the space better, I grabbed a gallon of bleach that was on the dryer and attempted to put in on the top of the cabinet above my head. I say attempted because the lid didn't close correctly on said gallon container of bleach and it poured directly into my eye. And then there was screaming. And blood. And hysterical crying. And at one point a, "Joey, call Daddy now! I need help." And then praying outloud, really loud. And my 11 year old superhero rushed to the phone to call his Dad. Without prompting, he ran to get me bottles of water and helped with his little sister.

Within 60 seconds he had water in my eye, his Dad on the phone and his sister taken care of when I couldn't see a thing. As a professional wedding and portrait photographer, my vision is obviously pretty important and panic mode had been activated. I can't tell you how grateful I am that my sweet kiddo came to my rescue.

A few minutes later, my handsome husband came running into the house and called poison control. He flushed my eye with water for 20 minutes and then drove me to the ER while making witty jokes about how fortunate I am that he watches Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs and that I can now call him "McDreamy." (I didn't dare remind him about the tragic ending of McDreamy or McSteamy.) I am so greatful for my medical care and even for the eye drops that I have to use every 15 minutes until I can see a doctor... which means not more than 15 minutes worth of sleep through the night until my appointment at 11am. But you know... I came home from the ER still cursing that dang dryer. My husband took the lead on bath and bedtime for our littlest and I think I might have even gone back into the laundry room and kicked our brand new dryer. Okay, I definitely kicked the dryer. And that's when I saw it.

There is a photo from our last mission trip to Honduras with Dream Big Honduras of the beautiful mamas washing their clothes in the dirty river that they have to scrub over the bumpy rocks. They then lug the heavy, wet clothes back up the road to their homes so that they can hang them out to dry. This photo is sitting in the mess of a laundry room ready to hang up and I realized that I had been completely out of line. There I am again, hysterically crying in my laundry room but this time, in gratitude and praying that I never lose sight again of how good I have it.