Time and Money and Stuff

I'm really hung up on time this week.

Things I think happened a few years ago keep turning out to be many, many more. I am losing track of time.

Lets start with my washing machine, which I was sure I bought a few years ago. Few? Try Seven.

Yesterday, I was just minding my own business, drinking my coffee, doing some laundry. The washing machine starts squeaking and thumping in the spin cycle. I stop it to look. Dear lord, the plastic door seal is ragged and torn, the spinning tub hanging suspiciously low. Broken. Badly.

What to do? Call for a repairman and pay $100 to find out I need a new one, or just get a new one? Didn't I throw out the extended warranty renewal not too long ago? Didn't I say things should be expected to work, how silly to waste the money on an unlikely event? Yeah, that was me.

To renew the service contract is $340/year, or to have a serviceman replace the bearing assembly is $250 in parts alone, and hours of labor, plus likely another $200 for the drum, and oh its a discontinued model, and poorly rated so I'm getting rid of that expensive hunk of metal. I'm glad I can't remember how much over $1000 I spent for it, but that's a lot of quarters at the laundromat. My first washing machine, purchased in 1987, sits in my husband's garage. A GE or Sears model, can't remember. He uses it to wash towels and shop rags. They really and truly don't make things like they used to.

I hated that Bosch washer anyhow. It always lied about how much time left on the cycle. A 56 minute wash cycle could take 90. Sometimes the spin cycle left clothes soggy, sometimes it spinned them into oblivion. I now read online that all front loaders are design flawed, weak and breakable at the bearings and super expensive to replace. Now I know.

In other news, the dishwasher is dying a slow death, and I think, golly I've only had this thing six years.
Nope, try Ten. A Decade is a long time for a dishwasher. I'm tired of pre-washing and post-washing my dishes and was already looking at replacement models when the washing machine killed itself. But I can't shake the surprise at how far off my perception of the purchase dates was with the reality. I'm losing years.
Why? How? Who knows?

In another time warp example, my daughter informed me that Tucker's Birthday was this week. I know how old he is because we got him 3 months before Dad died, and I know exactly when Dad died, and I can't believe how far away that day was, and yet how recent it feels. So Tucker turned six, which both kids couldn't fathom, they thought he was maybe four. I said welcome to my world, where I just keep doing the time warp, again.

My daughter's new coach just asked how old she was and I said 16, and when he asked her birthday, I suddenly realized that although she feels newly 16, she is not, and will turn 17 in two months. How did that happen? I could barely focus on the conversation because I was so shocked that my baby is turning 17.
How am I losing my grasp on time? I used to be a steel trap with dates, anniversaries, milestones.

I truly don't know. But I have two theories.
One, the older I get the faster the gerbil wheel spins, so it's easy to get dizzy and disoriented.
Two, the less I sleep, the more confused I get about things like timelines and the more my memory turns to mush.

Theories aside, I'm out of sorts here, and pissed how much time I'm losing, and how much money broken things are costing me this year.

In my last tirade about time, at the request of a friend, I agreed to let a college scholarship kid talk to me about knives. I asked how long the presentation was and he said 45 minutes to an hour. I said you're gonna need to speed that up, I don't have an hour. Well needless to say, the pitch went on way past an hour. Try an hour and forty minutes, the last thirty of which I tried with increasing frustration to get off the phone. I even said point blank this has gone on too long, and I'm brain dead. I can't possibly think or talk about this any more. But he kept talking, or babbling, and he was so nice and nerdy I didn't have it in me to be mean.
But at the end of the pitch, he gave me the price for the starter knife set - 8 items in a lovely wood block for only $834.00 - say WHAT?  I tried to explain to the kid that it was not his lucky day to call me on the day my washing machine died, and I didn't need new knives, and he just kept trying. These are the best quality knives made in the US and you'll never need to buy another knife again in your life, and on and on. Um, hey kid, I'm 54, and odds are I won't be needing any knives in about a decade or two. Not a sound investment. I finally told him look, I have to hang up now. Right now. Bye, bye. I think he was still babbling when I hung up. Poor kid. Poorer me, giving almost two hours because I can't ever say no. That friend of mine's going to get an earful about this one.

So yesterday was a blue ribbon day for thinking about time, wasting time, and thinking about wastes of time and also money, and if nothing else, at least I didn't waste any more of my money on the best knives made in the US. I think I'll survive just fine without them.

Oh, and finally.....6 more inches of snow last night, bringing our YTD tally to almost 60" of snow. The world has gone mad.

And yet, Tucker doesn't seem to mind one bit. He just takes life as it comes, and probably doesn't have the slightest concept of time.

In my next life, I want to be a dog.

xo