All New

This afternoon we had the 6^th new appliance installed in the last two weeks. It was my husband that started this. About two months ago he said he wanted a new stove.
I said, That is ridiculous. The one we have still works, except for the one burner.
He said that he wanted one of those glass-top stoves and he wanted a microwave installed above it so we have more counter space.
I said that if we are going to get anything new, we need to get new gutters first so he doesn’t have to climb the ladder every spring and fall to clean out the leaves. And then we should get a new sliding glass door out onto the porch because the glass seal is broken and it looks like winter frost all year.
That ended the conversation for a while.
Then one day I was drying some clothes in my dryer and saw that after the 70 minute cycle my load was still not dry. I thought about all the energy wasted because of all the time it takes to run the dryer. I told him I wanted a new one.
He said after we get the new stove.
This is more important, I said. We can live with the stove and the one broken burner but the dryer is wasting our energy and money.
Then I started thinking that maybe this is about priorities not about needs. So I told him that I would approve the stove if he got the gutters first. He made arrangements for the gutters within an hour.
Then one day, we were driving home from my daughter’s house and he said, Let’s stop at this appliance store. I happened to be there the other day and saw a washer and dryer that I want you to see.
So we stopped and I noted that the washer and dryer were on top of these drawers and I would not have to stoop to fill the washer and dryer any more. Doing the wash is the activity that most hurts my back. So we bought them right then and there.
He said, now we can get the new stove. He said he wanted a silver one. I said we can’t get one that is different than the other appliances. So we bought a new refrigerator, too. There was nothing wrong with the refrigerator except for the ice maker being broken and one of the door shelves.
I was raised in an era when people didn’t replace things until they were broken and these were not quite broken enough, I told him.
Our dishwasher has been broken for three years and we have gotten used to doing the dishes by hand (though washing dishes is the other activity that hurts my back). So that all of the kitchen appliances would match, we bought a new dishwasher, too.

We found out that our fry pans are the wrong kind for the stove top so I went to St. Cloud yesterday and bought new fry pans and a new wok.

Six new appliances, with new pots and pans, and new gutters in three weeks. Craziness.

Bernie just left for town and he said, see you later. You’d better start reading the instructions so we know how to work all of this stuff.