Actually yesterday day was ok; it was the evening that was rough but the whole thing started in the morning. The Queen (May She Live Forever) had a full day planned so she put a roast in the crockpot along with all the fixings - fresh spices, potatoes and carrots. By 10am, the house started to smell like dinner.

Before she left for the day, she wanted the crockpot moved from the island in the middle of the kitchen to a safer location. She asked me to do it, and I immediately complied. I unplugged the appliance, moved it carefully to the counter and plugged it back in. Then I went back to work.

She returned home after 5 to the smell of…well, nothing. (Ok, the smell of our castle - which is pretty much the combined smell of all its inhabitants, including the pets I suppose.) As she came in the door, I heard her exclaim, "Oh no!" She ran to the kitchen and then started saying "No!" over and over. Poor thing. She was completely wiped out from her day and was close to tears because her meal planning efforts was all for naught.

This crockpot (the big one) uses an electronic control panel (as opposed to the manual switch on the little one). When I plugged it back in, neither of us thought to press the cook button to turn it back on. Thus the beautiful roast, and all its accessories had sat on the counter at room temperature all day long. It probably could have been salvaged but we chose not to play food poisoning roulette and instead fed dinner to the trash can.

Our meal was rather late, to say the least.

During dinner, the Princess got up from the table and went to the fridge to get dressing for her vegetable: some abomination that some call cauliflower. She could not reach it so she stood in front of the open fridge chanting "I want wanch," over and over. Finally, the Architect heeded her cries and went over to assist.

Unfortunately the dishwasher door was opened and he did not see it. He tripped over it and then fell onto it. It obediently broke under his weight. He ended up injuring his hand, though not severely. At this late hour, the pile of dishes from preparing two dinners (and eating one) loomed large before our eyes, in view of our exhaustion...and the broken dishwasher.

The Queen (MSLF) worked on getting the kids to bed while I got tools and figured out how to disassemble a dishwasher. It turns out that a metal plate on the door was bent severely and had cracked at the stress point. It was very difficult to bend it back into place because the entire piece was welded to the door assembly. Using creative techniques (involving a rope, a hammer and a wonder bar) we managed to bend the bar into a reasonable shape and filled the crack with JB Weld (definitely the Dr. Pepper of the Epoxy world).

And that was the evening.

The next time there is no dinner, I think we will simply go out and graze on the back lawn. Now there is a plan that could never go wrong!