I know I wanted a new dishwasher but...

Last Saturday night, Ryan and I had an at-home date. Life has been so busy lately, that when we discovered we had no weekend plans, I suggested we feed the kids dinner and then sit down to a nice dinner once we put them to bed.

So, steak, baked potatoes, ceasar salad and a bottle of red wine was served at about 8 p.m. Alex was in bed but Austin was sitting quietly watching a movie while we enjoyed our dinner -- and commented that dinner date music has changed over the years. Instead of listening to jazz or other tunes, we were listening to Austin's movie -- The Muppet Movie (yes, he was watching the original 1979 Muppet Movie).

After an awesome dinner, we shipped Austin off to bed and headed downstairs to watch a movie of our own (Zack and Miri make a Porno -- pretty damn funny, by the way). But before we flipped on the movie, we turned on the dishwasher.

And about 20 minutes later, we heard drip, drip, drip. Drip, drip, drip.

Our dishwasher was leaking through the ceiling and onto the basement carpet.

Definitely not a good sign.

Ryan ran upstairs to the kitchen and I followed close behind -- but not before sticking a bucket under the rapidly spreading wet spot on the ceiling.

The kitchen floor was flooded and when we opened the dishwasher the tub was full of water. After mopping up the floor with towels and sucking the water out of the tub with the wetvac, Ryan determined that the dishwasher wasn't draining because the pump was shot. The water just couldn't drain, so instead it did the only thing it could -- flow down to my basement floor.

So, on Sunday we went dishwasher shopping. And on Wednesday night we went shopping some more. We found one we liked, but we haven't actually got it yet. Hopefully, it'll be in my kitchen by this weekend.

There's two good things that came out of this experience. The first is that we always, and I mean ALWAYS, turn our dishwasher on before we go to bed instead of before we head downstairs to watch TV. I don't know what possessed us to turn it on earlier that night, but it's a good thing we did because otherwise, we would've woken Sunday morning to a flooded kitchen and a flooded basement.

And the second good thing that came of this is that we've been wanting a new dishwasher pretty much since we bought the house but could never justify the expense when we had one that worked. The one in our kitchen was about 25 years old (yup, that old), sounded like a jet engine coming through the house whenever it was turned on and, lately, only got the dishes sort of clean. So now it's dead and we have to get a shiny new one.

But of course, not having a dishwasher, and not having a shiny new one yet means I'm stuck washing everyone's dishes by hand.