Beth’s excited voice rang out across the house Sunday morning: “They’re here! They’re here! Honey, they’re here!!!”

“They” were the delivery guys from Great Indoors, delivering Beth’s new washer and dryer. She’d been shopping and coveting and obsessing and thinking and talking and planning and wishing and dreaming and wanting a new washer and dryer for months, and we had finally pulled the trigger and bought them. And Sunday was D-Day: Delivery Day. She was so excited she was fairly squealing.

Of course there was a problem, though. Doesn’t there always have to be for any dream that comes true, some little bit of tarnish on the gleam of heavenly perfection? Our glitch was that they’d brought the wrong dryer. We ordered the gas model, they delivered the electric model. So back to the store with the wrong one and re-deliver the right one — today, if they are to be believed.

But Beth had been waiting for this day too long to be denied. She may not have had the new dryer, but by God she had a brand new washing machine and she was going to do laundry! (Cue snowstorms in Hell.) And so she did. This is Beth and Suki watching the magic of the new front-loading washer through the handy front-loading viewing port. Beth’s only regret is that it doesn’t have an internal light. Fortunately, she had a flashlight.

It’s a Girl and Her Dog … and Her Washing Machine.