Some thoughts on entropy

   Whenever life begins going along smoothly, there will be a bump in the road just to remind us that we are dependent on God, not ourselves and force us to turn again to Him.

There is also the fact that nothing ever stays the same.  It is constantly wearing down or breaking or descending into chaos. 

    Last winter I was pretty sure entropy was overtaking us.  It started with the dishwasher.  We were renovating a house and in the course of working on the kitchen at the new house, a new dishwasher came my way as well.  The old one had been subject to random fits of leakage so this seemed a good time to replace it.  This appeared to be an easy task but when Mark pulled out the old dishwasher, we discovered that it had been leaking for quite a while through the floor and into the basement, just not out in front where we could see it.  The floor underneath was rotten.  Obviously this would be a bigger project than we anticipated at first.

     While this project was still in process, our water in the house began shutting off.  We have our own well and I am used to running quite a few things in my attempts to multitask.  I can have someone in the shower, run two washing machines, the kitchen sink and the dishwasher all at one time without too much  distress for the person in the shower.  Suddenly I could only use one item at a time and it wasn’t going to be the dishwasher.   The only way to deal with this problem was run to the basement, shut off the washing machines, turn off the pump, wait a few minutes, reset the pressure switch, run back upstairs and remember to start everything up again.

     We were all still fairly cheerful about these things and then the house got cold and then colder.  It was January and I don’t tolerate cold very well. Since Mark was going out to get plumbing parts, he decided he might as well get some furnace parts too.  Then, to take the cake, our old furnace down in the basement sprang an oil leak.  Now my husband can fix anything but everything in one week was a little much.  Still, one can either laugh or cry.  We decided to have a good laugh and then work at fixing one thing at a time.  The furnace has been removed, the circulator fixed, the water tank has a new pressure switch and I have a new list of things that need repaired this winter.

     Entropy hits us in other areas also. For example, I have a dishwasher, a regular sized kitchen sink and a large 3 bay restaurant size sink and I still cannot keep up with the demand for clean dishes. Over the years I have become convinced that that at least in our house, dirty dishes breed in the sink at night.  No matter how empty the sink is at night, there are more dishes there in the morning.  One year I interviewed some of the children to see if anyone knew the answer.  Benjamin was seventeen at the time, and he offered the first plausible theory.

     “I believe dishes are like Hattifatteners.  The multiply especially fast during thunderstorms.  Outlets by the sink increase this disposition still more”

     This didn’t entirely explain my dish problem, so I asked Naomi.  She put forward her theory eagerly.  “Dishes are relatives to amoebas and they divide asexually at night while no one is looking.”

    Ephraim and Jedidiah simply said “Mom, eating food makes more dishes.” 

     They wondered why was this was so hard for me to understand.  They also added they sincerely hoped I wasn’t planning to ask them to help whip the dishes into submission.

     The more I think about housework and dishes, the more I become convinced that it is a simple mathematical equation. The degree of cleanliness of your house is a directly proportional ratio of mess created by toddlers and ability and numbers available to clean.  In other words, if you have mostly older children, your house will be cleaner than if you have a higher ratio of preschoolers.

     On the other hand, no matter how many preschoolers or almost adult children you have, entropy is always out there lurking just beyond the door, waiting to force its way in.  My husband is not so romantic about it.  He just says,  “ Everything is either being cleaned up or messed up. There is no in- between”

     He is right of course. There is nothing really lurking and conspiring to trash my house.  Life is messy and I have come to grips with that.  I refuse to give up and let it overtake me but neither shall I let it rule my life.  When everything breaks down, it’s time to gird up my loins and go to work so that when we are done, we’ll have another memory in our cache of stories to tell when we are old.