The saga of the dishwasher...

I will not bore you (or is disgust the necessary word here?) with the amount of detail or nasty (and when I say nasty, I mean totally, horribly awfully, disgusting, like worse than anything you have ever seen inside of a dishwasher, or outside..) pictures of what was causing my problem..
It is fixed now.. no thanks to the many helping hands and helpful comments from my children last night..
It was extremely un-helpful to the situation and to my mood to hear Lynn repeatedly comment, "The dishwasher is broken and this really sucks.." Yeah, tell me somthin' I don't already know.
Peyton was really helpful trying to literally dig in and help out :D
It was fun telling her to "stop it" over and over..
The problem originally was that, I believed, the drain was clogged. I was not exactly excited about the prospect of opening up the innards of my dishwasher to find remnants of dinners past, those remnants that do not dissolve away.. no, not excited at all.
There was standing water in the bottom of my dishwasher,and it has been there since Friday.
Gross, I know.
Whenever I would hit "drain", it would just fill with more water, and not drain. Totally not what the button says it does..
Very frustrating.
Last night, after washing the dinner dishes by hand, yet again, I opened the appliance to see if somehow, magically, the standing water had drained without my pressing the non-functioning button.
The only thing that happened, was the filling of my kitchen and adjoining dining area with an invisible, yet highly offensive smell.
Everyone began wondering who flatulated.
No flatulence here.
Just my dishwasher.
And it's standing water.
That won't drain.
Thanks to the non-functioning button.
Lazy button.
Out of desperation to rid my home of this foulness, I once again, closed the door. Pushed the drain button, and prayed.
Now, I don't know exactly what I prayed for, just that this would soon be over with.
I heard the spray of water commence, and quickly pressed the button again.
IT ACTUALLY DRAINED!!!
To see if my little prayer actually did the trick, I ran a cycle.
Only to have the floor of my kitchen flooded.
Water leaked out from the bottom of the dishwasher door, out the top, right under the control panel, and from the vent itself.
Not good.
Not good at all.
I think I used every towel at my disposal, trying this over and over, trying to see if my eyes were deceiving me, or if it were just a fluke.
It flooded over and over.
Each time I would open the door,jiggle around a few things, sometimes take things apart, trying to discover "why!?!?!"..
Then, on about the 98th attempt, I pried the interior cover off the vent, the thingie that allows the steam, the scorching steam, to escape the dishwasher during the drying cycle..
Sheer grossness...
I vomited in my mouth, then quickly swallowed it back down.
I mean, totally disgusting.
It took a while to clean THAT out.
And nowhere in my dishwasher's guide, booklet of instructions, guide to the maintenance of the appliance, does it say anything about this being a necessary task to perform.
I calculated..
We've had this thing for about 4 years.
Four years of gunk and goo, and sticky, very gross, barftastic crap, had accumulated there.
Now it is gone, and my dishwasher functions in a manner that is pleasing unto me.
It works.
It drains.
And it doesn't flood my kitchen anymore!