Best Laid Plans

So you know the old adage about making plans.  We had a semi-firm one to finally get a washer and dryer that match in about six months or so.

Now, mind you, I don't really care all that much.  I mean, we haven't had a matching washer and dryer for 30 years so why start now?  But it had finally gotten on my husband's nerves, and it doesn't help that our washer and dryer happen to be the first things you see when you enter into the house via the door that everyone uses.

At least they were both white; that was something.

Well, Sunday when I got home from church I saw that my husband had the dryer apart.  It had started making this cat screeching sound several months or so before but after a while it would die out and then stop completely.  However, it drove the cats crazy, especially one of them who instead of going away from the sound seemed pathetically drawn toward it.  And then that made her sidekick who always looks out for her and protects her come along too and the two would stand together while Sassy meowed.

He was trying to fix things, truly he was.  But you know how it is when you finally go to repair something and then it just gives out?  That's what happened.  We got it back together, no easy feat, and then thought we had aced it.  We were putting a load in to dry when he noticed that perhaps it wasn't making the usual sound as it spinned.  So he says, "Is that thing going around?  I opened the door and it was just all sitting there.  The motor was going and the heating element was heating, but at this rate, we'd have to wait for hours and hours for anything to dry.

So two loads of wet wash are in a laundry basket with a plastic bag inside waiting for help.  It's coming -- this morning!  We went over to Home Appliance in Massillon and got a new pair that match!  And they are taking the old ones away.  Including a washer that was doing just fine.  We got it used about a year ago.

I guess it will be all right.  We'll just owe $851 and some change and after a while, it will be all paid for. 

It's been an expensive period of time lately around our house.  First, my car.  Now this.  With a few little things thrown in for good measure.

We take a washer and dryer pretty much for granted.  They are the workhorses in the house that we depend on each week.  My mother had a wringer-washer and it was a hideous and scary thing.  We had no dryer; the clothes either hung in the basement or out on the line in the backyard, like most everyone else's did, or maybe it just felt like everyone else did it that way.  The towels were like cardboard, but that was okay too.

When we did get a dryer, it was some big commercial thing that took up half the basement -- a Bendix.  There's an old brand name for you.  My older sister who now lives in Arizona was a nurse.  She cleaned up her nurse's oxfords and polished them up nice, and then thought she'd wash the laces.  You guessed it.  She threw the laces in the Bendix, a dryer that was big enough to fit a kid easily, maybe two and then went around and around until they were ready to go.  Energy conservation.

Take care.  Hope it goes well this morning when they come and install everything. 

I won't know how to act.