The Washing Machine

I did some laundry this morning and when I opened up the door, the clothes were still in a puddle of water.  I was some concerned, but not a lot concerned.  I just turned the washer on the drain/spin cycle to try to get the water out.  Once that was done I opened the door and out of my front loading washer a river of water spewed forth.  It was like in the movies, except there weren't any suds.  I quickly closed the door and set about cleaning up gallons of water off of the floor.  I didn't know what to do since there was still a lot of water in the washer.  Normally, I'd call the Big Guy and see what kind of sage advice he might have and hope he might say, "Ok, I'll be right over," but since he's in Quartsite, AZ I didn't even think I should bother him with a problem he couldn't solve.  So I did the next best thing and called Bill, who said what he typically says, "Why don't you try the handymen?"  I cancelled my walk, left a message for the handymen and tried various methods of cleaning up the mess and trying to get the water out of the washer without more water flooding the floor.  None of my methods could be described as successful, as evidenced by the swollen floor boards.

The handymen came over and, of course, the water drained right out.  And when we ran first cycle it drained just fine.  They are nice guys and the swollen floor boards were proof that I was not making shit up and they did some research on the Internet and next thing I knew they had the front off the washing machine and a part disassembled and said, "You gotta come see this."  I was afraid it was going to be a dead mouse.  It wasn't.  There were at least 20 bobby pins stuck in this thing that has something to do with blah blah blah and somehow also has to do with the water draining properly.  I cleaned out all of the foul smelling junk and then they put the washer back together and now my washing machine is working like new.  I'm going to run out of laundry soap doing so much laundry today.

What a day though; this machine caused me to miss my walk and going to the movies with Sara and Jessica and made my back hurt from trying to clean stuff up.  I'm going to take a 1/2 a pain pill and spend the rest of the afternoon on the couch reading or watching dumb television.

I feel like this past week has been one calamity after another.  There's only one thing that's going to make me feel better: brilliant violence à la Jack Reacher.