Appliance Virus

Shortly after reading Fish in My Hair's crisis with boxer shorts accumulating due to dryer malfunctions, I started my dishwasher and heard the sound of impending disaster. I can only think that somehow, I've caught an appliance virus, sent through the computer through her blog. And, unlike her dh who might take his time fixing their ailing machines, mine considers all appliance repair to be under my job description.

Granted, I consider such occurances to be a throwing down of the glove, a challenge. I will not call an appliance repair man (and they almost always are men) because 1. they charge an ungodly amount just to show up without so much as lifting a finger, 2. they assume I know nothing and talk to me like a 2 year old, and 3. it has happened to me more than once that they've arrived, turned on the blamed machine which moments earlier would not work, and voilà, it turns on. "I'm sorry, ma'am, there's nothing wrong with it. Ya just have to push this here button."

After about $500 spent three weeks ago to repair parts of our ailing septic system, it again overflowed into the garage (where the relief valve is) whenever I did laundry. I convinced dh that we needed to dig up the pipe before the septic tank, and there we found a line break with a root ball as big as a car in there. The pipe is now clear, but due to weather, we've had this open hole, 4 feet deep, in our back yard. Soon, I'll learn pipe repair. I'm beginning to learn why people just up and buy NEW houses.

I've learned to fix the washer, dryer, computers, wire the house for electrical, and now, I'm about to learn about dishwashers. Of course, if you turn on the ceiling fan in the living room, the automatic garage door opens, but hey, the fan works.