Monday morning I woke up early to a hard rain. I decided to forgo my plan of getting up and continuing my normal routine despite it being a holiday. I went back to sleep. At nine o'clock I jumped out of bed and grabbed the laundry from my closet intending to continue my path, just two hours later. I carried the laundry outside, sorted it, and proceeded to fill up the washing machine.
Rewind to a couple of months ago when my wonderful Whirlpool top loading washing machine, that I paid an arm and a leg for, started making this god awful noise. It sounded like a 747 was taking off in our garage. If one was standing next to the machine, one could not hear any conversation, not even the one in one's own head. The fact that my machine was parked in the garage turned out to be a plus. The noise only occurred in the spin cycle at the end and most of the time I was busy in the house and, although I heard it, it didn't really bother me.
Well, it bothered my husband. It made him crazy. He called a repair guy. The guy came out and announced that the drum needed to be replaced despite the washing machine only being three and a half years old. He really wasn't concerned. He told us that Whirlpool would do right by us and to contact them. We did. They were not helpful. Not one little itsy bitsy bit. They said, "Pay up or else." My husband was not amused. The repair guy told me that nothing was wrong with the washer and that it would still work, but the noise made my husband batty. He finally tiptoed out into the night and replaced the washing machine.
The new machine is a Maytag top loader. It is smaller than my Whirlpool and not nearly as nice looking. The gadgets are not electrical and there is no nice dispenser to pour my detergent or my fabric softener. In fact, the machine came with a Downey ball to use when adding fabric softener. The start button is very small and covered with a piece of rubber. To stop the machine and unlock the lid one needs to hold in this rubber button for 3 seconds, which seems to last more like 10 seconds before the machine clicks and shuts off. I have shrugged it off and continued with the laundry.
Back to Monday. I loaded up the washer, dumped in the detergent, pushed the rubber button and nothing. No click noise. No starting of the machine. I pushed the button again. And again. And again, this time a tad harder. The piece of rubber sucked itself into the hole, but nothing happened. I banged it with my hand, muttered to myself about cheap appliances, and went back inside the house.
I went into Darcy's room to wake her as she was meeting a friend in thirty minutes. I sat on her bed and we chatted a bit. While we were chatting I kept hearing a noise. A very familiar noise. The kind of noise we use to hear in our playroom any time it rained. A drip, drip, smack sound of water droplets hitting carpeting. This noise was coming from Madison's room. I got up and went through the connecting door into her room and stared at the ceiling. It was dark in her room and she was asleep, but I couldn't see any spots on the ceilings like the ones that cover the ceiling in my Steelers room. Yet the drip, drip, smack was louder. I moved around to the side of the bed and there on the floor was a big wet spot. I looked up into her ceiling fan above. Large water drops were coming from her fan and plopping on to the floor. I went to the kitchen and got a large bowl.
Then I went into my bedroom where my husband lay sleeping, enjoying his holiday. I waited while the dog jumped on the bed and licked his face awaking him.
"The washing machine is broken. Something to do with the start button. The roof in Madison's room is leaking through her ceiling fan and she has a large spot of water on her carpet. The dog won't go outside to poop because it is raining." I touched his leg. "Oh, and good-morning."
He rolled over, pulled the covers over his head, and ordered me to call a Maytag repairman. He did not come out of the bed until 11:00 AM. By then I had pulled the dog by his collar outside and ordered him to potty, getting soaked in the process. I had found a Maytag repairman online who immediately called me back as soon as I answered the questions and hit the send button. Unfortunately, I did not find the phone in time to answer it. He left a message to call him. I checked on the water situation. I went into the bathroom where hubby was showering and made my report.
"Dog has peed, but not pooped. He refuses to do so in this weather. I found a Maytag repairman who called and left a message. What would you like me to do?"
"Call him and tell him to come out here."
"The bowl I put under the leak in Madison's room is almost full. What should I do?"
"Empty the bowl."
I waited until he was finished and dressed and took him into the bedroom with the leak. He was relieved that the ceiling was not decorated like the ceiling in my Steelers room. He thought the fact that the leak was in the fan meant that the roof was leaking at a seam. He didn't seem too concerned.
I took him out into the garage to the washing machine and showed him the button situation. I pushed it and showed him how it didn't click. How it didn't work. He stood for several seconds looking at the machine.
"I can see the problem already," he said quietly. "It isn't plugged in."
Flashback....ever since my husband has worked at his present job he has had to do several on-calls, meaning that we get calls in the dead of night from the department asking for computer help. If the computers are down, the bad guys might get free or something, thus the on-calls. My husband is not a good person to wake in the night, one of the reasons why my children do not come to his side of the bed in the middle of the night when they are sick, scared, etc. He would answer these calls and have to repeat everything the caller was saying. He would sit silent for a minute, rubbing his face, and then he would say this:
"Can you get behind the machine? Can you get down on the floor and look up behind the desk? Yes. Yes, go behind it. Can you see the cord? Can you follow the cord? Is the computer plugged in?"
This use to send me in hysterics. He did it every time he got a call in the middle of the night. I finally told him that the caller had to have wanted to shoot him. I told him it was demeaning and annoying. What idiot doesn't know that his computer isn't plugged in. Seriously? He assured me it was a necessity.
Spring forward to Monday.
"The machine isn't plugged in." He picked up the dangling plug, plugged it into the wall, pushed the rubber button, and the machine started right up. He looked at me, grinned, and said, "Now you see why I ask that question every single time. Wait til the office hears this one."
My sad response was, "Who unplugs a washing machine?" Turns out he did while putting in our new hot water heater two days prior.
Problem #1 fixed. He got a lot of joy from that one, especially when the repairman called back once again.
Problem #2 wasn't able to be fixed that night, although my youngest informed me that "Daddy is on the roof" when I called to check in at 8:00 PM while out to dinner. I hung up the phone on that note. I should have ordered a drink.
The roofer came yesterday. He examined the ceiling fan. He walked outside and looked up at the roof from Madison's bedroom window. H went on the roof. In five minutes he was back in my house with a rusty nail in his hand. "That," he explained, "was the culprit." Water was leaking around the nail straight into the room. He did some roof magic and assured me we shouldn't have any problems. Then he charged me $65.
Not bad for a rainy government holiday.
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