Walnuts on My Windshield

December 12, 2004

So many things have happened since the last Walnuts column that I have had a hard time figuring out what to write about. I could write about our trip to North Little Rock at Thanksgiving (very nice, very fun, ate too much) or Jessica's piano recital (she did an excellent job and we really enjoyed it) or her new upper braces (she hates them, but brushes faithfully with a great attitude) or even Katie's PSAT scores (she did very well, but we found out she took it a year too early to qualify for any scholarship opportunities - aargh), but I think, in honor of my life being a zoo, I will write about the washer.

When I moved into my own apartment, over 20 years ago, I paid $75 for a used washer that was approximately 20 years old at the time. I/we used it for about ten years. At that point, we embarked on a series of additional used washers. They came and went and generally worked very well, as did the final one in the line. A few years ago, it was given to us - a Whirpool, heavy-duty, huge-tub affair in excellent condition. We do an average of 18 loads a week, so you could say it was ridden hard and put up wet.

A few weeks ago, the washer began to chirp intermittently. Then the chirping became louder and more frequent. I mentioned it to Scott. His comment was something along the lines of, "sounds like a cricket in the laundry room." My job is to tell Scott that a problem exists and how important it is to me that it be rectified. This I did. Then it is his job to decide what, if anything to do about it.

Monday afternoon. Katie's laundry was whirling away when the chirping began. It escalated rapidly from a chirp to a screech. Scott, of course, was at work. I sauntered toward the laundry room. The sound approximated that of many fingernails moving rapidly over many of chalkboards. Suddenly, with a very loud yelp, the washer stopped. I did the obvious: I pushed the button in, and swung the dial around to see if there was any way to get through the cycle. The short answer would be, "no," because not only did the same thing happen at the same point in the cycle, this time I smelled smoke! I shut it off and ventured a peek at Katie's large load of soapy clothes standing in a tub of water. Not a pretty sight.

Monday evening. Scott fished out Katie's clothes, and she and Jessica hand rinsed them in the bathtub. Because they couldn't spin around very fast in the bathroom, it took three dryer cycles to get them dry.

Tuesday morning. Scott called a repairman we had never met, but who promised to come that day.

Tuesday, 6:00 PM. Mr. Bolend arrived at suppertime and found the problem in short order: the motor was burned out. Yes, it could be replaced, and yes, he had one in his truck. However, it would cost a little more than half the price of a new one, and he recommended our buying a new one, if at all possible. He spent quite while explaining the pros and cons of that decision, and even told us which brands to look for and which ones to avoid. He had been a Whirlpool service man for 30 years, so I guess he should know. He was at our house almost forty minutes, and he would not take a dime. He told Scott to apply it to the price of a new one. What a guy! He gets our next appliance service call.

Tuesday, 7:30 PM. We went to Lowe's, where we had had an excellent experience last summer with the purchase of a freezer, and selected our new Roper, heavy-duty washer. Being the only people fool enough to live in the country without a truck, we paid the extra $40 for delivery, set-up, and hauling off of the cricket. I would be gone all day Wednesday, so we arranged for delivery on Thursday, "between 8:00 AM and noon." I had a hair appointment in Forsyth at 2:00 PM Thursday.

Thursday. 7:50 AM. Getting the washer(s) in and out would require a somewhat circuitous route, so the boys cleared a path through the playroom, kicked all the piles of sheets and towels to the side of the dining room, moved the dining room table, and we waited. At 12:30 PM, I called the Lowe's man. (Each time you call the appliance department, you get a different man. They are all very polite, but I don't know their names. I will just refer to them collectively as "the Lowe's man.")

I told him I was expecting a washer between 8:00 AM and noon, but that it had not yet arrived. He said that Lowe's didn't guarantee delivery times; they only promised delivery on a certain day. It could be any time between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM(!), and I had to wait here for it. He couldn't imagine who would have told us it would be delivered by noon, because that was not their policy. Of course, I didn't know the first Lowe's man's name, but I told Lowe's man #2 that we had specifically been told Tuesday night that it would be delivered Thursday morning. I resisted the temptation to state the obvious fact that it was no longer morning. He then looked up our order and triumphantly announced that the delivery men should arrive soon; we were #2 on the truck and they had left Lowe's at 9:00 AM! I told the Lowe's man that if that were the case, their first delivery must have been in St. Louis. I gave the girls detailed instructions on what do when they came and left at 1:45 to be sheared.

Thursday, 2:45 PM. I returned just as Laurel and Hardy arrived. These guys were a riot. I don't know where Lowe's got them, but they clearly need to have a show on the strip. They kept us all laughing till our sides hurt, while they hauled the old one out and lugged the new one in. They got the new washer all hooked up and leveled, turned it on, and water immediately went shooting across the floor. This was not a good sign, and maybe I should have realized what was to come. They cheerfully tipped the washer up, did something else to it, hooked it back up, re-leveled it, and turned it on. No problem. Water went in properly, water spun out properly. I signed for it, they accidentally left a pair of leather gloves on the dryer, and they left.

Now, if you take your average American family of six and go three and a half days without doing any laundry, you will have heaps of soiled fabric everywhere. This being the case with us, Jessica set to immediately on the accumulated towels. We were all so happy.

Thursday, 4:00 PM. Jessica yelled at me to come quickly, which I did. There was water shooting from somewhere all over the laundry room floor. I couldn't see the source , but I could hear it splashing as it hit the floor. I yelled at her to shut it off, which she did. I was not happy at that point.

I called Lowe's and explained the problem. The Lowe's man (#3) told me that it must be a bad valve and that in moving it from truck to truck, it must have gotten stuck. Not to worry; they would bring us a new machine on Friday, sometime between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM. I asked him what to do about our machine full of water and soapy towels. He suggested we take the towels out and let the delivery man deal with the water. What fun.

Friday, 8:00 AM. We again moved furniture to clear a path for the great washer switch.

Friday, noon. No washer.

Friday, 3:00 PM. No washer. Scott called the Lowe's man (#4) to find out where we were on the list. The Lowe's man sounded surprised. List? We weren't on any list. We weren't?!? No. There was no delivery scheduled for Scott Roberts. Unbelievable! Scott asked what about the fact that I had called yesterday at 4:00 PM and been told that they would deliver a new one on Friday (between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM). The Lowe's man didn't know anything about that. If such a conversation had occurred with yesterday's Lowe's man, there was no record of it, and he had not put in an order for a washer to be delivered to us. However, he (Lowe's man #4) would put in a delivery order for us, and it would arrive on Saturday, between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM. Fine, and thank you. Meanwhile, our children were running out of clean clothes, and there was a veritable mountain of dirty sheets and towels, plus all the bedding Andrew had peed Wednesday night, still heaped in the corner of the dining room.

Saturday, 7:30 AM. Scott called the Lowe's man (#5) to make sure our second new washer was on the truck for today's delivery. It wasn't. The Lowe's man told Scott that there was no order for a washer for us that day or any other day.

Scott doesn't express anger very often at all. In fact, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I have heard him raise his voice. I can still count them on one hand, but it was getting close. Scott told the Lowe's man the history of this purchase: we had paid for it on Tuesday night for a Thursday morning delivery - that arrived Thursday afternoon and was broken; it was now Saturday morning, and that we still had no usable washer. He wanted one delivered TODAY. The Lowe's man took the order and said that he would have it added to the truck and we could expect delivery sometime between, yes, we knew: 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM.

Saturday, 10:00 AM. I suggested to Scott that he might want to call Lowe's and see if they planned to deliver our washer that day. = ) He called and the Lowe's man (#6) said that YES, we would indeed be getting our washer and, in fact, it would be arriving between noon and 1:00 PM. Wonderful. We proceeded through our day.

Saturday, 1:00 PM. No washer.

Saturday, 2:00 PM. No washer.

Saturday, 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00 PM. No washer, and I asked Scott if he'd like to call the Lowe's man again. As a matter of fact, he would. He did. He told the Lowe's man (#7) that we were expecting our (2nd) new washer between noon and 1:00 PM and, it now being 5:00 PM, could we still expect it today. Yes, the Lowe's man was sure that it would be delivered today.

Saturday, 6:00 PM. The Lowe's delivery truck pulled into our driveway! The kids and I were so thrilled we jumped up and down and screamed. However, this particular delivery man (working alone) was much more stoic than Laurel and Hardy had been on Thursday afternoon. He did not seem to appreciate our enthusiasm or our attempts at light-hearted conversation. With Scott's help, he hauled the old one out and lugged the new one in. He hooked it up, leveled it, and tested it. Scott verified that all systems were go, signed for it, and bid the delivery man good night. Jessica immediately started a load of those wet, soapy towels from Thursday.

Saturday, 6:45 PM. I was standing in the kitchen (which is next to the laundry room) when I heard the water splash/cascade onto the laundry room floor. I leapt nimbly to the controls and shut the beast off. It had been in the process of draining the wash water when this happened. I hollered for Scott. A certain amount of detective work later, it was determined that the problem was not the new washer. It had likely not been the other new washer, either. The problem was that the new washer(s) drained much more quickly than earlier model, and our drain pipe simply could not handle the flow. After a few seconds, the water backed up in the pipe and erupted out the top and onto the floor. Sigh.

I am a woman of systems. While Scott meditated on how to fix the problem, I set myself to the task of creating a system to endure the problem until he got it fixed. I ran a large load of sheets and stood there throughout. It probably looked like I was worshiping at the washer shrine. I timed the whole cycle and figured out that a little more than nine minutes after the agitator started, it went into a drain cycle. Furthermore, a little more than eleven minutes after the initial spin, it went into the second drain cycle. Armed with that knowledge and three of the essentials of motherhood (masking tape, index cards, and a kitchen timer), I was ready to tackle the washer demon.

I posted a sign on the washer giving detailed instructions of how to use the washer without flooding the floor. You see, the only things I launder are Scott's and my clothes. Jessica does the family sheets and towels, and the kids all do their own clothes. Therefore, it's not enough for ME to know how to wrangle with the beast; everyone else has to know, too. Here's the current plan. You start the washer, leave, and return in nine minutes to baby it through the drain cycle, as follows: you let it drain 15 seconds, then shut it off and wait 15 seconds. Drain for another 15, and shut it off for 15, etc. After six repetitions, the tub is drained. You are then free to leave for eleven minutes and return to do it all over again. This system is, of course, doable, but it's downright tedious, even for a compulsive person like me.

If this issue of Walnuts on My Windshield seems a bit disjointed, it is because I am writing this while in the process of catching up the ten loads of laundry that have accumulated while we waited for the Lowe's delivery man. That means that I run down to the laundry room and stay there for a few minutes, start my timer, tear up to my desk, and type a few lines, for either nine or eleven minutes. When the timer beeps, I'm off like a racehorse, down the stairs, angling through the living room, sailing across the kitchen, and skidding back into the laundry room. In addition to making it very hard to concentrate, this also provides me a nice little aerobic workout. So far, I have made it in time every time, although once yesterday, I had to leave the bathroom when the timer beeped, which was not fun.

Scott thinks the pipe must be partially clogged. Because the lower end of the pipe is buried in the ground heading to the graywater leach line, it is not what you would call readily accessible. He hoped to either pull the supposed clog out or force it on down. We don't own a plumber's snake, and neither does our neighbor. That didn't hinder Scott. He reminded me of "The Professor" on Gilligan's Island, when he created a snake with a sprig of bamboo and some coiled coat hangar wire. Unfortunately, the bamboo did not flex enough to go around the bend, and all it brought up was soapsuds. He next ran the hose from the outside faucet into the laundry room and turned it on full force into the pipe. However, the hose evidently produced less pressure than the spinning washer tub. All the water ran down the pipe just fine. Now we are waiting on a plumber to call back.

If we should ever have to purchase another major appliance, we probably will shop at Lowe's. However, we will buy a truck first.

From My Bookshelf:

Within Reach: My Everest Story by Mark Pfetzer, rank 7. Mark began climbing mountains at 13 years of age and by 16 had summitted some of the highest peaks in the world. In many cases, he was the youngest person ever to do so. This book tells of his training and several of his climbs, including his adventures on Mount Everest.

Life Without the IRS by ???, rank 9. I listened to this book on tape, and it is still in the van, which Scott took because the Honda is not in good shape, so I can't find the author's name right now. This is a very clear, logical case for abolishing the IRS and setting up an alternative system for generating tax revenue. The author gives details of exactly what needs to be done, why it must be done, and how it could be accomplished. He also explains the thinking behind the current income tax system; where it came from (can you spell M-A-R-X?) and where it will take us if left as is. Very, very interesting.

Quote of the Week:

"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head". ~ Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

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