Burning ring of fire

I tend to fall into bed at around 2 AM.  I finish working and then make a school lunch, fold a load of laundry, maybe wash some dishes and then go to bed.

So when my alarm rang at 7:30 AM today I felt bleary and maybe a little bit like I’d been tied to a horse and dragged over a dusty and rocky path.

I comforted myself by planning a post-meeting nap and then to my chagrin, I remembered that I was supposed to start working at 9 AM instead of my usual 10 AM.  That was problematic because I would be at a meeting with my daughter’s teacher at 8:30 AM.

Bummer.

Not only did I not get a nap, I had to start work an hour early.  And I have to start an hour early every day this week.  No fun.

Today I had appliance repair guys come to look at my dead dishwasher and linty clothes dryer.  First, they examined the dishwasher and declared “good news” and “bad news.”

The good news was that James, the head repairman, was able to diagnose the problem. Yay!

The bad news was that he was not able to fix it.  He explained that the part was no longer available and that to rebuild it would cost as much as a new dishwasher.  Boo!

We then had a brief conversation to lament that things are not built to last and then we blamed the younger generation for expecting electronics to be disposal instead of reparable.  Alas and alack.

Then James and the other guy moved on to the clothes dryer.  As soon as they removed the front panel, I heard exclamations of amazement and alarm and incredulity.  Then they called me in to see the fire hazard that blanketed the interior of my machine.

You could see where part of the linty layer had smoldered into a black patch of doom.

It was pretty scary, actually.  That was what I smelled when I smelled the scent of smoke in my laundry room last week.

When they pulled the top of the machine off and looked inside, it was even more impressive and alarming.

They cleaned out the whole machine and said I was lucky that we hadn’t had a fire.  They told me this was not just build-up from the three years we’ve been here but from way before that.

Here’s the moral of the story:  Get someone handy to open up your clothes dryer so you can vacuum it clean or . . . if you are unhandy like some of us, hire someone.  It cost me less than a hundred dollars and kept my family’s underpants from going up in flames.