Monday Madness

Fortunately, I felt better today. The weather was nasty, often spitting rain. I suspect I got a double whammy yesterday with nerve pain from partying Saturday, and fibromyalgia pain from the coming rain.

Today I tried to make up for lost time. Besides the usual chores, I had some little trees to plant. Dad likes to donate to the Arbor Day Foundation, but doesn't need the trees, so he has them sent them to me. I'd put them in water to soak the roots, and needed to get them in pots today.

In the midst of working with that, Jonathan was trying to get ready for work. There was no hot water. Cold showers in cold weather aren't the best.

Fortunately, it was a quick to fix, and he had breakfast while waiting for the water to heat up. I correctly surmised that one of the breakers didn't get flipped back after our mad flipping of switches Saturday, trying to figure out what was wrong with the washing machine.

Oh yes, the washing machine. It's broke. I discovered this Saturday, after sorting out two weeks worth of laundry and ready to "get 'er done!" Wouldn't you know it!?!

At first I thought it wasn't working at all, and that's when we went crazy flipping the breakers trying to find the one for the washing machine. Then I figured out it wasn't the lack of electricity, that the washing machine just wouldn't spin out. It would come back on if I moved the dial to a part of the cycle it "agitated" then go off again when it got to the spin cycle.

Mr. Fix-It can fix a lot of things, but washing machines aren't on his list, so I had to wait until today to call the repair man. Of course, he was busy and said he probably wouldn't make it until tomorrow. As it turns out, he got done on one job a little sooner than he expected, and about noon he stopped by here.

He fixed the no spin-out problem. There was a switch that went bad. Unfortunately, he found there were a couple of other major things that went bad. Like the pump had a leak. And the agitator wasn't really agitating. It was moving back and forth, but not really moving the clothes around in the tub properly ("not ratcheting" was his term). sigh....

I said, "Are you trying to tell me I have a dead washing machine?"
"Noooooooo... fix this stuff and it'll be good to go."
"How much?"

Well, never mind how much. Let's just say enough to make me seriously consider getting a new washing machine, but not quite enough to tip the scales and actually do it. The next washing machine I get I'm holding out for one of the nicer kinds that are sort of up on a pedestal, and you don't have to bend over so much and drag stuff up and out of the washing machine. That would be sooooo much easier on my nerve pain!

Anyway, the repair guy left with the pump to do some work in his shop and is supposed to come back tomorrow morning and hopefully get the washing machine in working order.

While he had it apart, I cleaned the mess under the rim and the sides.

I also needed to cook some ground beef. I buy big packages of it, cook it and freeze it to use it as needed. I used part of it first to make a salsa meat loaf for supper tonight.

Then of course, the kitchen needed cleaned, and... well, as I told Jess, if I don't hurt tomorrow after shoveling dirt, bailing water, scrubbing washing machine parts and so on... it won't be because I didn't exert myself!