You Spin Me Right Round, Baby Right Round

I know. I know! It has been far too long since we got our blog on. It’s a travesty really. It isn’t that we don’t have perfectly blogable things to well, blog, about. It’s just that we’ve been kind of busy.

And out of town a lot. That definitely has something to do with it.

But here we are (again) trying to climb back in the proverbial saddle and keep on riding, err blogging.

So without further ado, I give you a tale of victory. A tale of triumph!

But first let’s start with the facts. We have decided to re-do our home office / spare bedroom. It will have its own post at some point. In the midst of our 4th weekend working on this blasted *&!^$!%$ room, Murphy decided that he wanted to play. Specifically with our washing machine.

Which broke and wouldn’t drain the water out.

Oh, she agitated and she spun and she poured water in. But when it came time to release the soapy water, ole Wilma the washing machine wasn’t having it.

You should know this happened about one hour before we were scheduled to have dinner with some newly engaged friends (Shout out to Melanie & Kevin!! Congrats you two lovebirds!) on Saturday after a long, work filled day in the blasted *&!^$!%$ home office.

Murphy has *impeccable* timing.

So after we shared some expletive filled language, and perhaps flailed about on the carpet in a limb swinging tantrum, we decided that our shirts would just have an extra long soak Saturday night and we would deal with ALL THAT later. Specifically, after we had some wine, beer, and good company. Because just when you have absolutely no patience left, alcohol suddenly makes not you care one tiny bit.

So we returned late Saturday night, channeled Laura Ingalls Wilder and rinsed out our very clean shirts in the tub and called it a night. Fast forward to Sunday morning. It’s 8 am and I decide to wake my sweet hubs up not to the sounds of a lovely breakfast cooking, but to me scooping buckets of water out of ole Wilma. It was a lovely melody of water sloshing and metal clanging. He was so charmed I think I heard him reciting his wedding vows under his breath. I definitely know there was something about “for better or worse” and “lifelong commitment” when he passed me on his way downstairs to eat breakfast.

When we first discovered our washing machine had broken, panic gripped our weary hearts and doomsday visions of us sadly standing in line at Sears quickly entered our minds. We cursed the gods for our misfortunes for about 10 minutes before the radical thought that maybe this washing machine could be repaired (and thus saved) came to us. Our euphoria at this option lasted approximately a nanosecond as we grumpily remembered that repair persons tend to charge out the Wa-Zoo for merely breathing the oxygen in your home, let alone touching an actual appliance. And that’s when we remembered one of our very best friends: the Internetz.

Enter some Google and You Tube action and suddenly we’ve got a diagnosis, some instructions and a whole lot of determination.

After narrowing down the problem to a faulty relay switch, I found this website which gave handy instructions on how to disassemble your washer. Plus this fella kindly posted step by step pictures. An invaluable feature, since I sometimes gloss over written directions. What? Don’t judge me. I pay attention to the important stuff like “unplug the washing machine.” Safety First folks!

This is where I’m supposed to write out detailed instructions. But I won’t bore you with that because

a.) I’m lazy

and

b.) This guy already did all that. I’m not trying to steal his thunder. But I will give you a pictorial essay!

First up, here’s our washing machine nekkid and blushing.

This next pic is kind of grody. Who knew so much muck could get underneath your washing machine lid? This sent my OCD cleaning into overdrive. Poor Somanna.

And here! Here is our culprit, the faulty relay switch.

See how busted that thing is?

Then came the really tough part: calling local hardware / home improvement stores and trying to speak to a real human who could be of actual assistance. After about an hour of calling, holding, pressing zero / pound, feeling discriminated against because the Midwestern automated phone voice doesn’t understand my Southern accent, I basically learned that the only way I could get a replacement part was to order it and that would take 1 to 2 weeks and run me about $45.

Not a bad price, I just didn’t want to wait that long. So I moped a bit and then decided that what the heck, we had some errands to run anyways, it would just be best to physically go into the stores and see what folks had on hand part wise. Those call centers may have an “online” inventory but that isn’t always accurate. I struck out at two stores, before finally heading over to a Sears Service Center on a last ditch effort and struck gold!

And for $36 with tax. Sold!

Once we got home, Somanna wanted in on the action and got busy installing our new relay switch.

It made him feel manly since I got the fun of disassembling the washer.

And of course we, were closely supervised.

Puzezzed kitt-ay

Ottuhmunns Kitteh

And then we put Humpty, err Wilma, back together again.

So fresh and so clean, clean!

Ta Da!

And just like that, or 7 hours, 5 phone calls and 4 store trips later, Wilma was good as new!!

Which we celebrated with a victory dance similar to this. Don’t hate, appreciate!

In conclusion, just to drag out this absurdly long blog post a bit more and to show off my mad college essay writing skills, the internet is an amazing, amazing thing. We are clueless homeowners. But thanks to the Internetz we managed to feel like heroes one springy weekend, repair a fairly important appliance, and save some dinero in the process.

Pretty cool huh?

Now. If we could just finish that office….