Our Trek through Appliance Hell

The last year has been a bad one for our appliances.

First the dryer, born in the 1960s if you judged it by its color, refused to spin. So clothes got hot, the ones on the top dried, and the ones below got moldy and smelly. We expected its death, actually a lot sooner, considering we had to prop the door shut with a 2X4. It never latched from the day we moved in, but I was happy not to have to drop a load of cash on a new one right off the bat. So the new dryer was welcome, a far more energy efficient model that dried in half the time. And it was white, not avacado green.

Then the refrigerator stopped cooling. Bart Simpson called, asking if our refrigerator was running and I had to tell the little stinker "No." Joke aborted. We put all the food we could in the downstairs refrigerator, remainders in coolers on the porch and under the kitchen table. I was beginning to think that this was a conspiracy formed entirely by Maytag.

Conspiracy theory confirmed: The washing machine was next. I called a repair man in hope of resurrecting it, since it was relatively new and modern. It was a front loader, which I thought I would like until I had one. The seal around the door always smelled moldy, the damn thing never really drained. The repair man charged me $90 to tell me it would cost more to fix the stupid thing than get a new one. Shit!

Then last week, Nora (aka No-No Nora) pushed all the cycle buttons on the dishwasher and then held in the start button. I was watching this in my pre-coffee daze from the dining room. The dishwasher made a grinding sound. Smoke started rising from the door. She giggled, thinking this was great fun. The smell of burning electrical components filled the air, and then.....the door blew open with a POP! Broken dishes everywhere! Lights went out! Two-year-old screaming and bleeding! Yes, bleeding! The shards of broken dishes scratched the side of her face before catapulting her backward onto her ass, making it look like Freddy Krueger had attacked.

I put my head down on the table as she climbed up into my lap, tears and blood mingling on my pajamas. Yes, the dishwasher was dead too. And now, the only appliance in our ENTIRE HOUSE we have not replaced in the last year is the oven. Which is gas. Which is impossible to break/wear out/destroy. Right/