Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.

— Dante Alighieri, from The Divine Comedy

Over the summer, our oven stopped working. We ignored it for a few month because, really, who needs to turn on the oven when it’s 95 degrees. Finally, I gathered the motivation to order the defective part and replace it. This did nothing to actually fix the problem. We called a repairman to discover that, indeed, we had replaced the proper part, but the replacement wasn’t correct part (even though it was supposed to be). $250 later, our oven worked again.

There was much rejoicing. And pizza.

Then, a few weeks ago, Jen hurt her ankle thanks to a climbing fall. We’re still waiting to hear the results of a CT scan, but she is hobbling around with a rather large brace.

Around the same time, our washer gave up the ghost. This was not the first time. A year or so ago we had to replace several parts. This wasn’t terribly painful, as we haggled with Sears and managed to get it covered by a warranty we really didn’t have (we inherited the washer from the previous owners). This time, the drain pump wasn’t working. After briefly decided it was, in fact, the pump that was shot (and not a blockage) we went to Home Depot to buy a new one.

I hate spending money on appliances. Actually, I hate spending that sort of money on anything but bicycles or climbing equipment. But I girded my inner cheapskate, and off we went. We wandered around for a bit, looking at things like energy ratings, and finally decided on a front loading job.

Yes, we said, we’ll take it.

Sorry, they said, that’s not in stock. In fact, they said, we have very little in stock.

Why then, I thought, do you have all of these washing machines out?

The salesman did do quite a bit of legwork for us, and found a 2007 floor model that was fairly scratched and dented, nearly 50% off, and under full warranty. Appearances meant little, given our basement, so we took it, loaded in my father’s truck, and off we went. Whee, we could laundry. And clean the bucket of cloth diapers.

Soon enough, the machine we hooked up, and we put in a test load. Look at those clothes wash! And we could wash our sleeping bags! The last time mine was washed was when we lived in Shadyside. And we’ve camped quite a bit since then. I shudder at that thought.

Then we noticed the timer was stuck at 15 minutes. It just sat there. And sat there. And sat there. Jen restarted the load. Again, it just sat there. And sat there.

I drained the water, and we tried again. Same thing. Yep, our new washing machine didn’t work. And hey, look at that, guess what didn’t work:the drain pump. So now, we will wait until Wednesday for a service call. At least it’s under warranty. We take comfort in the fact that maybe the whole thing is shot, and we’ll get a new (a real new) machine. Or maybe we’ll just be able to do laundry again.

I wonder what will break next?

Posted on 10 November 2007