What a day!

Our washing machine has been doing strange things lately. It won't complete its spin cycle, so I have sopping wet clothes to attempt to put in the dryer. If I can even lift them out of the washer, they take hours to dry. I hung towels and jeans on the clothesline in 40 degree weather, just so they would dry before Memorial Day. I hate crunchy jeans and towels, but I guess I can live with it.

I called a repair guy, and he said he would be here yesterday afternoon, so my husband volunteered to come home early to meet him. I am so glad he got home first! When he had left for work, he evidently didn't latch the laundry room door all the way, and the two dogs (80-pound Labs) had free run of the house. Ordinarily that's not a bad thing, but one of them, I'm not sure who, has had some gastrointestinal distress lately. DH said there was sh!t from one end of the house to the other.

Needless to say, I dawdled on my way home. I was not in a hurry to be greeted by that mess. By the time I got home, DH had actually done a good job cleaning it up. Every door in the house was wide open to let the house air out. After K went to bed, we did a massive vacuum and steam-cleaning job. I think it will be OK, but that is never a fun thing to come home to.

Oh! And the repair guy came. He said in his 30 years of repairing washers, he's never seen one spin and agitate at the same time, which is what mine was doing. Yay, I'm original. He said the transmission is out. I had no idea washers had transmissions! He can put a new one in today... for $250. That's right on the cusp of Do I Fix It, or Just Buy a New One. I would love a front-loading high efficiency washer, but those are around $1200, which we are definitely not ready for. Even a new cheapo Sears one like ours is around $500. I think we'll make this repair, but the next time something breaks, we get a new one.

Ugh! Please let nothing break or crap today.