SHEEP in the DRYER (and other oddities)

We’ve had a couple rickety, or broken appliances around here lately.

For three months, our garage door slid up catawampus and then, with a grinding screech, got stuck and stopped. Sometimes we could lower it and start over, and sometimes we couldn’t.

Mostly, we just started using the front door. 

In March, the garage door simply rebelled and quit working altogether. You can grind wheels through a twisted track for only so long. 

The ice machine in the ‘fridge has been grinding too. For months.

We don’t use ice as much as we used to, so we ignore it.  We’re getting old and tired. 

With hurricane season upon us, we decided to bite the bullet and replace the garage door. We’ve been in this house twenty years, and the catawampus door is the original garage door. It’s old and tired too and probably abused, there at the end.

Yesterday, we had a new garage door was installed. 

The installer did a wonderful job. (Another line of work I am so glad somebody else enjoys. I wouldn’t last a minute.) 

While the garage door guy was here, the dryer stopped working.

“That’s it,” my husband said, “This place is falling apart.”

He slid all the junk away from the dryer so he could drag the dryer out and discern the problem. 

Within twenty minutes, he came in the kitchen and announced, “I fixed the dryer.”

“Really?” I said, dreading the expense of a new dryer.

“Come here,” he added. “I want to show you something.” He pointed to a plastic bag in the garage. “Look at this.”

I made a face. It looked like Lamp Chop, the Shari Lewis hand puppet.  “What is that?”

“Lint,” he said.

Sure enough. LINT.    

With a toothpick in it.

All of this lint was not in the lint trap. Oddly, the lint trap was clean. It should be fired, because clearly, it’s not doing its job. 

This is the fluff that had piled up below the lint trap and in all the nooks and crannies in the dryer. The lint had clogged the gears and rendered the machine inert. Good grief. 

I guess it would be beneficial to drag out the dryer every fifteen years and hose out the hiding places. 

On a roll now, my husband pulled out the ice maker and dumped the ice into the sink. The cubes came out in a single block. He took the bin and disappeared into the garage.

He disappeared for five minutes, then was back. “I fixed the ice maker.”

What a handy man I have, I thought. The guy is brilliant. 

“The problem?” I asked.

He handed me this.

Hmmm. What? 

“How did a spoon get in the ice maker?” he wondered.

I vaguely remembered reading about a remedy for puffy eyes: a cold spoon pressed onto the eyelids. I may have tried it at some point. 

“Maybe you were chipping at the ice?” he said.

I shook my head. “I use a butter knife for that.” 

Clearly, we’re slacking on home maintenance.  With having to check for sheep in the dryer and utensils in the freezer, it’s become more complicated.

Just this morning, the printer started acting up.

I hate to look.

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