The handywoman

I like to think that I can do anything. Even things that are mechanically challenging and not very ladylike. My friend Sallie is my hero, because she fixes all kinds of things. Since I have been married, I have mostly relegated these sorts of things to Jason and have become less motivated to try to figure them out. When our disposal stopped working right before our trip to Zions, I just told Jason about it and waited for him to fix it. I did scoop out the goo that was in the bottom and determine that the soil that Hallie had dumped in the sink while trying to water her bean seed, had rocks in it, and probably was to blame for the problem.

Well, by the following tuesday when the disposal was still broken, I realized that with Jason being gone so much right now, I probably ought to try and figure things out on my own again. I googled my problem and found that it was an easy fix. I took everything out from under the sink, used the little allen wrench and successfully fixed the disposal. I felt so good! I even cleaned out and rearranged all the junk that ends up under the kitchen sink. I decided that if I could fix the disposal then maybe I should move on to larger projects like tiling the laundry room or building a shelving system-think of all the power tools I could use! I continued thinking up projects that I could awe and surprise Jason with right up until the time that I went to put my wash in the dryer and found an inch of water on the laundry room floor. Crap!
A couple of weeks ago my washer started sounding like a rocketship trying to blast off, whenever it went into the spin cycle. At one point I had the repairman over, fixing a problem with my dryer (never buy a Frigidaire dryer )and he informed me that it was probably the drum bearing, which was a $600 repair. I looked it up online and was totally excited about ordering the parts and fixing it myself until I looked at the current part prices and realized I was still looking at at least $500 just for the part. Since this was the 2nd time this had happened (never buy a Frigidaire front loader) and the washer was 8 years old, I decided I would just replace it. However, I only expected it to grind to a halt-not empty its contents onto the floor. Thank goodness for wet vacs and friends.

My new washer promises to make me love doing laundry. I really don't mind doing laundry to start with but it is always exciting to get something new. I just hope I'm not replacing it's drum bearing 5 years after I buy it, right after the extended warranty runs out! I'll keep my fingers crossed.