Always On

 Sound asleep.

Made it through the first week of school without any major damage or trauma, and I was looking forward to a bit of rest and relaxation. 

So why am I sitting here at my keyboard at three thirty in the A of M Saturday, bashing away instead of being pleasantly and gloriously asleep?

Appliances. 

They are haunting me. It all started with our refrigerator, having decided that after twenty-six years of living with the same old bargain basement machine, we would go ahead and stop waiting for it to fail on its own. We at  put the old girl out of her misery. And ours, listening to the hourly thud of the compressor starting and stopping on ancient springs. 

Then the dishwasher gave up the ghost, so we went out and got a sweet deal at the Austrailian cousin of our new fridge. After several weeks of fits, starts and questionable installation, we were able to negotiate clean dishes without flooding the kitchen. Somewhere in there, our microwave gave up the ghost and we were able to replace that with a cuter, "vintage" version. We counted this as a win. 

Then, the labor saving device that was our robot vacuum decided rather than cleaning our floors it would eat itself. It left a trail of its own innards behind as it limped to its final resting place. We dragged what was left of that machine back to the place from whence it came and tried to get them to make things alright. "I'm sorry," we were told, "you'll have to deal with the company that made it."

Tired and disappointed, we dragged the reboxed entrails of the Roomba back to our basement, where I put a load of laundry into the dryer. The week was not going to be over until I wrested victory from the jaws of customer service the following morning. A few hours later, I awoke with a start, certain that my recent experience with our dryer, the ever-dependable gas machine that had been fluffing our clothes for decades had not been performing adequately. I was sure that I had been smelling gas each time I had gone downstairs to retrieve a load of laundry and that would explain the lack of thorough drying that we had been experiencing. "Nothing we can do about it right now," mumbled my tired but supportive mate. She turned on a podcast and drifted back to sleep. 

Not me. I was going to grab this supposedly labor saving bull by the horns and wrestle it to the ground, or at least save us from blowing up the house. 

In the basement, I found a nicely dry load, including towels, waiting for me. There was no lingering smell of death or decay. Just darkness all around and the promise of a new day. I put the clothes in our basket and trudged back upstairs to try and calm down. 

By writing down all my fears and woes about appliances. Now it's time to relax. Or try to.