Crazy Stable

First the dryer, then--last weekend--the refrigerator. Now guess who's volunteered for the Great Major Appliance Die-Off?

Okay, the old Kenmore gave us 20 years. I think it died from rug-whamming. (You know, when the spin cycle goes crazy and all the heavy-wet rugs cling to one side and the machine goes wham-wham-wham like Mr. Haney's washer on Green Acres.) It was just moments after a rug-whamming incident that the water surged from beneath. After 20 years, you don't diagnose the old dear, you just take it out and (see above).

The sadness, however, is that the little laundry room is fitted together like a Chinese puzzle, and now we have to take every single thing out. Again. "Every single thing" means most of our china and glassware, for reasons that are difficult to explain. It also means removing and re-installing the new gas dryer. In other words, it's not just a heart transplant, but a heart-lung transplant, except we did the lungs a few weeks ago and now we have to go back in and do the heart, and the patient is getting tired.

If I had any brain cells left functioning in the savor-delicious-irony part of the cortex, I guess I'd relish the fact that the washer flooded even as the roof was leaking directly over it, in the aftermath of Tropical Rainstorm Binky. A sort of attempted meeting of the waters. In theory, had I not mopped it up quickly, the rainwater could have actually fallen into the floodwater, like spring showers pattering onto a woodland stream.

Back to Sears. This time, I won't bother printing out a Consumer Reports checklist, since, as we discovered with the fridge, they can't even get the dimensions right, and they review only model numbers that don't seem to exist. I will just find a top-loader that looks like Old Reliable--no foofy digital controls, wide-panel TV screens, or "designer colors"--and say, Gimme one o' those.  What I'd rather shop for is a cool washer-related T-shirt. Can't find an active purchasing link for this one, but gotta love it:

On a more elegiac note, there's this one available from "Owl Movement":

There. Now hand me my rocket-launcher.

Look, it's a big house,  full of problems. So cut me a little slack here if I'm focused on the most adorable thing in all 16 rooms as it grows and explores the CrazyStable. Here, for your delectation, is Charlie (a.k.a. Nutter Butter, Fuzzbottom, Julius the Baby of the World, Little Big Man, and Carlito). 

How to Sleep Like a Kitten. Pose #42: "Road Kill."

(Toes, detail.)

You think it's funny that I fall between the couch cushions? I sneer at you like Billy Idol! Submit me to My Cat Hates You, because I do, fool, I do!

Aw, not really. I actually want to get on Cute Overload.

Wow, Mama Lexi and I love the wonders of nature! (Notice Child has coordinated nail polish to Lexi's eyes--too matchy-matchy?)

Gotta go--it's been five minutes since I kissed his belly fuzz.