Esteban and I recently refinanced our house, only because we’ve never done it and when the interest rates were really really low, back when everyone else was refinancing their houses, I looked into doing it and decided that it was a lot of work gathering all of these financial documents and our ARM interest rate was actually better than the going rate and we’d probably move before the interest went up that much and it was easier to just keep paying thousands of dollars in mortgage insurance despite having more than 50% equity in our house because math is hard and hey, look! Something shiny.
Amazingly, I have a ridiculously militaristic approach to our finances, except apparently when it comes to the simple math described in the preceding paragraph. Yes, I know how stupid it is. Which is why this year, when our interest rate went up again, I decided that it was really time that I put all my financial ducks in a row and took care of it. Which we did, so now we’re all locked in. Which is when Esteban decided that really, we should just move.
This is all he talks about now. Our next house. Where it’s going to be, what it’s going to have in it. I have two requests: closets and a big giant tub in which I can swim laps. And a bathroom attached to the master bedroom so that I don’t have to walk the Bataan Death March every day at 4 am when I’ve gotten a little too exuberant with the Smart Water at night. That’s really all that I care about. Typical.
From what I’ve been able to piece together from the evidence, last week the (fucking) washing machine had some kind of epiphany. While I filled its gullet with whites and khakis, spun the dial to SOAK/Full Cycle and then poured a capful of Tide Free on top, the (fucking) washing machine pondered the words of Camus and Satre. After filling itself, it sat there, soaking. Green light unwavering. It listened to the dryer, happily churning on its previous batch of towels. Perhaps this was cathartic for the (fucking) washing machine. Perhaps it came to terms with the value of a life spent in service. Perhaps it looked around at the spider webs and the veritable mountain of unending funky clothing and decided that no, no, it could not would not go forward into that dark night.
I completely understand. So when I came downstairs to cycle through yet another load of Sisyphus, I found it still deep in thought, tub full of murky soap water, green light still contemplating life. I flicked the dial on then off, popped it in and then out again. The light responded in kind but the agitator would not agitate and the washer would not wash. Could not, perhaps. I spun the dial completely around back to start and for the first time the green light wavered and then the green light went dark.
You have no idea how hard it is for me to not quote Fitzgerald right now.
I asked Esteban to take a look at it. After all, perhaps it was a fuse. It seems like everything is always somehow just a fuse, and it had blown a fuse a few months ago, so maybe that was the case again? Esteban dutifully replaced a fuse, which worked for exactly three seconds and then blew out again. It was as though the Maytag wanted to remind us that I had willingly cosigned a DNR order last year when I declared that two thousand dollars wasn’t too much money to spend if it meant that I had to spend fewer minutes of my life doing the (fucking) laundry.
I declared that it just wasn’t worth it to spend a hundred dollars to have someone come out and tell us that the fifteen-year-old washing machine needed an electrical overhaul, so we should just get a new one. Besides, I wouldn’t trust it again anyway. Both my sister and my mother have lost their homes on separate, unrelated house fires and I still feel like fate isn’t going to let me off without one, so I’m all weird when it comes to electrical issues. We tossed around a few potential replacements, thought about just spending the least money possible and then I saw a front loading steam washer and my friends, it was all over then. Steam washer! I needed a steam washer! I have no idea how laundry gets measured in cubic feet of space, but this steam washer, it has many cubic feet of capacity. There are a lot of big words describing it and they are all sexy, plus apparently it’s all Greenpeace and efficient, which pleases the hippy kid in me to no end.
We called around and found one store in town that carried the washer I wanted, but they only had it in navy blue, which cost $100 more, but the sales guy was willing to give it to us for the non-blue price. Esteban tried to convince me to just take the navy blue washer because it was in the basement anyway and who cared if it didn’t match the dryer? I’m not sure which woman Esteban has been living with for the last sixteen years, because seriously, he should know better. Besides, the washer isn’t always going to be in the basement and I don’t even LIKE the blue washer. I don’t understand these navy blue washing machine people, anyway. Do the words ‘avocado’ and ‘harvest gold’ mean anything to you? One shouldn’t apply aesthetics to something that is supposed to last for fifteen years. We are fickle raccoons and that flashy mauve dryer is going to be gauche in seven years. But maybe you are still enjoying that hunter green sofa with the mallard blue pillows circa 1991. Actually, in my screwed up view of the universe, I feel as though appliances, much like cars, shouldn’t come in colors. They should be black, white or silver/aluminum and that’s that. Or maybe I’m just scarred from having a faux wood-grain refrigerator from age 5 until I moved out of the house.
I refused to back down and reminded Esteban that we had friends and relatives with working washing machines and god knows I spent almost every Sunday afternoon at a Laundromat until we bought the house ten years ago. It’s not as though the only option was to haul our hampers down to the river to beat our underwear against the rocks.
So I ordered the fancy steam washer and apparently it is the second most popular washing machine in America and won’t be here for weeks and weeks. But I am very excited to get it. I’m assuming that I can also use it to steam broccoli and perhaps dim sum because I think my grandmother paid less for her house than I did for my washing machine. It’s going to class up the spider webs in the basement very nicely.
We had then to deal with the issue of a metric ton of dirty laundry, so we spent last Saturday afternoon hauling it all to the Laundromat. We filled the entire backseat with four hampers and put two baskets in the trunk. I had more laundry, but we just didn’t have enough hampers to hold it all. Esteban, who is sheltered, acted as though we were going to Colonial Williamsburg, where he was going to watch someone smelt bronze or something. So I taught Esteban how to condense all of our loads into the giant washers and dryers, but we accidentally irradiated an entire quadruple load of darks. I hope Abby properly appreciates my CBGB shirt, since she’s going to grow out of it before she understands its cultural significance.
However, I promptly forgot about the load of clothes soaking in murky water inside the gut of a dead Maytag, until I remembered them a week later. Yeah, you know the funk that Sundry wrote about? Multiply that by a hundred and you get a slimy tub of unholy terror that used to be benign cargo pants and camisoles. I used our barbecue tongs and pulled each piece out, one by one, and dumped it into a plastic tub, which then was nearly impossible to lift. June had offered to be a laundry service, so I managed to haul all 800 pounds up the stairs, dump it into my trunk and say a prayer of benediction that it wouldn’t tip over and leak out onto the carpet. Then I brought it over to June’s, where she corralled me into installing her iTunes and setting her up with a frequent flier plan, while she set up a detox plan for my linen cropped pants and Esteban’s favorite shorts. It doesn’t look good, but with the goodness of Tide With Febreeze, perhaps there’s still hope.
Meanwhile, the refrigerator has decided that it is going to leak water from’ someplace. We don’t know where it’s coming from, but I suspect that it might be getting it from the grey bowels of the Maytag, since the funk is sort of unbelievable. And it’s worse in the freezer, where there is no leaking. I pitched everything in the entire unit, scrubbed it and then waited. An hour later, there was already a pool of water on one of the spill-proof shelves.
What the hell, appliances? Why do you hate us? Why?
We are solving the problem by eating out. Which is when we noticed that my car is making a kerclunkety noise. Seriously, this is the best year ever.
