Tales from the Shark Tank

The old washer is out. The new one is in. The load that was so rudely interrupted is in and running. Joseph even found a toy he’d been missing for months; it had rolled under the washer. (Little things with wheels, like trains, tend to do that.) I may not have gotten much packing done, but it was a productive day none the less. I’ll not be asking what else can go wrong, though. I don’t believe I want to know.

In the course of trying to decide what to take with us and what to freecycle/ donate/ pitch/ sell/ otherwise dispose of, we had been discussing whether or not it was worth moving the washing machine. We knew it was all but worn out, as we’d had a repairman out when it started making hideous noises, and he had advised that it wasn’t worth repairing. “Run it until it stops” he said, and we concurred.

Well, it has stopped. It did so quite spectacularly, with a grind and a wail. It also did so somewhere in the midst of a wash cycle. I went to put the (presumably) clean laundry in the dryer to find the washer full of water, which was quite soapy when I squeezed it out of the clothing. So I pulled out the clothes, one article at a time, squeezed out what water I could, carted the mass upstairs, and rinsed it all in the bathtub. It’s sitting there now, draining out. The last project tonight will be bailing the washer, probably to the detriment of the desk packing project. The first project tomorrow is going to be the acquisition of a new washer. We’re not going out of the business of creating laundry after all, and as we’re already moving the fridge, the stove and the dryer, one more large appliance won’t make any appreciable difference in the hassle factor. But y’know, right now this is just one more errand, when I have more than enough to do.

My husband looked at the house for which I had such hopes, and tells me that it sets a new definition for “tiny”. He had the condos, which I also had him look at, for comparison, and he’s pretty good at estimating sizes and use of space. The quest is therefore ongoing. Watch this space for further developments.

Between the two of them, I think my parents may approximate one functional human. Dad’s body is failing (not that he’s doing anything to hinder the process) and Mom’s mind and memory are not what they once were. I end up dealing with a lot of very mundane things for them. Most of the time, of course, they’re just that – mundane. Once in a while, though, I run into something that leaves me looking for the hidden camera filming the sitcom. Today was such a day.

Mom’s vacuum cleaner has been on the fritz for quite some time, and while she kvetched about it, she never took it in to the shop, either. I had one that needed only a belt (or so I thought), so I replaced the errant bit of rubber and took it over there. I mean, it’s handy to have one upstairs and one downstairs, but I don’t really need two and when we move, won’t have space to store more than one. So today she called me and told me the one I took over wasn’t working properly. Our boychick and I hied ourselves to Chateau Cohen, and I turned the vacuum upside down and began investigating. Lo, the new belt had snapped in exactly the same fashion the old one had, whereupon I looked further. It turns out it actually needs a new brush, as the old one no longer turns on its spindle. One end spins just fine; the other acts as if it has terminal lockjaw. So ok, I have to get parts. I can do that, but not today.

Then Mom asked if I had ever dismantled the old one in similar fashion. Indeed I had not, and so I took it out on the porch to accomplish that task. When nothing appeared to be amiss from the bottom of the machine, I asked Mom in what fashion it was misbehaving. She said that instead of picking dust up and depositing it in the bag, it simply blew it around the room. Now this seemed odd, but I checked. No, the bag was installed properly. Could it then be the hose? And so indeed it was. The upper end of the hose was securely linked to the bag. The lower end, however, had been removed from its proper residence above the motor, attached to a crevice tool, and left there. So when Mom ran the vacuum, it pulled dust out of the rug, sent it up the tube – and out into the room, having no hose to guide it the remainder of the way into the bag.

If my dad were functional, that’s the sort of thing I remember him attending to. Mom’s always been mechanically challenged; she’s the only person I’ve ever known who could get locked out by an unlocked door. And the piece de resistance? My son reminding his grandmother, very seriously, to be sure to plug the vacuum in before she tried to run it. Given what had been wrong with it, the advice did not seem ill-timed.

The single-parent thing being what it is, my in-laws had offered to watch our son for us for a few hours if I needed it. It took a while for my husband to remember to mention the offer to me, and a while longer for me to have occasion to take them up on it, since I wasn’t going to ask them for a full day. But I do need to do something without my “assistant” this afternoon, so yesterday I called to find out if he could stay with that set of grandparents for a few hours. I’d hesitated because their health isn’t great, and he can be a handful and a half when he gets bitten by a silly-bug.

I didn’t hear back before we left to go to an early evening gathering, which struck me as odd. I did, however, have voice mail from my father-in-law on my return. They are out of the babysitting business for the next several months, as my mother-in-law had shoulder replacement surgery yesterday. I don’t know if his dad had e-mailed my husband and he forgot to mention it to me, but the fact remains I had no clue, and asked something at the worst possible time because of it. Ah, well. I’m a little embarrassed, but no one is angry at me. My mom is going to keep her grandson for a few hours, and my obligations will be met. And I’ve been wishing for years that my husband’s family would start telling us about things before instead of after the fact, but if it hasn’t happened by now, it isn’t going to.

My husband and I finally got a good start on our library this weekend. It’s a two-person project because neither of us is willing to risk the wrath of the other by disposing of treasured books out of ignorance. So now he’s gone through most of the bookcases in there (there are total of nine, most of them 6 feet tall, 30 – 36 inches wide, and often double stacked) and packed the things he really wants to keep. Now I’m going through with two boxes in front of me; one for the books I want to keep and one for the ones that will go to the used book store at first opportunity. So far we’ve only made it entirely through one entire bookcase, with the ratio of books in the van running only slightly less than the number that were kept. It’s a good start.

I got word of a house that someone is remodelling (read “tearing out the entire interior and putting it back from the studs out”) in northern Indiana that they will want to rent beginning August 1. So I called last night and spent half an hour on the phone with this guy. I think it will work out, as by the time we got off we were laying joint plans for daylilly and herb beds. The lawn isn’t in yet, so he was saying he’d let me choose where the beds went before he put in grass. It doesn’t have a few things we insist upon (dishwasher and A/C), and he was already figuring out where that dishwasher could go and when he could install the air conditioning before the end of the conversation. He has a son with issues like our son has, and was able to tell me about all the school options that he’d found, including a Montessori co-op school. Evidently my time is my son’s tuition, if I have the skills, and I do. So now my husband gets to look at this place in the next day or so, as well as looking at the condos I saw last week. Hopefully we’ll have made decisions by week’s end. And then I can really get down to it, because I’ll know how much space I’m actually going to have. I’m ready. When you come down to it, I’m beyond ready. And right now, please excuse me. I’m gonna go pack up another bookcase or two while my son is playing with his best friend.

I thought I’d found a workable house, at least to rent for a year. The woman who showed it to me seemed nice enough, but she didn’t have any sort of handle on the business aspects of the matter, referring me repeatedly to her husband. So, with much hopefulness, I went to speak to the gentleman as indicated.

Problems ensued. He managed to confuse me within about three minutes flat, and I don’t confuse easily. At that point I called my husband (about 20 minutes away) and asked him to come help me out. (My husband told me over dinner that my claiming confusion was the first red flag.) Then the owner, who is also a contractor, wanted to sell me a home to be newly constructed. Since I don’t know the area, I have no idea where I’d want to put a home. That’s rather the point of renting for the nonce. Then the numbers he quoted me were substantially higher than those she quoted. He didn’t have a form contract, suggesting instead that we draft one and he’d have his attorney look it over. He ostensibly makes his living this way, and doesn’t have a contract he uses? Then he couldn’t explain the terms of the agreements he makes specifically enough that I could draft something were I so inclined. And did I mention that the numbers kept changing…upwards? Of course, they might go down again if we would sign a contract purchase agreement under which our downpayment would be forfeit if we walked away.

We have walked away, with nothing lost but a few hours of our time. I can’t put my finger on where the scam is, only that there is one. It’s a pity, because the house itself is nice enough, with a decent floorplan, rooms large enough to change your mind without having to step out of them, and a good deal of storage space. But at this point, that house is crossed off our list. Our current best option is a condo considerably smaller than our house, but which at least is close to such things as the grade school and the city park. Even if we get rid of half of what we have, we’d end up putting some things in storage. But we’d have the family together in one place again, and we’d be able to finish cleaning up this house so we can put it on the market. And right now, so far as I’m concerned, that is sufficient.