Water water everywhere…
Nature, I suspect, at least looking back over decades of experience, senses weakness. Wolves don’t kill healthy prey, they kill the infirm, the young, the helpless. Disease takes those with weakened defenses. It’s a Law of some kind, a warning for those who believe what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Sure, we survived the Storm of the Century last week and I survived the washer floods in our basement, a sudsy tsunami. The worst, I thought, was over.
Complacency is the enemy here. The false belief that the bottom has been plumbed and now the only way is Up leads only to more misery. Optimism in the face of disaster is for pastors and fools. The Lord spared us, they say, but ignore the wreckage. The Lord is merciful, they say, but offer no sustenance for the battered bodies we’ll be burying the same week. It can’t get any worse, they say, then the aftershocks hit. I say hunker down, pull the sheets up high, wait for a Sign, forget homilies and happy thoughts, the world is tearing at your very fabric. It wants to kill you. You need to understand that. You need to know what created you will turn on you. It’s the Law.
So maybe I’m guilty of complacency too. I got our old washer out of our basement, loaded it up and dealt with it with Extreme Prejudice. It won’t be menacing us or anyone else any time soon. Or ever. I replaced it with a 3 year old unit that weighed twice as much as the old washer, hauled it into the bathroom, hooked it up, stacked the dryer on top and gave it a trial run. Seemed just fine to me, ever the dumb optimist. And think of the money we saved on a used machine over a new one!!
The mizzus, never the sunny optimist I am, noticed the water left below the drum as soon as she got five feet from the machine. She has a sixth or seventh sense for these things where I have the gift of ignoring such signs. When we turned the stainless steel drum, yeah, I could hear a little sloshing going on, sure, but it is, after all, I said, named Whirlpool. And besides, the thing works great, what’s a little residual water?
I googled and found that all machines have a little water left over. I drove up to the Appliance Connection where I had a 90 day parts and labor warranty and the nice young man said it was normal. Knowing the mizzus wouldn’t believe this salesguy’s assurances, I went to another appliance dealer and got the same answer. That made 3 of us to her one. I was doomed, I knew that, I knew that as sure as I know water flows downhill. I checked other people’s washers to see if theirs had enough residual water to make a sloshing sound. They didn’t.
I have two choices. I can load this monstrously heavy machine back into my truck and haul it 40 miles to the guy who says nothing is wrong with it … or, and you might as well know right off the bat this is the correct answer, I’m going to tear into myself, figuring it’s easier than the first choice. What is true, what I know for a fact even in this Trumpian Universe we’ve been living in where truth is no longer based on facts, is that both options are bad options but they are infinitely better than the mizzus’s sad grimace every time she runs a load from now until the day I’m relegated to the Mabana Sunset Villa for the Infirm and Aged. So be it. No one promised an Easy Way. No one guarantees the worst is over.
Wish me luck. Ha, like luck has anything in the world to do with it.
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