Technology Sucks Sometimes.....

I know, an ironic statement from a woman who pays the bills with Google money, right?

But seriously, I am feeling very anti-technology this week. Here's the deal - last Tuesday, my dryer decided that it was going to stop getting hot, thus not drying any clothes. This minor bump in the road of life has led to several alternative solutions in the quest to keep my family in clean underwear while we wait for our warranty service call:

Solution One: I can wash my laundry here at home and then take it to dry at Laura's house. Laura's house is nice because there is always coffee on, I feel like I can show up in pajama pants, and no one cares if my kids act like rabid monkeys. After all, as mentioned before Laura is my parenting soulmate. The drawback is that I have to work it around school bus pick up, preschool, and nap time. This can be a hassle.

Solution Two: I can wash my laundry here at home and then take it to dry at Charlotte's house. Now Charlotte's house is nice because I go there in the evening after my kids and her kids are in bed and we sit around and play around with picasa and drink strawberry daquris while my laundry dries. The drawback to this is that no matter how genuinely welcoming they are, I feel like I'm encroaching on their evening...and I occassionally wake up with a laundry hangover the next day.

This brings us to Solution Three: I can wash my laundry at home and then take it to the laundramat to dry. I have done this three times this week. This is nice because I can dry everything I have in under a half hour. That is the one and only nice thing about it.

The laundramat is a strange, sad, depressing place.

First of all there's the "laundramat supervisor," who peers over your shoulder while you fold your husband's underwear in between foggy sessions of chainsmoking just outside the door before meticulously vacuuming up all of the lint from the inside and outside of each and every dryer while humming the theme to Days of Our Lives.

And then of course there are your intereting (and often disconcerting) quarter-carrying fellow landramat patrons who either want to talk your ear off or make you feel instantly uneasy while you watch your towels and socks tumble 'round and 'round and count down each and every minute on the timer.

So yeah......having a broken dryer sucks.

Of course, you may be asking yourself why I don't use my clothesline. After all it's been sunny and pleasant here in Oregon considering that it's December. And believe it or not, I've actually utilized it a few times this week for a few blankets. But that's as far as I'll go. For one thing, I don't like my skivvies hanging out there flapping in the breeze for all the world to see. And for another, my name isn't Laura Freaking Ingalls. I have a beautiful shiny blue front loader that simplifies my life. I don't need no dang clothesline.

*sigh*

Then to add insult to injury, on Friday the one and only TV in the house decided to poop out on us. AGAIN. This is the second time in less than 18 months that it's gone kaput. It's like a huge black lemon that intermitedly lets me watch Boston Legal. And NOOOOOO Mr. Customer Service Dude That I Waited Forty Minutes To Talk To, NOOOOO we don't have an extended warranty. Why? WHY? Because my Daddy raised me to believe that they are a ripoff scam and besides, who expects their pretty shiny new TV to crap out twice in a year and a half ANYWAY???????

>Deep Breaths<

So after a long Dora-The-Explorer-free weekend of kiddos playing with legos at 6:15 each morning, today I finally got to talk to a manager who agreed to cover the repair for free. But after that if the dang thing breaks again, we will be the proud owners of a very heavy 42 inch paperweight. Nice huh?

That just about sums it up. No dryer, no TV. My normal evenings filled with watching sitcoms while folding my family's assorted wardrobes are indefinitely on hold. And as if that's not enough, over the weekend my eight year old hair dryer decided that it had blown dry its last head of hair. It's limping along if I'm gentle with it, but I know that it's only a matter of time before it too joins the great appliance junk pile in the sky.

*sigh*