Mamalicious!

So when I woke up this morning it was 9 degrees here. Last night, I discovered that my washing machine’s cold water pipe had frozen. So much for washing the comforter and other laundry I needed to do in preparation for my sister and niece’s arrival from Florida (yeah, we got that backwards). I prefer to wash most of our laundry in cold to prevent fading. I know, I know…but old habits die hard. Anyway, nothing was getting washed in cold last night. So I went to bed more than a little bit frustrated.

This morning, I call TechBoo, whining about my washer, and he comes up with the genius plan for me to wash the comforter in warm. Duh, Deesha, duh. The hot water line still works after all. So, I’m way more happy than one person should be about laundry…until it’s time for the rinse cycle. No cold water, just the frozen line, humming, mocking me. Once again, TechBoo saves the day by suggesting that I switch the hoses and rinse in hot water. Excitement!

I shut off the valves on both the hot and cold, no problem. Then I have to remove the hoses: problem. Let me interject, in case it’s not obvious: I am not handy. Nor do I want to be. But my desire not to be out a few hundred books to a plumber compels me to fake handy real quick. So, I realize that the situation requires pliers. Can’t find my pliers. I find a wrench instead. The narrow space and the angle of the placement of the hoses makes it impossible to use the wrench. I try removing it with my hands again…and this time it works!

That was the easy part. The tears come a few minutes later.

So, now to get the cold water hose attached to the hot water faucet. And tighten it so that it doesn’t leak.

My hands aren’t strong enough, so it’s back down to the basement to look for the pliers again. The light in the basement is out and I can’t see the area where I think the pliers might be. I’m sliding my hands around dusty cabinets in the dark, feeling helpless, and annoyed because of all the things I was supposed to be accomplishing since I woke up super-early this morning–did I mention that it’s just 7 am at this point?– and finally, I just burst into tears. Then I’m mad at myself for crying.

So eventually I find some needle nose pliers (I’m not handy, and yet I know the names of these things. Probably because even though I’m not handy, I do read a lot. I like to know the names of things, even if, in a perfect world, I never have to touch them.). With lots and lots of micro-turns (and one scraped knuckle), I get the hose tightened such that I can start the rinse cycle without any leaking.

So it’ll be a hot-water-wash day here…at least until it “warms” up.

Current temperature: A sweltering 11 degrees. Hooray for double digits!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 8:36 am and is filed under It's...Whatever., My Last Nerve, This and that. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.