Dried Out

Our dryer attempted retirement/went on strike/broke last week. Stephanie states she was on her period at the time, and coupled with the fact that "there has been ZERO CHOCOLATE in this house for WEEKS!!" (-Stephanie) made for a difficult several days for her (she's the laundry guru in our house).

I tried to buy a used dryer off of craigslist, but the only acceptable dryer for sale happened to be blue, which of course is not even an option because blue is the same color that blueberries are and it's not even summer anymore. However, I did accidentally talk to a dryer repair-man for as long as he would keep me on the phone, attempting to squeeze as much free consultation out of him as possible. The result was nothing concrete, just a newfound sense of "this can't be that hard to just fix myself" and "I love DIY appliance repair anyway."

Well, I went through the odious task of replacing two parts in the dryer in a real-life version of Battleship; unfortunately, I didn't get a hit and the dryer was still broken until last night, when I figured out how to do a strange something called a "continuity test" with that magical item we refer to as a "voltimeter." Turns out a fuse was blown, which interrupts power and the electricity monkeys can't swing around their cages and blah blah blah. I ordered the new part on Amazon and I hope it works tomorrow.

I forced my family to go camping on Friday night; this makes 16 nights of forced family camping this summer. To sum up this trip, Braeden enjoyed riding his new bicycle while Emerson made 14,000 attempts at riding his new hand-me-down bicycle without training wheels. To be completely fair, Emerson has rarely had the opportunity to ride with training wheels during his lifetime (we live on a large hill and our driveway is steeper than the side of the St. Louis Arch), even though he's 6 years old now and in my mind is long overdue for the ability to simply roll along a straight stretch without falling over. *sigh* Eliana loved riding her bicycle with training wheels, but is still completely oblivious to the connection between the handlebars and her trajectory.

At any rate, we spent good time together this weekend and I'm glad for it.