Appliance Exorcism

Yesterday was a bad day.

I should just end it there - what bizarre need do I have to blog about my mostly horrible, no-good, very bad day? Yet, here I am. It only started out bad because I woke up exhausted. I should have known and just crawled back into bed, pulled the pillow over my head and waited it out. Instead, I chose to venture into the world. The morning, in all fairness, wasn't so bad (if one excuses the fact that I had to force myself to stay awake in church).

The afternoon rectified any sort of good the morning had going for it. The plan was to walk to the Hobbit Hole from church (it is two houses away, a luxury I will be reveling in until the first snow), fix lunch (frozen or boxed food - blech), start a batch of laundry and work on unboxing things until the laundry finished.

I heated up the oven (after figuring out how to operate a non-digital oven), put lunch in and went to start the laundry in my brand-new washing machine. Ten seconds into the cycle I hear, "BANG BANG RATTLE RATTLE BANG BANG" - noises that one should not ever hear from ANY washing machine, let alone one that has been out of the packing crate less than a week.

I peered in the bathroom, hoping it was somehting else. The washer looked possessed. So possessed, it frightened me and I hid.

It stopped making the horrific racket ... for about 2 minutes. Then again, "BANG BANG RATTLE RATTLE BANG BANG SILENCE." It was the silence at the end that caused me to come out of hiding. I cautiously peered around the bathroom door. The washer WAS possesed - it, an inanimate object, had managed to move itself clear out of the alcove and across the bathroom floor, blocking all hope I had of using the bathroom (which was becoming an urgent necessity). It had moved so far, it had unplugged itself (hence the eery silence). Of course, since the thing weighs 250 lbs, there was no hope of me removing it from its present location either.

I fled in a state of near hysteria. I called Himself (not generally useful in times of mechanical crisis, but used to my increasingly frequent bouts of pregnancy-induced insanity). I told him the problem, then disolved into an alarming amount of tears. That scared me - I am an angry crier, not an emotional crier. Between disgustingly undignified sniffles, I let every other thing that was wrong escape, launching into an emotional soliloquy. "I have not felt so completely an utterly helpless in recent memory. I had no idea who to call to rectify the possessed washing machine. It wasn't something I could even to attempt while pregnant. And on the subject of pregnancy - I sobbed about not being able to accomplish much at a time, because the bending/moving/up and down exhausted and pained me. I couldn't lift anything. For some reason, I'm incapable of spending a night in the Hobbit Hole alone. I am completely dependent on everyone, which meant being completely incapable of anything, since I didn't know anyone..." and so the conversation went (stopping here to avoid embarrassing myself even further).

Himself wisely suggested I call my father, who knows a thing or two about everything. Knowing he was likely already on the road back home, I still called him, starting the conversation with, "I have a huge problem."

Fortunately, they weren't on the road, they were having a late lunch at my uncle's. Dad promised arrival within the next 90 minutes (after lunch and the almost hour drive to the Hobbit Hole). Exhausted, I rescued my now overdone (but thankfully not burnt) meal from the oven, sat down to eat it and woke up an hour and a half later, having not even finished my lunch.

The parentals arrived, the washing machine was excised of any mischievious spirits (ie the shipping bolts, which we had somehow missed in the set-up, were removed), we spent an hour re-leveling the washer and dryer (we had to pull the dryer out to fix the washer) and we put the laundry on rinse and spin to finish the cycle.

Holding our breath, Dad and I sat and watched the entire 18-minute cycle, not daring to hope the washer hadn't been completely ruined. It didn't make any horrible noises, but it didn't spin very fast either, even on high spin. At the end, the lightweight clothes were completely soaked. The only good thing is the bolts wouldn't have damaged the spin, so if today's after-work washing adventure doesn't produce clothes not drenched in water, I will have to call GE to have them patiently explain why I'm an idiot and clearly am doing something wrong.

The parentals needed to begin the 4.5-hour journey home. I needed some sort of sleep to calm my frazzled nerves. Failing to accomplish anything, I left. I left the wet laundry in the washer, the lunch dishes rinsed off in the sink and fled to the Hoopty (which, to add to the bad weekend, I discovered on Saturday needed 4 new tires and new rims).

Remember the post on Friday? The one about fearing I'd become completely dependent? It's happened. Already. Less than a week into my Hobbit Hole saga and already I'm incapable of just about everything. On top of it, I am an emotionally fragile wreck. (I'm praying that the emotional part is just pregancy hormones - though one would think they would have stabilized by now).

I ended up crawling into bed early last night - too tired to face any more issues. I return to do battle with the washing machine this evening. Wish me luck.