Handy Mandy

I'm cheap.  Really cheap.

And I'm resourceful.  Really resourceful. 

So when shit breaks (or when I break shit), I am loathe to call a repairman.  Instead, I insist that I can fix it myself. 

In the last few weeks, I've fixed:  Matt's dresser drawer, the kitchen sink (my bad), the dishwasher (still not really sure what I did), and. . .

Rewind to Sunday.  Matt and I went to the beach, got into a five-minute fight, got sunburnt, read magazines, headed home, bought a pineapple at the Piggly Wiggly, got home, took showers, and started a load of laundry.

Easy enough.

Except that when the washer had completed its cycle, I went to switch the load and the washer was still full of water.  Like full full.  Like "Oh shit, we're going to have to go buy a new washer" kind of full.

Crap.

So I asked Cris (Lost enthusiast and former roommate, mother of Reilly, pictured above) what she suggested, and we decided that it would be a good idea to just run it again.  Kind of a "turn the computer off and then turn it back on" solution. But it didn't work.  The washer was still full of water. 

And since I really didn't want to spend the rest of my evening emptying the washer with plastic cups, I turned to The Google, googled "washer won't drain," and discovered that there was a good chance that the draining hose thing was clogged.  Made sense, especially considering how much fur and how many coins and tubes of Burt's Bees have ended up in the washer.

So I pulled out the washer and unplugged it (figured that might be a good idea), and slowly removed the hose.  After I stared at it (much in the same way that Mitch stares at me when I ask him if he wants to order a pizza--slowly moving his head from side to side) for a few moments, Cris had another good suggestion: blow into it. 

Yeah!  Great idea!

So I blew.

And I blew, and I blew, and I blew.  (I blew more than the horrible episode of The Hills that I'm watching right now--Jesus Christ, Spencer, could you be a little more crazy?!)

And bubbles kept coming up from the bottom of the washer.  Just like farting in the bathtub.

I blew some more, at this point because I was impressing myself with my incredible lung capacity.

Then came the moment of truth.  We put the washer on the rinse or spin cycle (I can't remember), and held our breath.  Well, I didn't hold my breath.  I was kind of out of breath from all the blowing.

And. . .

VICTORY! 

And then, every 10-15 minutes for the next three days, I'd turn to Matt and be all, "Hey, remember that time I fixed the washer by blowing into it?"

Washing Machine, 0.  Mandy, 1.

F you, clothes!

I'm pretty tidy. I'm not the cleanest person on the planet, but I'm nowhere close to the dirtiest. I'd say that I'm in the 78th percentile of tidiness. If I didn't have a big furry dog who insisted on building new dogs with the fur he sheds, I'd be in the 85th percentile of tidiness.

I actually like cleaning, for the most part. I'll wipe baseboards, my ceiling fans are usually pretty clean, I dust, we sweep almost daily, etc. There are a couple of household chores, though, that I absolutely loathe. One is mopping the floors. The other is putting away the clothes.

I don't even mind doing the laundry, but for some reason I can never seem to muster up the drive to put clothes away. They just sit there on the loveseat in our bedroom (formerly the couch of bad dreams, the one I put in our room thinking to myself, "Oh, wouldn't it be nice to have a sitting area in my bedroom. . .I'll just relax and read." Yeah, right.) mocking me. They laugh at me. I hear them heckling and cackling like the characters on Lost hear voices in the jungle.

They've been like this for, oh, three weeks or so. When people have come over I've closed the door to our bedroom to avoid having them see my embarrassing clothes-splosion.

This guy isn't a fan of the task, either. Here he's saying, "Hey, mama. Can't we go to the park or the bank instead of putting clothes away? I'm bored."

Another reason that the clothes never get put away is that there always seems to be more laundry to do. If I let it go just two days, then there is at least another load. And, shucks, I shouldn't put the clothes away if I'm just going to be adding to them.

"Boring!"

Last night I told Matt that if I didn't put the clothes away, I wasn't allowed the eat cookies. So today, even though I have an echo in my ear and have other things to do (like perfect my outdoor eating area, the Carport Bistro), I DID IT! I PUT THE CLOTHES AWAY!

It's pathetic how proud I am of myself at this moment. I should lay down and read. Yeah, right. Lay down and eat cookies, maybe.

Tomorrow I will mop that dirty, dirty kitchen floor.