An expensive lesson in handwashing

Last weekend the dryer started making a funny noise. The clothes were dry, but the dryer didn't sound so good. Of course, I was halfway through doing laundry, so on Memorial Day I was stringing clothesline on anything I could find (I now have an intricately designed spiderweb laced between various hooks and drainpipes in back of my house for the purpose of drying clothes) to dry the clothes I had already washed. Yes, there is a landromat a half a mile from my house. But I wanted a clothesline anyway. Of course, I would actually like a real clothesline that will hold an entire load of laundry at one time. Not that the neighbors don't enjoy seeing all the laundry that won't fit on my spiderweb draped all over the front yard. I feel very virtuous using the spiderweb clothesline.

Anyway, today the repairperson came to check the dryer. They had originally said between noon and five. I told them I wouldn't be home until 3pm, so they agreed to between three and five pm. At 4:59 pm, the truck showed up. At 5:05, the repairperson turned on my dryer, listened to the noise for a minute, turned off the dryer, opened the dryer door, and yanked out a bra underwire from where it was sticking out of the heating element.

Oops. The underwire, being metal, fried the heating element. I'm glad I stopped using the dryer as soon as I noticed the funny noise, because I probably would have ended up with a burned down house. As it was, I had to get a new heating element for the dryer. He just happened to have a restrung one on the repair truck which I got for half price, so along with the $75 service call, I'm only out $138 for the dryer. Which is approximately the amount I would have had to pay Jupiter's preschool today if it wasn't the last week of school (tuition was $238 a month, but I had to save my bonus and part of my tax refund and put it in a reserve fund to pay for the preschool tuition. ) So there went THAT extra money.

Note to self: hand wash underwire bras and hang on the spiderweb line. And yes, they have to be underwire. Otherwise, as Jupiter points out, they hang down. That's the moral of the story. The hand washing, that is.