Phew, what a morning! Four Babybugs read just now and Alida was asleep almost before she started nursing. Her cold makes her a quite dramatic sleeper so we'll see how long this nap lasts. I've got a mountain of dishes as a result of my morning kitchen flurry, but I've also got three or four blog posts that have been percolating so we'll start with that. I'll begin with the downer news and then move upwards.
At our Wednesday evening Tangly Woods meal, I mentioned that one of my current "thorns" is that it seems like we are heading into a phase where we have a surge of things breaking on us. It seems these things sometimes go in waves and I'm hoping we are about at the crest of ours. It is ironic that our permaculture principle for this month's discussion which took place on Tuesday of this week was "use and value renewable resources." Most of these things breaking do not fall neatly in that category!
Stove: The other day I was cooking a big pot of chili. I pushed the simmer select button and was quite surprised by the huge bang that came from the stove. It blew a fuse and upon closer inspection by our future-brother-in-law, who also happens to be an electrical engineer, we got clear instructions to not use that burner. So we need to buy parts for the top of our stove. We knew it was coming as we are pretty hard on stoves with all our cooking/canning and had been noticing an odd sound (which should have been our warning to discontinue its use weeks ago...).
Windshield wiper fluid: We often neglect to do real minor "car maintenance." Well recently I started putting a reminder in my outlook calendar so we do things like check the oil, add antifreeze and windshield wiper fluid, clean out the car, etc... Well within the past week we did all those things. However, after taking care of all that the windshield wiper fluid stopped working. It is likely just a coincidence but it reminds me of when I finally flossed every day between dental appointments so I could tell the hygienist honestly that I did it and then she didn't even ask me AND I had my first cavity. We have yet to trouble shoot the problem and it may mean a trip to the mechanic...
Solar water heater: This has been a bit of a nightmare ever since installation during the building of the in-law quarters. It kind of works and then boils over and then gets reset/reprogrammed and then kind of works, etc... We recently had one of the panels replaced due to a factory defect and were hoping we were in the clear. Not yet!
Drainfield: Jason noticed a soggy spot in our drainfield the other day. Not a great sign! Still need to investigate this further and maybe have the tank pumped... Let's hope that is all it needs!
So those were the four things on my mind. Then this morning, when my to-do list was much longer than the hours in the morning, I added two more things to the list:
Washing machine: The old one in our bathroom was here when we moved and it was old then. It has been super faithful (until today) with only minor hiccups along the way. Well today, despite trying to wash the load of diapers/sheets on every possible setting it would stop at the point at which it needed to drain the water out and spin. So I rung out wet clothes, put it through the upstairs washer and have yet to empty the washer full of dirty water. I guess that machine is probably on its way to the dump (which means I'll have to really start being better about closing the door to the bathroom if our "washer screen" is no longer there!).
Hand mixer: What is it about me and hand mixers? Granted they have all been second hand store finds but I've broken about three. Today cream cheese frosting was the thing that did it in. So I really must get to using my birthday money to buy the coveted immersion blender with the mixing attachment.
In the meantime, we need to carve out time to attend to some of the above! But for now I'll do another blog post instead. :)
Our washer started doing the exact same thing a few months ago. After a bunch of fiddling, I figured out that the thing that sensed that the door was closed was not working properly, so it would not spin. There's a little button thing that gets pushed down and that was fine, but there's also this little metal arm that comes over to latch to top closed while spinning, and that was not functioning. I was able to pull the little arm over and secure it with a paper clip so it was in the latched position all the time, and it has been working fine. I know your problem may be different, and my solution for ours will probably not work forever, but I thought I'd share. I find it pretty amusing that I was able to use a single paper clip to avoid spending hundreds of dollars on a new washer. Just call me MacGyver! :-)
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