Is it better to have a leaking washing machine, or no washing machine?

My ingenuity has failed me.

After spending nearly five hours trying to repair my own washing machine, I’m giving up. It’s almost midnight, I have dishes to do, and I have to be up early tomorrow morning for work. Never mind that it’s daylight savings and I’ve scored myself an extra hour.

What’s so frustrating about this endeavor – as indeed so many like it are – is just how close I came to success. I first noticed our washing machine leaking about a week ago. At first it seemed tolerable, but once great pools of water were on the floor by the time the spin cycle was done, I figured something was pretty much definitely up. My first reaction was to buy a new one. Who cares if it’s another $500; this one’s twelve years old, had its day, and now we move on.

But as day after day came and went with with either no laundry or very dirty laundry, I began to think, what the hell – maybe I can do this myself. So home I came from work tonight, bent on getting this damn thing working or die trying.

Well, I’m not dead, but I sure feel close to it. I began with a bit of Google searching, and found the user manual for the machine (helpful as they’ve been to us, the washing machine manual is the one thing our landlord didn’t leave us). It was great – it told me how to take the whole damn thing apart, and put it back together again. This was too easy, thought I.

The first sticking point was the agitator, which turns out to be the tall pillar bit inside that swishes your clothes around. The nut holding this in was at the bottom of a six-inch shaft, and nothing I had would fit in there to unscrew it.

No problem, I thought. I know what I’m looking for; time for a late-night trip to Home Depot. It took me a while – it wasn’t clear where the screwdrivers were (it turns out I was looking for a socket wrench anyway), and when I did find them, almost none of them were long enough. Taking a gamble, I picked one that seemed about the right length, but still small enough that I could walk out of there without feeling like a plumber (or plumb idiot).

I took my shiny new tool home, and lo and behold, it fit! I had the agitator out in a jiffy. Underneath this plasticky piece of machinery was the never-before seen bottom of my washing machine – you know, that place where all the pennies go. There was this weird, black, greasy shaft poking up (I haven’t touched it, don’t want to know what it’s for), and, pinning the inner tub (the white tub with all the holes in it) were four more bolts.

Well hey, guess what? They were the kind that my brilliant new socket wrench could handle! No way! I socked my wrench onto these nuts, gave them a good twist…and nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing. Not the tiniest bit of movement.

Stumped, I considered what this meant. Clearly, I ought to be able to remove these bolts with my socket wrench, since it fit them so perfectly. Well, thinking back to my old physics lessons, perhaps I simply needed more torque. This meant I needed to find something with a right angle and a long handle that could fit into the square end of my socket wrench’s attachment.

I scoured the basement. We’re quite lucky – our landlord (whose home this used to be) had left us a wealth of tools in the basement (no socket wrench though, of course). At first I came up with nothing. Disappointed, I looked again, deeper. This time I found something that I thought might work. I’m still not sure what this thing was originally intended for, but basically it’s a small steel bar in an ‘L’ shape, with a slightly tapered square end on either side. If I fit one of the ends into the socket wrench attachment, the other end would give me plenty of force to apply to the stubborn nuts. I brought it over to my washing machine, tried to insert the thinner end of this bent metal bar into the socket wrench attachment…to find it was around 1/2 a millimeter too wide. Gargh!

Not yet defeated, I scoured the basement yet again, and this time came up with a file. Ah-ha! I could file down the end of the steel bar, and it would fit. Then I would have those bolts out, oh yes. I filed. The bar got thinner. I stuck it into the wrench attachment – it fit! A great heave and groan, and the bolt started to turn. I had done it!

I quickly removed these last four bolts, the only things standing in my way. Placing them safely to one side (I, still naively thinking I have this under control and our fixed washing machine will be cleaning my clothes before dinner was ready), I gave a back-wrenching heave on the washing machine tub…

You guessed it. Once again, absolutely nothing happened (well, I pulled my back, I believe). Agitated, I consulted my manual. “Remove the four nuts, pull the tub out of the machine.” Sure. I tried again, thinking perhaps I’m just not as strong as I thought I was. Still nothing.

I began frantically trawling the web, trying desperately to see if there was something I missed. Lots of people, it seemed, had these problems. Some appeared to have solved them, but rather unhelpfully forgot to post exactly how they got it to work. I tried again, and again. Over the course of two hours, one can of WD40 and more sweat than I’ve shed in a year (I’m a little ashamed to admit that), the most I had managed to achieve was to slightly twist the inner tub out of alignment with the outer tub.

Great, I thought. If I can move it – even such a tiny bit – maybe there’s still a chance. The problem is, by now it’s getting late, I’m worn out, and my hands are raw from pulling and pushing and straining at this damn thing. So finally, I give in. I’ll put it all back together, and at least I can have clean clothes, if not a clean floor.

And here’s where the big problem suddenly occurred to me. By shifting the inner tub out of alignment with the outer tub, I suddenly found myself no longer able to insert the four bolts (the ones that had given me so much trouble) that held the inner tub in place; their holes didn’t line up. I began tugging and pulling harder than ever before. Now, I was moving the outer tub with the inner tub, and the holes simply would not realign.

And so, finally and wearily, I gave up in despair. So close to success, I was thwarted by what should have been the simplest step. I still feel there’s something I was not told. A screw, a bolt, a lock of some kind that, had I removed it, would have made the whole thing work.

But I couldn’t find it.

I couldn’t do it. I tried to fix my own washing machine, and failed. It doesn’t feel that good; my evening was gone, my hands hurt, and to top it all, I’m now left with a washing machine in pieces that won’t do anything, leaking or not! The machine defeated me, and I’m left feeling quite inadequate. Plus, my wife will be angry now for going to bed so late. And hammering. And cursing.

So now I’m going to do the dishes (the sink still works, thank goodness), slink into bed, and wake up way too early to go to work, aching all over.

And tomorrow night, we’ll go buy a new washing machine.

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What is the history of this light?

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As I sit here at the Van Ripper-Hopper House Museum waiting for a chipmunk (though I suspect I’ve been stood up), I couldn’t help but notice this light here beside me.
I’m here with my wife and son because they have pumpkin painting (the safer alternative to carving, I guess), and a book signing for a children’s book Miles quite rudely said he wasn’t interested in.

Anyway, while they roam the grounds and his pumpkin dries, I saw a chipmunk sit – twice – on this fence, and thought perhaps if I also sit here for long enough, he might hop back on and let me take his picture. So far, he hasn’t obliged.

In the meanwhile, I saw this light and began wondering how it came to be so twisted.
Like the fence it sits beneath, it has become uprooted, and is on the verge of collapsing entirely. It has no lightbulb, and its exposed wires suggest it isn’t likely to work again. But why is it thus? I don’t imagine it was originally installed that way. The wires lead underground, so some careful thought and planning went into this light. There aren’t any others nearby. It was put in to light the area, and has since been neglected. I feel sorry for it.

Well, my wife is calling me to leave, and the chipmunks are teasing me with their chirps (did you know chipmunks chirp?), but won’t show themselves. At least I saw the light.

What’s in the Garbage?

I used to live in England. It isn’t where I’m from, but I’ve lived there longer than any other place in my life, so I might as well call it home. I appreciate the many ways in which the European influence has cultured the country, and enjoyed my time there.

There are, of course, some notable ways in which England is behind other countries in the world, and especially the United States. Growing up in Portland, Oregon, nearly twenty-five years ago now, I remember having several separate crates we filled each week with glass, plastic and paper. Each week, we would dutifully place these on the curb, and upon return find them empty, magically cleared by the mysterious and rarely-seen garbage men.

However, where I lived in Sheffield, curbside paper recycling has only taken hold in the past five years, and glass and other materials even more recently than that. It would be collected once a month.

I now live in New Jersey, and without going all the dubious benefits this entails, the garbage and recycling cycles have intrigued me. This stuff is collected all the time. I mean it. Household trash is collected on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Recycling is collected every two weeks on Monday. Needless to say, our family of three doesn’t come close to filling the requirements of these tailgating pickups; often we miss one or more pickups with no consequences to speak of.

What truly astonishes me, however, is our neighbors. Generally, every single garbage day, they have one (or more) garbage cans on the curb, often overflowing with trash. Same goes for recycling, so I can’t even say that they simply aren’t too green. Every day.

What are they throwing out? I can’t imagine that three days’ worth of table scraps – even for a large family – would fill a whole garbage can. Kitty litter? No cat shits that much. Do they, perhaps, cook an extra meal every night to feed the hungry kitchen bin?

Perhaps it’s all packaging from the prodigious number of toys, gadgets and other miscellany they buy every few days at Stop & Shop. If so, where do they get the money, and how can I get some? My job’s not that crappy, and even a gajillion dollars of credit card debt couldn’t really account for it.

So what’s in their garbage? Try as I might, I can’t fathom it. They are likely larger families than ours, but more mouths eat more, not trash more. Maybe they get disproportionately more junk mail than we do (which is already staggering). Perhaps I’m just unaware that we’re surrounded by the mafia, and these are simply their weekly body dumps (the black sacks the funeral home around the corner leaves on the street are decidedly suspicious).

Ultimately, there may no answer (other than to knock on their doors and politely ask, and I don’t fancy contributing to their trash). I’ll continue to notice and continue to wonder; perhaps the truth is only known to the mysterious garbagemen. What an insight into our lives they must have.