Attack of the clothes dryer!

I realize that I haven't written for a while, but I didn't realize it was this long! Things here have been going fine except for our duel with our dryer. Normally I write about Moira and motherhood. She's great, growing like a weed, and starting to sleep a little better. I still don't quite fit in anything and my belly looks like a deflated balloon. But what's been the biggest event this past week, besides father's day of course, was our experience with our dryer.

Let me start at the beginning. We rent, so if things don't work or are broke, we call our landlord and more or less he either fixes them or buys us something new. Since we've been here (two years) we've gotten a new fridge, new washer, new dryer, new central air unit, new master bath toilet and a few visits from various handymen and our do it yourself landlord to fix things like our front door lock (it still looks like someone could break in) and our air/heat unit. Reading all this, I just realized what a piece of crap this place really was when we moved in. So many upgrades in such a short amount of time, it's almost like the money pit. Anyway, so over the past month, I noticed that it was taking longer and longer to dry clothes. Of course, I thought nothing of it and ocntinued to wash-dry. Now anyone with an infant knows the importance of a functional washer and dryer. Can we say spit-up??? Can we say 2-3 shirts a day because of spit-up? So, our washer and dryer are in pretty constant use, that is until two Tuesdays ago when the dryer just did not dry. It took 4 cycles at high to dry a small load of Mo's clothes and burpcloths. Yes, 4 cycles which means 70 min times 4- 280 minutes! Translations Almost 5 hours to dry her teeny tiny clothes! Bry calls the landlord, who claims someone will be out the next day. Wednesday, guy comes to clean the vent. Yes, that's the problem?!? After 20 minutes on the roof, he leaves. I think it's fixed so I dump a load of towels into the wash and then attmept to dry them. Again, I say ATTEMPT. Guess what? The dryer still does not work! So now besides having a dryer that takes over 5 hours to dry one load of towels, I still have laundry piling up! Bry calls the landlord yet again, and then Bry calls me to ask questions. The conversation went something like this:

Bry: Jac, how would you say the dryer is broke?
Jac: Uhh, it doesn't dry the clothers!
Bry: Yeah, I realize that, but landlord wants to know what's broken?
Jac: How the hell am I suppose to know? Do I know anything about dryers?
Bry: Neither do I. What the f***! This is annoying! We don't know anything about dryers. Can't he just come and fix it! UGH!
Jac: Try running out of clothes because your kid spit up over everything!
Bry: Yeah, well I need underwear and undershirts! Damn landlord. I'll call him back and attempt to tell him our problem.
Jac: Yeah, good luck with that! ....Crap she just spit-up on me again! F*** We really need that dryer working!

Landlord calls to say another guy will be coming on Saturday morning. Saturday morning landlord calls to say guy will be coming on Monday. The guy fixes a "blown fuse" and says that the vent hasn't been cleaned well. Yeah, I thought that's what the first guy fixed? In the meantime, I dragged my kid, her stroller, infant carseat, baby bag, two laundry bags of clothes, detergent, dryer sheets and my sanity to Bryan's aunt's house to use her washer and dryer. Thank God she lives only a few miles away. I then drag those above and the now clean and DRY clothes back to our place.

We call the landlord to explain that vent still needs to be fix. (again, this is the following monday!) He calls to say the vent cleaning people will be back on Wed. between 9:15-10;15. Bry decides to stay home on Wed. morning to oversee this debacle. We wake and I bring Mo downstairs at 8:40 while Bry heads to the bathroom. At 8:45 there's a knock on the door, and I answer....in my pajamas holding my baby. the vent cleaners are here...a half hour early. I shut the door on the guy and get Bry to come out of the bathroom. The guy now goes back onto the roof, and then climbs into our attic crawlspace. 30 minutes later he leaves. I wearily attempt to do a load of laundry. I place the wet towels into the dryer and......IT WORKS! Yippee! Bryan goes out to get breakfast, we sit down to eat and the smoke alarm goes off! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! WTF?

Bry and I hightail it upstairs and find that the metal exhaust pipe that is suppose to blow the air outside has come off the back of the dryer and so it is now blowing all that hot humid air into our house. Again, this F***ing dryer! Bry shimmies the dryer out of the little laundry alcove and does to high steps to position himself behind the dryer. It's quite a funny picture. This large man, behind the dryer stuck next to the washer trying to attach a pipe to the wall. He attaches it, no big deal. Highsteps back to the front of the dryer and starts to shimmy the dryer back to the wall. That is until we notice that he smashes the pipe into the wall and thereby tears it!

Let me just say the next few hours include the following items in various amounts: duct tape, a trip to Home Depot, a screaming child who's explosive poopy diapers have soiled the bouncy seat thereby leaving no place but my arms for her to be, a sweaty, pissed off husband, two screwdrivers and enough expletives to last a lifetime! At approximately 2, the dryer was finally fixed the best it's going to be. Thank God!

You'd think that was it, right? However that night we discovered that all the outlets on the left side of our living room and kitchen are not working. We checked the circuit breaker, rebooted the fuses, and nothing. Called our landlord and you can only guess what happens next....let's just say I'm typing from the right side of our living room!