It started with what I thought was an air raid siren at 5:30 a.m.
It was only the cat. He's 18 years old, deaf as a stone, nearly blind, and when he wakes up, he thinks he's all alone in hell, so he raises the alarm. He's been a good friend for a long time, so I don't call in an air strike; I get up, feed him, brush him, comb him, reassure him, and he waddles off to his favorite spot and falls asleep.
I, however, am awake.
Shortly thereafter, I discover the clothes dryer is dead, due to a malfunctioning logic board. It comes on, beeps at me, goes off, comes on again, etc. My wife tries it--same thing. Forty minutes later, I finally get it working, and I show my wife how I did it, so she, too, can bring it back from the dead.
My wife performs exactly the same ritual with the control buttons, but nothing happens. I perform the ritual again, and it starts.
I am not inventing this--I have no idea what lies behind this phenomenon, but I alone am able to conjure life into the evil dryer.
My iPod, which had been fixed by a green plastic frog, is now dead again. Always make sure your technician is NOT a green, plastic frog before entrusting him or her with your cherished device.
I left our apartment in a foul mood, only to discover that I could not exit the building in my usual way because city workers have utterly destroyed the sidewalks and replaced them with new, fresh concrete. So I take another exit, walk along another street, where there is yet more construction, and while I am stepping past the rubble and the cement trucks, a worker starts up some sort of concrete annihilating machine that makes even more noise than our cat.
Ha ha ha. I will not let this trouble me. Walk down Yonge Street. No more construction. Good. No asteroids, no lightning, no dog turds, and no speed demons on bicycles racing past me on the sidewalk. The cars, however, are a different matter, running red lights, stop signs, and crowding anyone spotted in a crosswalk.
Near Canadian tire, I begin crossing at the light with a few others. A female twit runs the light and nearly kills the man in front of me. He slams his fist down on the hood of her car; she gives him the finger. I stay out of this. I am still alive; that will suffice.
I have an interesting discussion with a chap who works at the place where I purchased the dryer. No, the store has nothing to do with appliances it has sold; they are unclean and must be handled by special technician priests from another company.
So I call this company on my Treo, and after much pushing of buttons and automated annoyance, get a polite woman who listens to my tale of woe, then tells me that her company, like the store that sold me the dryer, does not handle appliances that break down unless they have been swaddled in an expensive extra protection contract. She will give me a number to call.
I get the first digit; then my Treo breaks down.
I will not give in to anger. No. This is nothing. I call my wife. On the first attempt, I can't hear her. So I go and stand inside a nearby Bell store, where I can be sure of good reception, and this time, I do indeed get through to my wife.
The moral to this one is, if you want good cell phone reception, go and stand in a store operated by the telecom that sold you the phone.
Work? What work? Nothing has been done. And there is so much to do!
Call from my wife while still close to the store. The technician will charge $100 merely to contemplate the capricious dryer god. Parts will be extra, if he has a supply.
Later, at home, discover the Hydro bill, which now features all sorts of interesting extra charges, including a new tax component--the HST.
Very angry now. Warning to anyone reading this diatribe--do not distractedly eat whilst fuming over bills and other assorted annoyances. It is possible to consume an entire bag of chocolate covered almonds while examining your bill to see if the numbers have perhaps diminished while you were invoking a demon to annihilate the service provider.
I am not angry. I am not afraid of Friday the thirteenth. All of these things are mere coincidences. The dryer is not a malevolent entity bent on my destruction.
Here is a picture of our cat, before he turned into a crabby old guy with a big voice.
I am contemplating purchasing this book--it comes very highly recommended from a number of trusted sources, and not one of them is a clothes dryer.
In line with everything else that has gone wrong today, the link below was somehow messed up, and I am simply too tired to fix it. Besides, something else might go wrong.
Search Amazon.com for elizabeth castro
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