02 November, 2009

Ordeal by washing machine

Everything, absolutely everything, seems to be extremely taxing at the moment. I can't decide if I'm tired because I'm still jetlagged or because everyday actions seem to involve major challenges to my sorry brain.

Today we needed to do some laundry. So we confronted the behemoth in the garage. A classic American toploader with minimal programmes and no instructions. How hard could it be? Well it turned out very hard. We could not get it to turn on. We pushed and pulled its knob, we turned it and turned it and still nothing. Tom briefly got it to work when he moved its plug to another socket so we thought it might be the plug which was dodgy. At this point I started to fiddle with the plug and discovered that American wiring leaves something to be desired. Bang! and my left arm was tingling for the next fifteen minutes. Of course when we worked out how to get the beast to work, there was nothing wrong with the plug - it's just that it has a circular dial but only uses half the circle. If you point the start arrow at the bottom half of the circle, nothing happens.

Next stop would have been the tumble dryer but all our clothes say don't. So we haven't. We've hung it up in the garage on a line, which makes me feel virtuous and green once more, but also dubious that it will actually dry. At least this way I can't get electrocuted again.

1 comment:

Garden Girl said...

And of course they don't 'do' radiators out there, so you can't even hang them there. At least the average US washer seems to take half the time it takes a UK one to do a load.

It's the little things, isn't it?

Have the girls started school yet?