Renewal Time!

Back in 2014 I posted about Earning My Lesbian Card here on the ol’ blog.  On Monday, that darn card came up for renewal!

For some reason our dryer stopped working last week.  It finished drying a load and then when the next load was put in, it just wouldn’t start at all.  It was a complete mystery!  I went out and flipped the breaker and unplugged and replugged it back in to no avail.  It wasn’t going to work.  I grabbed the handy dandy drying rack that I bought in 2010 and hung the clothes to dry.  I knew that I had a very busy last two days of school and a graduation and celebration for my 3rd child so the dryer wasn’t going to be fixed until I survived all of that.  On Sunday evening I signed in to chat with someone from Sears about getting it fixed.  I bought it at Sears and it’s a Kenmore so that’s what I went with.  They set me up with an appointment the next morning!  Yay!

The repairman showed up and went about his routine of checking it out.  He discovered that 3 parts were bad…something that surprised him.  He said it was probably from an electrical surge, lightning strike, or something.  Considering all the storms we’ve had and how many times the power has gone out recently, this isn’t a big surprise.  The problem was that he had 2 of the parts, but the third part is no longer in their inventory, because it isn’t used on newer Kenmore models.  I was frustrated with this because my dryer was purchased in 2012 so it’s not like it’s very old and a newer model won’t be breaking down anytime soon hopefully.  It’s the older models that will need to be fixed!  Unfortunately, because he didn’t have all the parts, he wasn’t allowed to fix any of the dryer at all.  They offer a 90 day warranty after they fix it, but since he couldn’t guarantee it would work I was out of luck!  The most frustrating part was that I had to pay $89 for a service call even though he couldn’t do anything to help me.  Now, I know that I could have found someone else who probably could have actually fixed the thing, but I went with Sears because that’s all my overly stimulated brain could think of at the time.

Because the repairman could sense my frustration, he showed me all three parts that needed to be replaced.  He told me that I could get all of them at an appliance parts store for about $150 and have my husband fix it for me.  Little did he know that there isn’t a husband around these parts, but I chose not to bewilder him with that information.  He showed me where things unscrew and unplug and how the parts were like puzzle pieces to fit back into place.  He gave me the part numbers and wished me well.  I got online and found an appliance parts place not too far away.  I was going to have to be the butch lesbian this time because Candied Jansen was out of town for a few days.  I decided I should take the broken parts with me just in case something was messed up on the part numbers so I proceeded to unscrew and unplug them from the dryer.  When I arrived at the parts store, I handed my part numbers to the clerk who took about 15 seconds to round them up.  Wow!  No old parts needed!  I paid $133 and headed home.

Now to fix the dryer!  Several pieces fit right in just like the repairman said, but there was this one new piece that apparently took the place of the old piece.  Thankfully the package had a picture of the old and new pieces and directions explaining how to attach the new piece to the old place.  Some of the instructions were repair jargon to me and I had no idea what they were talking about, but there were diagrams and I can do that!  After about 20 minutes of actual work, I set the dryer upright, turned it on, and by golly the thing worked!  I turned it off and flipped it back over and reattached the back of the dryer which took longer than the actual repair due to the millions of tiny screws used.  I cautiously kept turning it off and on because I could see the glow from the heating element inside the dryer and I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to happen!  After a few minutes it stopped glowing and functioned normally.  I figured all the dust that dislodged from me turning the dryer over was burning off or something.

We’ve used the dryer several times since then, and it works like a charm!  I told Candied Jansen that the next time we need a butch lesbian, it was her turn!