Fresh air

A few years ago, I woke in the middle of the night and heard the dryer running. This jolted me awake, and I leapt out of bed and dashed down to the basement, disturbing the sleeping dogs. The dryer had been running since sometime the previous day, and the clothes were toasty, even crispy. Suddenly I realized that I wasn't getting fatter--my clothes were shrinking. Well, maybe I was also getting fatter, but that's neither here nor there. The timer on the dryer was not working. Instead of spending the dough to get the dryer fixed, we've instead spent the dough on the cost of electricity for all the extra time the dryer runs when we forget to turn it off after the clothes are dry.

A few weeks ago, one of us went down to turn off the dryer, and it was already off. Or at least the tumbling part was off. The heat was still on. No timer, no fan, no motor--but at least it still heats!

At this juncture, we determined that continued use of the dryer would be unsafe as well as impractical. In the short term, we've decided to hang the laundry out to dry, and get the dryer fixed when the weather gets too cool for that. I actually enjoy this chore--it gets me outside, which I love, and the clothes smell great. Plus it saves electricity and money.

On the minus side, it takes a lot longer than just shoving the stuff in the dryer, and if I'm the only one home with my daughter, I have to be careful that she doesn't try to scald herself while I'm out there. Also, there's the dog poop. Dropping a sock on the ground becomes highly undesirable. I did try to get that all cleared away today, but there are years of unscooped poop on the ground, blended in with the soil, nurturing the wide variety of weeds.

Weeds are great for attracting butterflies, by the way! Especially when they grow out of control, resembling a scene from Platoon. I recently borrowed a book from the library about weeds, trying to determine what friendly species I had in my back yard. It turns out that not only can pokeberries be used for ink, but the entire pokeweed plant is highly poisonous. It also turns out those peppery-smelling vines with the pretty red berries are Deadly Nightshade. Both of these plants are great for birds and butterflies, but not so great for curious little girls. I spent several hours out there recently trying to remove the offending plants. When they come back in the spring, I'll be more hasty about removing them again.

Anyway, the weather is already getting cooler, so my laundry experiment may not last too much longer, but I'm enjoying it in the mean time--except for the sandpapery towels, that is.