Washing machines: The Wet And The Wild

I always thought natural disasters were, well Natural things that originated outdoors.



Until last Wednesday.




Let me elaborate a little.

We have an old washing machine. 16 years old, to be precise. Same amount of years as my parents have been married. It goes to show how old they are :P......I mean...just one of my parents...he he... the one who DOESN'T check this blog.....
Anyway. It is a very old Kenmore set with a washer and a dryer. Unlike the modern new washer/dryer sets with all of those new features, ours has old features. For example. It comes with a noise indicator to let you know when it's done. Not only does it have a buzzer, but you can tell what stage it is in. A sound somewhat similar to the garbage disposal in the sink, only magnified, means it is draining water. A heavy thumping is the wash cycle, Etc. The best way to know it's done is when the Cantankerous symphony is finally over. You could probably hear these on normal washers, too, but with this one, not only you, but your neighbors can know when the laundry is done.

It also has the "make sure you check your laundry" feature, in which all of the wet laundry slaps up onto the sides of the spinning cylinder and causes it to thump the sides in an ever growing thump cycle, going thump..thump...thump...thump..thump...THUMP THUMP!!
And it continues until the neighbors come and tell you to stop the noise, because it has already apparently made you deaf.

So you open the lid, peel the plastered clothing off the sides and start it again. Occasionally, if the laundry load is heavy enough, it may just eject it out, stopping the machine.

So to the event. Catastrophe strikes! Well...sorta.

It all started when...naw....Once upon a late spring day.....No....Basically, It's summer now. We have been swimming several times now. We've done a lot of yard work to fix up for summer. Thrown an occasional water balloon at an unsuspecting sibling. SO after some tedious slave-labor in the yard, we were ready to go swimming. We were about to dive in to the cool, (actually freezing) waters of the pool when an ear piercing shriek came from the house. Madeline, my sister. As always. This could mean anything, however, as that if anyone so much as pats her, she screeches louder than a screech owl calling into a megaphone.
This time, however, it was something.

We ran inside to find a dripping sibling yelling "THE LAUNDRY ROOM IS FLOODED!" We arrived on the scene of the laundry room, an extremely small room in which, of course, our laundry machine is. Being filled with such devices, the door doesn't close well And it lies right across the bathroom, whose door is always open, unless of course, it is occupied. Arriving on the scene, It was immediately noticed that watter was spraying out from the rear or the laundry machine. "It's coming out of the wall!" both my sister and mother shout. It only takes a glance to notice that that it is coming from a hose into the washing machine rather than the opposite wall. It was only shooting out so fast that it was ricocheting off the wall and had removed a piece of wallpaper. It was so flooded by that point that the same swimming experience could've been obtained indoors, without the sunburns.

It was kinda like that scene in 'Master and Commander' where they are trying to clog the hole in the hull while it's flooding in. The previously sent troops were out and the others were sent to turn the water off. Water was flooding into the tile bathroom, making it slipperier by the minute. The reserve was sent int. I charged, shielding the hot water with a towel as I charged into the sauna. Well, it was like a sauna, but not at all relaxing. Steaming hot watter poured down, and finally a towel was put over it as (yours truly) saved the day. Well...My mom was the one who actually turned the house water off. But the worst was yet to come. Now we could bathe in the pond that had formed in the hall betwixt the bathroom and laundry room and had filled both. So came the drying. We would've used towels them washed them, but the hose was broken, so we couldn't. So every towel in the house was in the backyard, hanging on the fence to dry. The battle was over. The repairman would arrive the next day....

The Battle of the washing machine was over- The water balloon war was about to begin.