Where have I been?

I woke up this morning and it was September.

Where have I been?

No, I wasn't in an alien spaceship, although that might have been neat. Oh, excuse me, cool. Neat went out in the 1950s, whereas cool, has been, well, cool since the 1920s.

Instead of being carefree in an alien spaceship, I was a prisoner to my household appliances. First the washer started doing weird dances across the laundry room floor and making ungodly (almost possessed) sounds even our neighbors could hear. Not only that, but on the rinse and spin cycles my husband or I had to hold the machine down so it didn't smash into the dryer or bang into the wall and take chunks of wall out.

Days of bugging my friends and family for ideas for a new washer, checking out the internet for sales and a list of the most dependable and inexpensive washers, tramping through mega stores and listening to sales pitches, and asking the same questions over and over...We bought a front loader. It's quiet, doesn't walk or bang across the floor and is energy efficient. We may even get a governmental rebate or whatever it's called for being energy conscious. (I think that's better than being energy unconscious, but I'm not sure).

I sit down at my computer, ready to compose another GONE WITH THE WIND when the air conditioning starts making weird cracking, crackling, and banging sounds at night. Great for late night blogging or sleeping if you're deaf. By then, I'm beginning to think: The house is possessed by a household appliance demon. But not only noises filled the evening air, weird wet deposits appeared on the bedroom floor. "It's your outside handler. You need a new one, but you'll have to get both inside and outside machines because of new governmental rules. No more freon. Only SEER ratings of 14 and above and yada, yada, yup, $4,000 later...Magic, we have an air conditioner that doesn't make a sound. It darn well better not at those prices. And get this...we have two air handlers; one for each side of our house. I can hardly wait for that outside handler to go...Yes, I can. And no more nightmare dreams about the air handler from hell, please.

Then the lawn mower goes, right when my husband's about to cut down all that tall grass in the front we've been letting go because of the air conditioning and washing machine encounters. Yup, it dies, rolls over, and won't even yap. Off to the lawn mower repair place, because everyone knows it's cheaper to repair than purchase a whole new one. Yes, but when you have to return the darn thing three times after the initial repair because they stripped the screws, forgot to put in a gas filter, yada, yada, you are pulling out your hair and screaming, "Not us! Why us!"

But okay, summer is over and we don't need air conditioning as much ( so even if it does go, who cares?), and the lawn is growing more slowly because the summer monsoons have shut down, and yes, we still have to do wash, but that machine is guaranteed for 10 years, or so they say, but I couldn't read the tiny print at the bottom that probably says, "Ha, ha, April fool!"

So that, in a nutshell, is what I've been doing since my last entry. I swear on my Girl Scout badges that I will faithfully report to this blog and share my fiction writing experiences now and forever forward from this day.

Signed in blood...or at least a dab or strawberry jam...

Fiction Writer

Carolyn Chambers Clark