Three Dumbs

So I could talk about how the two candidates have decided to throw integrity away and start making claims of terrorism and scandal...but I won't. I could talk about how the Chicago Cubs (whom I'm not a direct fan of but do support when the time is right) should be forever banned from Major League Baseball...but I won't. I could talk about how at work a member of my five person team just went on maternity leave, another will be leaving in August, and the other two don't want any of the leaving twos’ work and because they are older won't get any of it...but I won't. I could talk about how my dad has become an increasingly brainwashed Republican who is trying really damn hard to convince himself voting for McCain is a good idea, so he's started to send out thirteen minute Youtube clips put out by Young Republicans in Poly Sci 215 with nothing better to do...but I won't. I could talk about how Hampton called me tonight to tell me of an event he attended where he rubbed elbows with some of Hollywood's finest, but when his blog eventually catches up to the present (it's stuck in like 1983 now), he will...so I won't.

Instead, I'll talk about the chain of events that led me to be woken up at 5:30 this morning by a large man who looks and acts like Santa Claus but smells like cigarettes instead of cookies. Does Santa smell like cookies?

About six months ago my fiance (because she was yet to be my wife—pay attention to the timeline) left for some sort of trip. It was probably to go shopping with her mother. Like a good wife, I stayed home and cleaned the house, built a wall, did the laundry, ordered not one but two pizzas, ate them both, and cared for the dog. At one point during my seventeenth load of laundry...

I know it was the seventeenth because our "laundry room" is in the unfinished section of our basement that has both a floor that always leaves small anonymous dust objects on my socks and poorly constructed walls that are never quite clean, even after I clean them. (I've never cleaned them) It’s similar to the hole in Metallica’s Unforgiven video where a creepy guy who is inexplicably trapped there starts to scratch lines into the wall. The lines indicate how long he's been in the strange hole. I think that was the video for Unforgiven. It might also have been in Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo. I confuse the two. Regardless, each time I do laundry I prick my finger ever so slightly and rub a bloody two-inch line down the side of the wall. It not only helps me build strong calluses for guitar playing, but it helps me measure forward progress.

...a really loud noise happened. It sounded like something in the basement was grinding itself one last time before explosion. Since I know literally nothing about anything, I looked at my dog for advice. Since she is scared of everything but lawn mowers she immediately started barking and ran straight into the front door. Her brief yet amusing panic led me to believe I could be in danger. I let her outside (so she'd shut the hell up), and I went downstairs to investigate. The dryer shook violently. I was no longer worried the house was going to blow up. We received this dryer from my wife's aunt and uncle prior to moving in to the house. I can't prove it, but I don't think they are international terrorists. They wouldn’t have sold us an armed dryer. Besides, if they were international terrorists, why would they waste such an interesting weapon of mass destruction on their niece and her lazy, domesticated fiance?

Two minutes later the load shaking sound stopped. The dryer stopped moving. It continued to dry my clothes like nothing ever happened. It reminded me of the time my freshman year in college when a professor of mine stopped talking and moving mid sentence and just stood behind his podium, perfectly still. He froze in time. Thirty seconds later, he started moving again and finished his sentence. It was as if nothing ever happened. He said it was because he had calcium deposits in his brain. I told him to drink less milk. Really though, I think he was a robot.

I turned around to leave the room and heard a slight squeak. Then I took a step and heard another, less slight squeak. Each step away I took the squeak grew louder. The squeaking somehow was in sync with my movement. I tried to take a backwards step to see if that would lower the volume in some weird mystical way. I hoped I could spend the weekend eating pizza and training how to rock out a dryer. Unfortunately it did not work and the squeak grew louder. The squeak annoyed me, but the dryer still served its purpose, namely to dry clothes and pop popcorn.

When the dryer initially broke its biggest malfunction was the loud horrendous squeaking. I adjusted. I timed my loads of laundry as to not have to dry anything while my wife or I tried to sleep. This was challenging because Kelsey goes to bed at 8:30 on weekdays. I also tried to make sure most of the drying took place while she and I bandied about the town. I managed okay until the dryer decided to start eating clothes. I took out a load of my dress shirts, pressed one up real nice, and put it on only to notice a small hole in the middle of the chest. The clothing had been twisted to the point it tore and had been burned. This left a small hole and large black streaks in the chestal area of my designer t.

Luckily the dryer only ate three of my shirts. However, I could no longer trust that dryer with my shirts or my sexy silk thongs. This was four months ago. Since then I've spent much more energy trying to come up with creative ways to dry clothing than it would have spent me to dial a repair man. Last week, on a crazy whim and a prayer, I called GE. I told them their drying device ate my clothing and kept me up at night. She said, "I'm sorry to hear that. May I ask you which of our fabulous GE models you own?" I hung up and called again. I told them their drying device ate my clothing and kept me up at night. He said, "It's not supposed to do that. What model you got?" I made an appointment for the next day. Conveniently my five hour window came at the same time the baseball playoffs started, so I had to work from home. Terrible.

The repairman called and told me he was six blocks away from my house but wanted to probe a little further before showing up. He said he'd been in the dryer fixin' business for fifteen years and my model number is ten years old. He said that every call he ever got to a house with this particular dryer with the symptoms of "squeaks and eats clothes," the dryer is ruined. He probed further. I'll spare you the details of what was an incredibly fascinating conversation and tell you that he told me to cancel the service call. Basically I could buy a $300 replacement part, or I could buy a $300 new dryer. He told me he wanted to call because if he were to stop at my house I'd automatically be charged $75 even though he'd tell me the same thing he told me on the phone. I told him he was the greatest repairman to ever live. He told me his goal was to help as many people as he could. Noble.

(Cue music to indicate scene shift to "near-present")

After getting a second dog about one month ago, I've really let my drying going to hell. By Sunday morning of this past weekend I had every dress shirt I own downstairs, along with all my shorts, jeans, and pants, my entire wife's wardrobe, three sets of sheets, a llama, and towels I don't remember ever using. It overwhelmed me. I decided to look into a laundry-mat (for those who prefer the less colloquial Laundromat I apologize—I despise useless capitalization). As luck would have it, the closet laundry-mat was called Scrub Pub and had a bar inside. The bluer collar areas of Go America just understand life a litter better than the rest of the world. I got incredibly excited at the idea I could simultaneously complete seven loads of laundry, drink a Jack and Diet on a Sunday night, and watch the Red Sox play the Angels on a TV...in a laundry-mat…wearing sweatpants…I could be in a bar…on a Sunday…watching sports…wearing sweatpants!

Dumb #1: In my excitement to leave the house I not only left the back door to the house unlocked, I left it wide open. It's a good thing I own nothing of value.

You can only imagine the type of craziness that happens on a Sunday night in a bar slash laundry venue. You can only imagine it because really it's not that crazy. There are machines that wash clothes and people who will give you a soda, burned or not, if you request nicely and pay. Due to lack of material and the fact I plan to go there again, I'll save specifics for a blog to be used later (which I have ten dollars on me not actually writing). My wife and I played an awesome game of Phase 10 in which I think I won nine phases. She was terrible. It was one of the worst performances of all time. After the laundry was dry, we loaded up the car and went home. On the plus side, one of the Sunday regulars left three games of pinball on the machine. He told us we could have them. We were excited.

Dumb #2: When I arrived home I had to remove laundry from my car. I opened my rear driver's side and passenger's side doors as well as the trunk. After I brought the laundry in I closed a car door and went inside.

Eventually my wife and I put now clean sheets on the bed and went to bed. I slept reasonably well seeing as I stayed up until twelve something or other watching the Angels play erratic, inconsistent baseball.

Around 5:30 this morning we heard a loud, thundering creature walk up our front porch stairs. New dog slept through the guest's arrival but original dog barked and barked and barked. Thanks Dottie. We opened the door to find our neighbor Roy, a heavyset man with a gray bushy beard, standing there in blue shorts and a dirty maroon t-shirt. He said, "I think Jay's car's been broken into. When (my wife) left for work this morning she called to tell me to call you and let you know his door is open."

Nervous because I left my work computer in the car over the weekend (note: bad idea), and frustrated because I wanted sleep, I walked outside to examine the car. Sure enough the night before when I unloaded the laundry from the car, I left my driver's side rear door open. Since the car was parked on the side of the road I could not see the open door from the house. Luckily for me, no one took anything from the car, nor did anyone drive by my car and break the door off. Unluckily for me, if I ever run for office and someone asks is it true I was once woken up by an urgent, burly man on more than one occasion…I can’t say no.

The day went on. What a great way to start a week. I went to work. I worked really hard. I went home. I discovered my wife’s latest three week head-cold is actually an allergy to our new puppy. I discovered this literally the day after we’d decided to keep the new puppy. Life. We went to our aerobics class. We bought and ate a delicious foot-long sandwich on Italian Herbs and Cheese bread from Subway and washed it down with satisfying Diet Coke. It…was…DELICIOUS! We went home. I showered. I went downstairs to watch more baseball. My wife bathed. Life was normal. Kelsey told me she was going to bed. We obligatorily hugged goodnight. She tried to lock the front door. The front door wouldn’t lock. She opened the door.

Dumb #3: When returning home from the YMCA (where you can teach your children Judeo-Christian values and the value of fitness…for a low, low price of $30 a month), I unlocked the door and closed the door. I forgot to complete the middle step—taking the keys out of the lock.

Kelsey asked me if I was trying to get robbed? I said no.

I don’t think I am.