While doing my husbandly duties this evening, I looked into the dishwasher and, much to my chagrin, I found yet another victim. Like a wilted flower, or a wheat field crushed by a mid-summer's hailstorm, there it was, lying there; desolate. One more victim of the unyielding forces of nature - the conversion of steel to iron oxide. One more finger in my dishwasher's bottom rack had rusted off.
It's come to the point where there are more casualties than survivors. It is now next to impossible to stand up a dish in the back row of the dishwasher. Soon, very soon, this appliance will need to be replaced.
This will hopefully be the last in a long line of replacements in recent years. Nearly every major appliance in our home has kicked the bucket in the last five years.
When we moved to Estevan, we brought with us a brand new stove, since our old house in North Battleford had built-in appliances. Both the built-in oven and stovetop had been replaced, as well as the microwave and dishwasher, in the year before we left. Our appliances were dying off so fast, there was a point where I was literally cooking supper in an aluminum takeout tray in the wood stove located downstairs. Very rustic, indeed.
The following spring in Estevan, our dryer died. That very same week we were going to Prince Albert for what was then the largest photo shoot of my career - a four day dance festival. Just as we were walking out the door, I heard a strange noise coming from the 30-year-old fridge we dragged with us across the province. It, too, died and at the worst possible moment. We emptied it, crammed what we could into the little bar fridge that used to be in my camper van, and took off for P.A. Upon our return it was a case of Sears card, here we come.
It took the better part of the year to scrounge up the money for the other half of the washer/dryer set. Finally, we seemed to have some relief in sight.
One could only hope.
Our then two-year-old son decided to get behind our old 25-inch CRT television and push it off its stand. BOOM! My wife and I raced upstairs to find him giggling as our hearts were leaping out of our chests.
It took almost a year to scrounge up the money to replace that, finally, with a fancy-schmancy 50-inch plasma TV which I intended to drag around to trade shows to wow people with my photography. Some people buy TVs to see the hockey game. I tested out every TV in the store with a thumb drive full of sample photos for display.
We had it for all of two months when I carted it off to Regina and back for a bridal show. It made the trip safely, but a little "whoopsie" ended up destroying the new brand new TV before it could be put back up on the wall. I never want to hear a crash like that again.
In recent months, the aforementioned bar fridge has given up the ghost. At first we thought Spencer had simply turned the temperature control off again. No such luck. It would need to be carted out to the dump. But heaven forbid it should make that trip alone. Oh no. One can't have one dead or dying appliance at a time.
My microwave of 19 years, the graduation gift from my parents, decided servicing me without fail for more than half of my existence on this planet Earth was enough for it. I think we saw a little smoke from it, and it got unplugged and its cord cut. Once again the Sears card got pulled out.
If there was ever such a thing as an appliance funeral dirge, I would be able to whistle it by heart.
In recalling all these appliance travails, I am reminded of a little truth. When you pay off your car, you think to yourself, "Finally! No more payments."
That's when the maintenance bills start rolling in.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected]
