My bad.

Here's a story for you. It's kind of long, because I have a hard time telling stories in a succinct way. Maybe I'll work on that some day, but probably not.

This actually happened a few weeks ago, but the motivation to write it out + the time in which to write it never added up.

But, tonight's the night. How excited are you?

A few weeks back I was outside with the kids and noticed the cover for the dryer vent had fallen off. It's nearly always off and I'm not sure why I felt the need to put it back, but a part of me thought, "I'm going to do this task for my sweet hubby and he will notice and say, 'Thanks for fixing that, babe. What would I do without you?'" Or something like that.

A few days later I put some towels in the dryer and another load in the washer and walked away. Later that day I started to remove the towels and they were still VERY damp. No problem, I thought, I must have forgotten to turn it on. (This is, admittedly, a somewhat regular occurrence.) Set it again and re-start.

Return to the dryer an hour later to discover: STILL WET TOWELS. The dryer felt hot, the towels were spinning, but not drying.

Panic mode. It's laundry day. And I have three children, two of which regularly defile their clothing with various bodily fluids and partially masticated food. That means I have approximately 53 loads of laundry piled in my basement. Plus, I now have two loads of wet laundry (one that is now musty and stinky). And it's now 10:30 PM. LOVELY.

I started laying/hanging all of the wet laundry throughout the basement, exclaiming to David that he had to do SOMETHING.

He got on Craig's List and voila! An older gentleman just a few blocks from us fixes up dryers and resells them. The next day David left the house with $125 in cash and came home with a functional, albeit stinky, dryer. Our basement smelled like stale smoke for a few days, but we added a few extra dryer sheets and things improved.

Or so we thought.

About 5 or 6 loads later, our wet laundry was, well, still wet. Same problem. Coincidence? Probably not.

David dug a bit, replaced a hose...investigated a bit. Then he went outside and saw the vent.

Then he returned inside and said, "Did you put on the vent cover?"

"Yep." (Remember, I was kind of proud of myself for doing this unsolicited favor for my husband.)

He said, "You put it on upside down. It was holding the vent closed."

"Oh. Uh..."

"Our old dryer was fine, the air just had nowhere to go!"

Picture me, sheepish, "Oh. Sorry."

Our "old" dryer was still in the garage, so now we had a decision to make. Which dryer should we try to sell?

We stalled and didn't think about it for a few days. The "new" dryer was now functioning well.

And then it wasn't. Seriously. All of a sudden, the clothes weren't drying anymore.

So, David called the friendly gentleman and explained that something was wrong. He had given us a 10-day warranty and guess what day it was? 10!

So, the guy says, "I'll come over and fix it up for you."

(That would be great, but we kinda don't need it anymore...)

David goes ahead and explains that his wife is a total ditz. (I told him he could.) And this is what the guy says, "Well, I guess I could take it back, but it's broken now...I guess I'll give you $80." Uff da.

The rest is history. A $45 loss and a lesson learned.

That lesson would be: just leave the stupid vent cover on the ground. It's fine there, really.