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From AAA Appliance to Z-Pack

In addition to getting a bunch of work done today along with my mothering duties, I had two mandatory things on my to-do list:
A) Find a belt for the washer.
B) Convince a doctor to write me a prescription.

You may have read about the black smoke that came out of the washer on Tuesday morning.  If I had just called the appliance repair guy before I called Ben, I wouldn’t be sniffing through the dirty laundry looking for clothes that smell less bad than the rest, but hindsight is 20/20.  Mr. Fix-It is still insisting that we can replace the washing machine belt ourselves.  I’m pretty sure he originally said, “myself”, but now it’s apparently a team effort.

I called the appliance parts store yesterday but both of their locations were out of the belt.  I called Belcher’s and they were incredibly helpful, but they were out of them too.  Either everyone’s Maytag SAV205DAWW has a broken belt, or we’re the only ones who bought that model.  The guy at Belcher’s told me to try AAA Appliance Parts on 135, but they close at 2 on Wednesdays.  I called them this morning and they had one in stock!  The guy told me that they’re located “inside of Larry’s Home and Garden,” so while we were there Norah kept asking me, “Is that guy Larry?  How about THAT guy…is he Larry?”
No offense to Larry, but Larry’s Home and Garden really should be called “Larry’s Appliance Graveyard.” From the looks of the store and the outbuildings, Larry has been hoarding used appliances for quite some time. I never thought about it but I guess there’s a market for them. We made it out of Larry’s / AAA with our belt, so now we just have to figure out how to put the thing on.  Ben found some instructions online – 18 steps including removing the pump and motor.  WTF? 
Now to numero dos on my list…drugs.  I don’t take a lot of medications, but at least once a year I get a cold which eventually turns into something really nasty like bronchitis, walking pneumonia, a sinus infection, etc.  When Dr. Quack had his practice on Route 9 across from Whole Foods, I could go in there and get a prescription just by sneezing a couple of times.  I know the dangers of taking too many antibiotics, but I also know that when I’m sick for this long, it’s not going away on it’s own.
Since Dr. Quack is no longer on Route 9, I decided to try out the CVS Minute Clinic in Natick (the photo is not of the Natick location).  I wasn’t sure if it was Minute as in “minn-it” or “my-newt”…I’m thinking the latter because it took about an hour and the “clinic” was a very small room squeezed in next to the photo developing desk.
There were two nurse practitioners working there, and when I filled out my information on the touch screen, I was patient #1 in line.  I went into the my-newt room, described my problem, and forty minutes later I had gotten a flu shot and headed back to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions for a Z-Pack (Zithromax) and an inhaler.  I think a bunch of people heard the news about the seasonal flu vaccine shortage, because when I came out of the clinic, there were about 10 people in line waiting to see the other nurse to get their flu shot. 
The first woman I dealt with a the pharmacy wasn’t very nice and since I didn’t have my prescription card (I don’t usually use CVS) she basically told me to come back when I had my ID number.  After trying to call Caremark to get it, I went back to the counter and while I was waiting, a guy asked if he could help.  When I told him that I couldn’t get my number, he offered to call Walgreens and get it for me!  How great is that??
All in all, both experiences were good, so if you need a used dishwasher or an inhaler, you know where to go.
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False Alarm

A couple of weeks ago, Ben brought Adlani to me so I could examine the “injury” on Adlani’s buttocks.  I’m not sure what he thought the injury was from (maybe a well-deserved wupping from me?), but he was very alarmed. 

I’m no nurse, but even a hardware consultant could put two and two together and figure out that:
A) There was no blood or bruising,
B) Adlani wasn’t in any pain,
C) I hadn’t wupped him recently, and
D) The “injury” formed a complete circle around Adlani’s butt. 

Hmmm…what would you call that?
NintendoD.Ass?

Yes, I do realize that Adlani’s going to kill me someday for posting these photos, but right now he’s too busy playing NintendoDS to care.
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Alien Abduction

The giant mound of laundry that grew while the sewer line was clogged kept me up late last night doing several loads, and I woke up early this morning to continue.  In the midst of the mad rush to get the kids bathed, dressed, and fed, and myself out the door for a meeting at the office, I smelled something burning. 

I opened the basement door, and out wafted a haze of black, burnt-rubber smoke.  Since we have 3 smoke detectors monitored by ADT, my first thought was that the fire department would be arriving soon for the 4th false alarm at the Greenabderrazak residence.  I bravely and stupidly ran down to the basement to see what was burning, and the source of the smoke was the washer, which was on the spin cycle.  I lifted the lid and the basket wasn’t spinning – obviously the belt was slipping or stretched and burning.

I turned the washer off, aired out the basement, and called ADT.  Then I called Ben to tell him the bad news.  When I told him that I was going to call the appliance guy to come fix the washer, it became obvious to me that aliens have abducted my husband, Mr. IgnoreItAndItWillGoAway, and in his place left Mr. Fix-It. 

Mr. Fix-It insisted that we could replace the belts ourselves for a fraction of the cost, and spent this evening watching appliance repairmen on Youtube replacing washing machine belts (when I walked past the computer I heard one of the appliance-repair professionals say, “So I’m going to replace this bastard…”). 

I guess Ben is still on the DIY-high from reaming out the sewer pipe.  Tomorrow night should be fun!
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Everybody Poops

It feels like much longer but I guess it was about a week ago, I had just finished running a load of laundry, and I found poop(?!) in the utility sink in the basement.  Since the washer drains into the utility sink, I assumed that there had somehow been poop in the dirty laundry.  I asked the kids who had pooped in their pants and Norah said that she had pooped during naptime at school.  I thought they had sent the poopie pants home and Ben had thrown them in the wash without emptying the poop out.  Mystery solved.

Then I mentioned the incident to Norah’s teacher, Maria, and she said Norah hadn’t had an accident.  Hmmm.  That night, Ben went to the basement and there was water on the floor in the front of the basement (the washer’s in the back).  While he was splashing around down there, I noticed that there was soap in the water and I surmised that the utility tub had overflowed when I ran a load of laundry, the water ran to the lowest point in the basement, and then the floor in the area of the washer had dried.  Some additional evidence was the fact that a couple of weeks before I had noticed that the utility sink was draining slower than usual and I had mentioned it to Ben.  He had used his “you’re over-reacting” tone and said that it was always like that.  I’ve learned that it does no good to argue with him, so I let it go.  When we found the water in the basement, he cleaned it up and again said not to worry about it.  WHATEVER!

The next night, after washing no more laundry, guess what?  More water in the basement!  Same exact situation…an inch of water in the lowest point of the basement, none around the washer, but it was wet under the laundry baskets.  We had all taken showers and baths that morning, and THAT water overflowed out of the utility sink.  NOW it’s getting serious because that means it’s not the sink drain that’s clogged, it’s the sewer line.  After making my case using a straw to demonstrate the fact that there was a clog somewhere down the line, Ben shunned my suggestion of calling Roto-Rooter and headed for Lowes.  He came back with a flimsy little 20′ pipe snake (pictured above), and a bottle of magic drain cleaner.  WHATEVER!

Then came this…
Ben (yelling from the basement):  LORI!!
Me (yelling from the kitchen):  WHAT?!
Ben:  COME DOWN!
Me (now in the basement):  What?
Ben:  There’s poop in the sink.
Me:  Yeah?
Ben:  Whose poop is that?
Me:  I don’t know.
Ben:  That looks like your poop.  Did you poop?
Me:  How the hell can you identify my poop?  Who cares if I pooped?!  I keep telling you, THE SEWER LINE’S CLOGGED!  That’s why the POOP came UP the sink drain INTO the SINK!  DO YOU GET IT?!  THE SEWER LINE IS CLOGGED!  THE POOP HAS NOWHERE TO GO!
Ben:  You mean, that water I cleaned up had pee and poop in it?
Me (WTF?):  I TOLD YOU IT CAME FROM THE SEWER PIPE!!!  YOU INSISTED ON USING THAT STUPID DRAIN CLEANER INSTEAD OF CALLING ROTO-ROOTER, SO YES, THERE WAS PROBABLY PEE IN THE WATER, AND NOW THERE’S POOP IN THE SINK!  DEAL WITH IT!

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At this point I think it was Sunday morning.  Our handy-guy (Orialis) was supposed to come that day and he knows everything about everything, so we decided we’d wait for him.  When he came at 5 p.m., I had escaped to the office, so Orialis, Ben, and the kids all piled into the Camry to go to Home Depot and rent a heavy-duty snake.  By the time I got home they had been at it for a couple of hours and determined that the 50′ snake wasn’t long enough.

Orialis came back at 5 p.m. today, they went to Home Depot again to get the 100′ snake, and finally reached the clog which was apparently some tree roots.  I will give Ben a lot of credit for spending 2 nights in the basement with Orialis, cleaning up all the water, and washing everything with bleach.  Now we have to figure out how to keep the tree roots out of our sewer line.  What’s next?

Actually, I can answer that.  What’s next is 4 dishwasher loads of dirty dishes (#3 is running right now), at least 12 loads of dirty laundry, and 3 filthy kids who will need baths before school tomorrow.  It should be a fun morning.
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