Another Lattice of Coincidence Kind of Deal

My dryer hasn’t been so great lately. It was taking two and sometimes three cycles to dry. I knew I needed to clean out the vent, but I just hadn’t gotten to it. I kept thinking about it. I have the tools. I have this little brush on a long wire, kind of like the one Dick Van Dyke carries around in Mary Poppins. I even have a special vacuum cleaner attachment.  It all came in this kit I had bought a couple of years ago, and I think I’ve cleaned the vent once since then.

Not exciting, but like I said, it was on my mind. I was going to get to it. The other night I was reading on the couch while Manfrengensen was watching basketball, and a commercial came on. “Does your dryer take more than one cycle to dry your laundry?” came the words of the announcer.

I took notice, looked up from my book, thinking, Why, yes. As a matter of fact, it does. The announcer then proceeded to scare the crap out of me with the possibility (nay probability) of a dryer fire caused by the build up of lint in the vent.

Aaaaah!

That night, where I might usually have run the dryer when I went up to bed, I didn’t, out of fear.

I was going to get to it, and I had to get to it soon, because there was a load of wet wash in the machine. The ad gave a number to call for professional cleaning, and before I went to bed that night, I opened up the phone book and checked out the options, planning to call the next day. (Turns out a lot of the companies that clean out dryer vents are also chimney sweeps like Dick Van Dyke.)

First thing Thursday morning, I happened to speak to my mother-in-law, and I just casually asked her what was going on with everyone in the family she’s usually in contact with. She answered with a bit of random excitement from her end: that my sister-in-law had had a dryer vent fire the day before.

The Lattice of Coincidence strikes again.

Okay, I had to get that wash done, so I figured I would take a look behind the dryer to see if there was something I could do in a non-professional capacity. I pulled the dryer out just a few inches and what do you know? The dryer vent tube became entirely dislodged. I had none of that silver tape to reattach it, so now I was totally out dryer-wise.

My father, thankfully, helped me put it all back together. I could do a whole post on how great my father is.

Anyway, we’re back online now with the laundry. And I got it all cleaned with my Dick-Van-Dyke-esque tools.

In other news, yesterday The Princess developed a wicked case of pinkeye. Manfrengensen says she looks like she went ten rounds with Mike Tyson.