Household Maintenance Hassles #18,193, 18,194, and 18,195, or, Please Don't Tell the Appliances Some Money is on the Way

Household Maintenance Hassle #18,193:

For some time, the dishwasher has leaked and its soap dispenser has failed to dispense. Having been of modest means -- or worse -- my entire life, I've learned how to work around and make do. In this case, when I wash dishes, I shove a gently used towel under the bottom of the dishwasher to catch the water, and I run a timer to tell me when to dispense soap. Now, I'm about to get some back pay (long story), and I thought I'd get these problems fixed once and for all.

However, other fixtures around the house apparently heard me say that the dishwasher was going to get a little attention.

Household Maintenance Hassle #18,194:

The other morning, I flipped on the switch that controls the ceiling fan/light fixture in the living room, and the light flickered, then brightened, then flickered, then faded to black. Not the usual bulb-burning-out scenario. So I pulled the fan chain to make sure the problem was only the bulb...and of course it wasn't. The fan appears to have taken its last whirl.

This is Florida and I'm already working around my central air problem by using window units, so having a fan in that room is essential. Add new ceiling fan to the shopping list.

Household Maintenance Hassle #18,195:

Yesterday I did something I try to avoid doing: I left the dryer running when I left the house. However, I thought Tall Son would need a clean towel when he came home, so I took the chance. That was about 2:00 p.m.

I went to work, went to my meeting, did some work in my office, had some dinner, ran some other errands, and got home about 11:00 p.m., just in time to watch House on USA.

About 11:30, Tall Son steps into the kitchen and says, "Did you start that dryer again?" (Dryer cannot be heard from anywhere in the house except the storage room and laundry room.)

We compared notes and discovered that when Tall Son came home at 6:00, the dryer was running. Since no one ever knows what my goofy schedule is, he assumed that at 6:00 I had recently left the house. Eventually, we realized that the dryer had been running from 2:00 until we stopped it at 11:30. Yikes! Fortunately, only towels were in the dryer, and even more fortunately the dryer didn't catch on fire.

Close inspection of the dryer seems to reveal that, while we can move the knob around, the dryer control will no longer advance on its own. Wherever we set it, there it stays.

So, dryer control repair is now added to the list of things to be done with the modest back pay check, and this is the most urgent because Tall Son is most clueless when it comes to his surroundings. What did he do this morning before he went to work? Started drying a load of clothes, which I found running three or four hours later. (He hadn't forgotten about the problem; he just forgot to stop the dryer manually.)

The back pay check just isn't that much, so please don't let the 21-year-old fridge hear about any of this.