I really don’t know of a suitable requiem for a clothes dryer- it was 11 years old after all- but mine finally took its final puke yesterday.  Of course, with a full load of wet clothes in it. So guess who got to hang up various items all over the basement in the hopes that they will dry before they mildew.  The good news is when I came home tonight everything was dry and not mildewed- but stiff as a board because the clothing items were denied their tumble dry with the dryer sheet.  Nothing like crunchy undies.  Jerry’s going to bitch about that!

The dryer had been singing its swan song for some time.  About three months ago we put a new bearing in the drum and that helped for awhile, but for the past two or three weeks the drum would barely turn.  Then the spring on the belt idler pulley came off and the drum would not turn at all .  Jerry managed to get it back on.  It ran for about another ten minutes, then the belt broke and the pulley assembly more or less disintegrated.  The drum won’t turn, and without replacing the pulley assembly, the belt and assorted other goodies it’s not going to.  By the time I order the parts and fart around with it yet again, I might as well buy a new one.

I have to do shit tons of laundry around here between Jerry, the dogs, and the fact that I am totally anal about having clean clothes and bedding at all times.  As I have told Steve-o many times, if you wore it and it’s not been washed, it’s dirty.  No sniffing the crotch to see if it passes the “smell test” or anything like that.  You wore it, whether I can smell the funk or not, it smells like your bits and pits, and it needs washing.  If it’s bad enough for me to smell the body odor funk- with my seriously impaired sense of smell- it probably needs Clorox’d and/or burned.  The only thing I want to smell on clothing is the slight hint of Febreze and/or fabric softener.

I did the laundromat thing for five years which was five years too long.  I am not doing the laundromat thing again.  Especially these days when it is not safe for a woman to be out after dark anywhere for any reason, let alone while nice and vulnerable schlepping laundry baskets about.

I finally got some better pics of Sheena.  She is not that enthused about having her picture taken so I have to sneak them. She has a lovely coat.

I’m older, not necessarily wiser, but at least I don’t look like President Ford in drag. Yet.

That’s what really got me about this painting, although Quinten Massys- the artist responsible for it- died in 1530.

People didn’t bathe very much in the 16th century. Queen Elizabeth I was quoted to say that she bathed once a month whether she needed it or not.  For the time she was considered a frequent bather.  One could only imagine the pits and bits funk on Renaissance period clothing. No wonder they all had the lice and fleas and God knows what sorts of parasites and critters living in and on them.  The royalty and nobility would have smelled worse than dingleberries on a goat’s ass.  Just imagine the common people who lived in the streets and probably never bathed or changed clothes.  Nasty.

I need a new dryer in the worst way.  Just thinking about not being able to do laundry makes me want to wash everything in the house again and to be able to dry it in the dryer with a dryer sheet so it isn’t crunchy.

Need clean clothes…soft clean clothes….