Last night was, um, interesting.
At about 9:30, Bob suddenly got worried about the build-up of lint in the dryer--the lint that you can't get to by cleaning the lint filter. I bet you didn't know that there was other lint, did you? I didn't. He thought it might be keeping the dryer from working well; he said that there is a special tool, something like a bottle brush, that you can use to snake down into the dryer and pull out the lint.
We don't have one of those tools, however, of course, so he tried to use a spatula.
Which he dropped. Into the dryer, down in the hole where you stick the lint filter.
I suppose if we were talking about something like a toaster, he could have picked it up and shook it, and the spatula would have fallen out. However, we're talking about something just a little too large to pick up and shake. He actually handled it very well. I stayed out of the way except when he called me to come hold something, and I heard very little cursing. He just pretty calmly took the whole dryer apart until he could get to the spatula (which he subsequently flung across the room).
While the dryer was pulled out of the alcove, with the front of it taken off, and all the insides exposed, he went upstairs for something, and I heard some kind of a noise, like something hitting something metallic. I went out to investsigate, and didn't see anything untoward, although, as I said, the front of the dryer was off.
I peered inside, thinking maybe that one of the cats was exploring in there; there wasn't a lot of room, but I could easily see one of them getting inside (after all, Pyewacket once crawled into an open trash bag and got taken out to the curb, so anything's possible).
I could see Pyewacket in the living room, so if anyone was in the dryer, it was Dinah, so I just made a mental note to mention it before Bob put the front back on the dryer. When he came back downstairs, he had the same thought, apparently, because he said, "Where's Dinah?" I said I didn't know, and he said he just wondered whether she might be inside the dryer, and then we heard her cry.
"Dinah?" he said, and she answered, but we couldn't tell from where. "Dinah? Where are you?" Another cry. He said to me, "Call her," and I went out in the hall, but before I could say anything, he said, "She's up there," and pointed to the laundry room cabinet. The one above the washer. The "metallic" sound I'd heard must have been Dinah jumping up to the top of the cabinet from the washer.
She's done it before, but always before the dryer was there, too, and she could jump down onto the dryer. Now, though, there was nothing but empty space, and she didn't know what to do. She crawled out onto the clothesrod and stood there, but was unsteady, so she backed up back onto the top of the cabinet. I stepped into the laundry alcove and reached up to her, trying to get her to come down to me, but she wouldn't, and frankly, it's probably good that she didn't, because what was I going to do? Catch her in mid-air? Without losing an eye? Unlikely.
She kept crying piteously, obviously scared and unable to get down on her own (without breaking a leg), so Bob went and got an ottoman, and I stood on that and reached up and grabbed her and hauled her down. She immediately started purring.
By the time Bob got the dryer back together and put back in place, it was nearly midnight, and he was hungry. We made a midnight run to Taco Bell, the only place we could think of that would be open. Not your typical Saturday night, although with us, anything could happen.
Over the weekend I got the most wonderful box in the mail from Liora -- bubble bath, a back scratcher/massager, a couple of bottles of nail polish (purple and orangy-red), two books ("The Memory Keeper's Daughter" and "Shopgirl"), two bracelets with blue wooden beads . . . was that all? I can't remember, there was so much stuff. She sent a lovely card and said it sounded like I needed a little pick-me-up, and boy, did she provide it!
I tried out the bubble bath last night--Strawberry Margarita. Lovely.
I keep forgetting to mention that two author websites that I designed and built have gone live in the past month or so, one for Karyn Witmer (aka Elizabeth Grayson):
And the other for Suzanne MacPherson:
A couple of gratuitous cat pictures:
