Grumble

My washing machine died. Semi-full of a middling load, including towels. Died at the first spin cycle, so when I went to check on it everything was soapy-waterlogged. Ran a rinse cycle, came back to find it still unspun. I wrung out about half of the load as best I could and started it in the dryer; wrung out the other half (with the towels) and left it draped on the washer to drain as much as possible more out of the stuff while I wait for the poor patient dryer to extract the water from the first half.

I put in a call to a local repairman, but while waiting for a call back then thought, well, this thing is 20 years old and I've more than got my money's worth out of it, so called the local appliance store, where I've bought other items and been happy with them. They said the earliest they could install a new purchase would be Tuesday. That's not so bad, so I drove over, checked out what they had, and wound up buying a new top-loader on sale for a darn good price. It's not top or even middle of the line but it's an American-made Maytag, it's small enough to fit in the spot where the old machine lived, and since I don't want or need all the bells and whistles of a higher-end machine it will do just fine for me.

The salesman said it sounded like it was the transmission that blew out, that it would have been hard to find parts to fix my 20-year-old machine, and that 20 years was a good run. He said washers these days probably only last about ten years, but in ten years I'll be 78 and I daresay the health of my washing machine will be among the least of my worries.