Last Monday morning was stressful.

It wasn’t supposed to be - it was a holiday, we were going to see Captain America - it was a nice, lazy day.

Then Kathy threw the sheets in the washing machine and things started to go sideways.

The machine started beeping in the middle of the wash, which doesn’t usually happen.

Kathy re-hit the button and things resumed as normal.

Except after a few minutes it started beeping again.

I went downstairs to see what was happening - and THERE WAS WATER.

I got scared. I got panicky. The day our old washer and dryer broke (the washer went first, but the dryer wasn’t doing so hot [pun not intended]) was terrible - I had to go to the laundromat for a few weeks and it was inconvenient and there is a door that makes it a very narrow laundry area in our house and I hurt my hand removing the door when the new appliances were delivered.

So there was a lot going through my head on Monday.

I looked at some stuff online and decided maybe I shouldn’t try to take apart the machine.

I took a break, slept on it, and woke up Tuesday morning ready to call someone to fix it.

We need our washing machine. So I spent a few minutes worrying about how long it would take for someone to come fix it.

Then I took one more look at some videos and typed in the model number so I was looking at the exact same washer, and saw a guy showing how a tube had come loose.

He said maybe a particularly heavy load had knocked it off.

A loose tube? I can tighten a tube back up. Heavy load? That was the sheets!

So I unscrewed and removed the back panel.

Sure enough, there was a tube dangling. Not the same tube as in the guy’s video, but a tube nonetheless. It’s the one pictured at the top of the post - the yellow-ish one on the left.

I reattached the tube, made sure the clamp was tight, and reattached the back panel.

I ran a wash. NO LEAK.

Let me repeat that: I FIXED THE WASHING MACHINE.

My diagnosis: the machine had one of those shakes that happens with a load that might be a little too big, the tube came loose, and when it was draining the water went out the hole instead of into the tube.

And when I ran subsequent tests to see what the story was, we got the alert because it wasn’t reaching its necessary water fill line, because the water was coming out that hole.

(I know a lot about my washing machine now.)

In my teaching days, I had a very good electric pencil sharpener. It did not handle colored pencils very well. There was a big project where students used colored pencils and the sharpener just died.

I got a new one. It met a similar fate.

But I thought it was weird that colored pencils had done this twice, so before I bought a new one I took the pencil sharpener apart. Sure enough, there was a wad of colored pencil jamming up the mechanism.

I wedged it out, put everything back together, and - boom - it worked. (And broke again not too long after. Colored pencils do not play well with pencil sharpeners.)

I’m not afraid to play around with something that’s broken. Plumbing and electricity are a different story - but if it’s a loose tube that might be able to be reattached…I’ll fix it.

I will be honest - part of the big panic when the machine was leaking was (other than the fact that we NEED the washing machine) having to call someone to come fix it.

I don’t like the uncertainty of when we can schedule it, I don’t know how the dog will react…and I hate using the phone.

How much do I hate using the phone?

Well, so much that I’ll learn how to fix a leaking washing machine in order to avoid using it.