No dishwasher in the history of dishwashers has ever broken down when it is completely clean, right after a cycle. It’s always when it is heaped with disgusting dishes, which have dripped various sauces, dressings, and beverages down the door and the bottom of the dishwasher, mixed in with bits of food. It’s a unique explosion of colors and funky smells. This is when you discover the broken dishwasher because this is when you try to use it. Of course, one of my unique talents is loading a dishwasher. It really is just laziness that encourages this talent. I don’t want to hand wash anything, so it MUST fit. That dishwasher couldn’t hold another plate or mug the other night. I popped in the detergent thingy, closed the door, and hit the start button. And nothing happened. No light came on, no water started, no nothing. So that’s when I got Travis out of bed so he could take a look at things. I woke up my sister Teresa too, since she was visiting from Denver, and why shouldn’t she share in the late night fun? My specific talents are encouraged by laziness, so fixing a dishwasher is outside my normal parameters. That night, it was outside Travis’ and Teresa’s parameters too. We never discovered source of the problem. It just doesn’t work. I did remember smelling an electric smell earlier in the evening, which should have been a clue, but then I would have had to remember the smell. And since the smell didn’t cause the house to burn down, which would have been really bad, I forgot it, because remembering things isn’t encouraged by laziness.

Here’s the rub. The outlet to the dishwasher is working fine and the GFCI switch never flipped. Shouldn’t it have flipped if some arc was possibly melting enough of the wires that we could smell it all over the kitchen? Isn’t that the purpose of the GFCI? I know, it has to do with water and all, but shouldn’t it also have tripped in this situation?

Here’s the second rub. I get to remove the dishes (after screwing it back under the counter so it doesn’t tip over with the weight of all those dishes) and wash them by hand. And I will have to dry some by hand because there is no place to dry the dishes. Actually, if the dishwasher didn’t look and smell like a sewage plant, that would be the perfect dry rack, but it’s disgusting, so the dishes need a relocation dry plan. Although, it turns out I have a talent at stacking dishes to dry. It looked like an art deco building. Why would I have this particular talent? To avoid the work of hand drying, so of course I’m good at it, because I’m lazy.

Here’s the third rub. That dishwasher is only two years old. Which reminds me, the other time a dishwasher breaks is during a cycle, when it floods your kitchen while you sleep. I guess then it’s clean, but it’s also full of water…and soapy dishes, which need to be washed, or at least rinsed. That’s what happened to us two years ago. At least this time I didn’t need to quickly mop up hot water to save the hard-wood floor and I didn’t need to find creative ways to empty the dishwasher of water (preferably not back on the floor). I suspect that I will need a new dishwasher though. Two years doesn’t seem like a long life span, even for a hard-worked dishwasher. For this week, we will wait for Fix-it Merle (my father-in-law) to try his hand at it before replacing it, but I am not holding out hope, since I am really trying to avoid burning down my house. Who knows, maybe we will get a glimpse of the micro-Merle shorts as an added bonus. You never can tell. I’m also expecting another appliance to bite it, since the cars partnered up when they broke down. I think the car-virus came into the kitchen.