Kathy has been thinking for quite some time that we needed to replace our dryer, which has been spinning along for over twelve years and seemed just about ready to give up the ghost.  Actually, it was still spinning just fine – but the  actual drying of clothes was becoming increasingly difficult for it to do. . . and it was starting to feel like we were wasting half our waking hours waiting for the clothes to dry.  So with my blessing, my wife went in search of the perfect washer and dryer. . .and found them at our good ol’ Sears store.  Actually, she already had her eye on these particular machines because Polly and Mark have them, or something which closely resembles them . . . and they really are neat – and compared to what we had, they are straight out of Star Trek.  Both units have fancy digital dials on front that make all kinds of different settings possible – they run almost silently – and maybe best of all, they are much much much more energy efficient than what we had.

No, no, on second thought,  best of all is that they’re too complicated for me to operate. . .  so until further notice,  my lovely wife will be doing all the laundry around here., for fear that I might turn all the clothes pink, burn the house down, or both.  (But I’m sure I’ll be on hangar detail, or in charge of buying more Tide.)

I am grateful to be married to a wife who notices such things as the fact that we need a new dryer. . .  The thing would probably have to explode or sink into the earth before it would slowly dawn on me that maybe we should think about getting a new one.  Kathy thinks of that stuff  – and I also appreciate the fact that her taste in such things is not very grandiose.  She wants it to suit our needs  in a dependable way – but it doesn’t have to be studded with diamonds or complete with every last contraption.  On the other hand, she knows when it’s a good idea to leave the Budget 101 behind and go for the Kenmore HE II instead.  The things in our lives do make a difference and we have two more reasons now to be smiling a little more broadly these days.