Oy, Pioneers!

Today was the day that my life was supposed to change significantly for the better.  But you know what they say.  If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.

Our new electric dryer was delivered today.  That was supposed to mean that I would not have to wait for a sunny day to do the wash so that I could string it up between the trees in our backyard.  It did not work out that way.

Now, I already have a dryer,  It is a very nice, top-of-the-line dryer, and it is attached, as space-saving apartment-style appliances tend to be, to the top of the wonderful high-end washing machine I insisted was moving to Rockland County when we did.  The problem with my Old Original Dryer is that it runs on gas.  Guess what we don't have, out here at the end of the long, lovely woodsy road that the deer and the antelope play upon?  That's right.  Gas.

"No problem," said my husband.  "We will be getting a propane hook-up.  Then I can have a gas range in the kitchen, and you will be able to use your dryer again.  Plus, we will need to get a generator for when the power goes out, and we will get a dual-fuel model so we can use our propane tank as a back-up in case the gas stations run out of gas due to the emergency, like they did right after Hurricane Sandy.  Not," he added hastily, seeing my face, "that I expect the power to go out."

This was back in June, and I have been hanging the laundry out on a wash-line ever since.

The propane people have made innumerable trips, taken a great many measurements, given us an enormous amount of contradictory information, and the upshot of all this waiting for the Propane Miracle was that it made no sense to put in a propane tank, because it turns out that installing a propane tank costs a lot more than just buying a new dryer, dishwasher, and high-end stove, and since we need everything on the list, we abandoned the idea of propane and went out to buy an electric dryer last weekend, that being the most pressing item on our list - at least, if I am to stay married to my present husband. (Divorce, as it turns out, costs even more than a propane conversion.)

I was sort of glad, because I had been afraid the propane tank would explode and blow us all to Kingdom Come.  My husband said that would never happen, but then, he also said I wouldn't be hanging the laundry up outside past the first couple of weeks we were living here.  We moved here, as you may recall, in mid-June.

After we bought the dryer, I assumed a lot.  Chief among these assumptions was that I assumed the brand-new electric dryer was going to work.  So I gleefully did a load of laundry this morning, planning to pop it all in as soon as the nice delivery men brought me my lovely, lovely dryer and I could stop living like a latter-day Ma Ingalls.  (Let me state for the record that, while I enjoyed reading the Little House on the Prairie books, I never actually wanted to be in one.  Eloise at the Plaza is more my speed.  Room service, and charge it, please.)

And so, as I say, I did laundry.  Lots of laundry,  The kind of laundry you don't do when you have a wash-line instead of a dryer, because the big stuff trails on the ground and gets all dirty again.  But now, with the dryer on its way, I turned reckless.  Clean sheets for everybody!

Did you know that just because the former homeowner had a clothes dryer in the laundry room (which didn't give off any heat, now that I come to think of it) and there is a vent in the wall for the lint to blow out of through the duct that hooks up to the clothes dryer, and just because there is already a big enormous outlet in the wall to accommodate the big enormous plug that is attached to the new electric dryer, does not mean that your home is wired for the big new electric dryer?  And that, if your home is not wired for this machine, then the machine will turn on, and the drum will spin, and the clothes will turn and tumble and lollop briskly about, but they will never get dry, because there won't be any heat?

Gentle Reader - neither did I.

So there was, thank God, enough sunshine to get the clothes mostly dry, and the electrician is coming next Monday.  And I planted another 33 daffodil bulbs, which leaves 32 for Thursday.

But, you will say, today is only Tuesday.  Why not put those 32 daffodil bulbs in tomorrow?

Because, Gentle Reader, tomorrow I am going to catch a ride into Manhattan with my husband, see a few friends, eat a proper bagel, and then go to see a play in the evening.  I will not do one damn pioneer-type thing  all day.  And they will have to tie me up and load me into the trunk of the car to make me come back, if the electrician calls between now and then to say he isn't coming after all next Monday because it's Columbus Day.