The Game of Life

So I haven't died, been maimed in a freak accident, gotten on my way home, or hogtied by my children and left in the closet.

I've been playing tennis with life and it keeps me busy with killer serves and not to believed backhanded returns. On life's part, not mine.

About a month ago I was served a washing machine with attitude. It not only was giving me little number/letter combination error messages on its control panel but it would lie to me and say there was a minute left in it's cycle and an hour later it was still rolling the clothes around its innards.

The clothes were coming out soaking wet and often not smelling like spring fresh rain as my detergent promised.

We are in a financial bind right now (complete other story) so I wasn't looking forward to calling the washing machine repairman so he could charge me $100 for something I was sure was an easy fix. I poured over the instruction manual but could find no answers.

So the other night, after spending 2 hours fighting with it, begging it to spin the clothes dry, pleading with it to tell me the truth about how much longer it would be and when it finally shut itself off and presented me with dripping wet stinky clothes, I remembered the immortal words of Jeff and scurried off to find out if Google was indeed still my friend.

I ran a 30 second search on troubleshooting and immediately came up with an answer.

The drain filter was clogged. One screwdriver and a giant hairball with a life of its own later and my machine was running like new.

And it didn't cost me a cent. Score one for me!

Of course this could have been fixed a month ago if the dang manual mentioned there was a user friendly panel hiding the drain filter that anyone with a double digit IQ could figure out. But then the washing machine repairmen couldn't look like heroes to countless washing machine owners across America.

Personally I prefer that my heroes don't charge me for their services.

That hasn't been the only tough volley I have had to deal with over the past month, but I think one problem per blog entry is enough.

See now why can't life take an example from me... and only fling me one ball at a time. I could put all my attention on it, figure out what needed to be done, create a plan of action and get it handled in a timely manner. A slow, perfect return.

Not turn the ball machine on high and let 'er rip, laughing as I dodge and weave, swinging wildly until I retreat defeated out the back gate as the balls ricochet off my rear end.

Not a pretty sight I can assure you.