Wes Strikes Again!! Or so I thought....

Yes, he deliberately wanted THIS picture taken.

Wes, dear, dear Wes (aka "I'm Why Mama Can't Have Nice Things") may have a reputation for breaking things.  I'm not saying it's not well-deserved; but occasionally something breaks that's not his fault, even if at first all evidence points to the Usual Suspect.  

I'm not one to complain about doing laundry--other than physically putting clothes and soap into the machine and turning it on, there's really very little work to it except remembering to ask the kids to put the clothes in the dryer for me and reminding them to sort and put away their own clothes before bedtime.  This time, Wes was closest when I remembered that the Piper's bedding had to go in the dryer.  He cheerfully did as I asked and I forgot about it for another few hours.  

When I went to get the laundry out, the blankets and sheets were soaked. As in dripping with pounds of extra water.  I looked at the washing machine, realized that the load had become unbalanced and stopped during the cycle, and Wes had taken items he could barely lift out and into the dryer without mentioning the unusual weight.  As I put the items back in the washing machine, my feet got wet.  So much water dripped out of the dryer that it had created a puddle on the tile floor and was already ruining the cheap baseboard in the laundry room.

Humph, Wes strikes again.  And this was worse than it first seemed.  Every time I ran the dryer, another huge puddle seeped out from the dryer.  It got to the point that I ran the dryer empty to shake all the water out and catch it immediately in the dozens of towels under the floor.  

After a few days of this, I stopped and forced myself to think differently about this.  Is there truly a never-ending source of water coming from the dryer?

Sigh. I spent so much time assuming Wes had Struck Again that I never looked at the washing machine right next to the dryer.  The one whose cold water hose was leaking behind the machine every time it ran a load, roughly correlating with the dryer usage.  

Within 30 minutes of making the discovery, I had returned from the hardware store with replacement hoses, and then Dwayne and I had to decide who replaced them--the man who had the strength to turn the wrench, or the woman who could fit behind the dryer.  We moved the machines.

So ends another week of suburban surprise.