Seven Repairs in Five Years

My day started with the seventh dishwasher repair in five years on my seven year old dishwasher. I think I have now spent more repairing it than I paid for it in the first place.

I have used the same repairman for over a decade. He has repaired my current dishwasher and the one it replaced, my dryer (twice) and my fridge (twice). He has probably been to my house at least 15 times. Every time I call and every time I answer the door when he arrives, it is like he is encountering me for the first time. Why do I use him? Well, he always comes within a couple of hours after I call. His rates are reasonable. He doesn’t charge extra to come on weekends or holidays. Today, for the first time in over ten years, he acknowledged that he knew who I was. When I called and told him the address he replied, “You, again?!”.

To provide Trystan and Owen with something to do on a rainy day other than the one thing they want to do (play video games), we baked some cookies from the Mrs. Fields cookie book. I hate that recipe book. Everything looks so good, but so many of the recipes have too many steps (mix, wrap, refrigerate,roll, cut, bake, ice), too little flour (so end up a sticky mess) and overly optimistic yields. Today’s recipe was par for the course. The elapsed time was hours. It stuck to everything when we rolled it out. We ended up with 13 cookies compared to a predicted yield of 36. They did taste good though and it kept the boys away from the TV for a while.