Walking on Broken Glass…

So with all the joys of packing and trying to leave for vacation, I completely forgot to mention another joy – the joy of discovering that your almost new (not quite  3 months old!) washing machine – the first one that you’ve owned that wasn’t the cheapest one in the shop – bust a gut.  Well, not really a gut.  Most like a glass top.

Yes, apparently the glass top of the washing machine decided to implode.  I say that because when I heard it happen, I was in another room.  The washing machine wasn’t running – hadn’t been running for about six or seven hours – and there was no one in the room with it.  I was just sitting there, and suddenly there was a noise like someone had gone all Dexter on a roll of bubble wrap.  How odd, I thought.  But no cats came running, no dogs barked, and nothing else seemed out of the ordinary so I dismissed it as a weird noise and kept on with what I was doing (which was probably grading papers since that seems to be the majority of what I do with my life).

A few minutes later, I got up to do some packing for the trip since we were set to leave the next morning, and I walked through the laundry room to drop off something in the car.  And that’s when I actually saw it.

The glass lid of the washing machine had seemingly shattered.  It had spider-web cracks all over it, seemingly originating from nowhere yet somehow covering the entire surface.  How it happened..why it happened…no idea.

We touched it, and it seemed weak.  If any pressure had been put on it, I think it would have rained down the glass shards into the washer, definitely something we wanted to avoid.  And, of course, we were leaving on vacation the next morning.  So just like the fact that my car battery died earlier on in the week, I was semi-grateful it had happened.  It would have been worse had the lid shattered while we were gone.  A cat sitter would have shown up and potentially discovered a cat, stuck in the bottom of the washer, covered in blood or dead.  Scary thought for all of us.  At least this way, we knew about it. And we had access to the information for the warranty.

The problem now was how to keep exactly that from happening (the whole dead and/or bloody cat scenario, that is…).  I found the “Pop-Pop board” in the garage.  (For those not in the know, my grandfather, Pop-Pop, could build anything.  Years and years and years ago, he built this awesome big wooden board with rails along the sides.  My mother used it to do puzzles on.  My sister and I used it to build with small wooden blocks on top of it or played with our marbles – you couldn’t lose them because the rails kept them on it…and it was absolutely gorgeous, too – dark wood, lovely stain…)  We duct-taped the board over the top because it covered it well enough to keep it from putting pressure on the already cracked glass, and then we piled some empty cardboard boxes all askew on top, trying to keep the cats from jumping up, just in case.

So we’ve been gone for a few days now, and so far, no dead or injured cats, so that’s a hopeful sign.  And the local service company that will come out and check the warranty “issue” have already called to make the appointment for the day we get back.  If all goes well, we’ll have a working and safe washer in under two weeks.  If not, be looking for a blog that talks about the evils of LG…