One of the work parties included two IU students who live nearby who found out about work parties via our signage. The other work party included Emerson, who used to live in my house. Great seeing old and new friends connecting!
We also enjoyed our second Community Dinner of the month on the patio, though I didn’t take any photos.
The really big, and hilarious, news: Marita was absolutely determined to fix the washer in my basement. (We get our appliances from Scotty’s, who sells old, fixed up appliances and accepts returns (in this case, an appliance he sold us only two years ago for $499). He insists old ones hold up better than new ones. And he’s usually right. Which leads up to my story for today:
The washer suddenly stopped working; wouldn’t go into the spin cycle unless you pressed on the lid and kept weight on it. What?
So Marita investigated the situation, and discovered that the issue was a tiny screw. She tried to use superglue to force it back where it was supposed to be. No luck.
The next day, she tried to just reinsert the screw, which was underneath something, and up diagonally . . . She spent around two futile hours doing that. Then her housemate Joseph tried. He spent another hour. No luck. It just wouldn’t go in. When I went down there to check on him, his face was sweating profusely with the effort.
It looked to me like we would have to give up, take the washer back and get another one. Spend another $500, at least.
But the next day, Marita said she was absolutely determined to fix it, and thought she knew how. All along she had been consulting youtube videos . . . Consulting another video, she just knew she could take the entire machine apart and fix the tiny little issue once and for all.
So she did. Took it all apart.
The next day went back to work in the morning, having consulting at least one other youtube video, totally convinced she could do it.
She did it! WHEW!
But then, came the job of putting it all back together again.
She tackled that the next day again. And though it took great effort to make all the pieces wrap around and come together the way they were supposed to, she succeeded. I could sense victory the way her feet pounded up the stairs!
VICTORY. Felt real good to have tackled this mechanical problem, use youtube videos to solve it, and then actually manually do it.
She spent probably 15 hours total time wondering how to do it, consulting videos, working on it, going to store to get screws, etc., all over about a week.
Thank you Marita!