Tricksy Clothes Washer

Tricksy clothes washer. It wants too many repairs, My Precious, yes it does. It insists on a new motor now, impertinent washer, cruel washer. It sent us to the laundromat, My Precious, to sit among the stainless steel coldness by ourselves, it did. But we won't budge, will we, My Precious? Because the tricksy washer is worth more dead than alive, so says the Appliance Soothsayer.

Waaah!

Motor's burned out, it'll cost more to fix it than it will to replace it. That assumes we had the money to replace it, of course. We have the $80 we thought it would take to fix it, but not the hundreds required for the motor. If we get the motor replaced, he says it's likely that the timer mechanism would go next, and then this would go wrong and that would break, and personally he'd put the money into a new machine.

So I hauled my sorry, laundry-laden butt up to the laundromat to discover that they want $3.50 per load just to wash the stuff, and another quarter for each 10-minute increment of drying time. Insane! Of course, how on earth do you get around doing laundry? You know? So there you have it.

Scouts has been cancelled at our house for this month, postponed until January. (Which is probably good, considering that we're apparently going to be wading around hip-deep in dirty clothes for awhile!)

Saw an ad for this during Saturday morning cartoons today:

This is, believe it or not, a little girl's vanity. But it's also a castle. This is actually quite clever...and I'm willing to concede that point even though it's BARBIE. 

You can see the TV ad here. This is sized for Barbie, but the Barbie dolls don't come with it. Instead, it's just the vanity/castle, which is covered with secret little rooms and bits of jewelry. I'm wondering how this might be size-wise for My Little Ponies. I just might be willing to shell out for a combo Big Pony dollhouse/castle and vanity.

Lauren, by the way, thinks it would be great to have CUSTOMIZED Ponies. Like the following:

Hasbro doesn't sell this, you have to dye the pony yourself, re-hair it, paint it, etc. Mom wants to take bets on how soon I'll be making my own custom Ponies for the Pony Princess. ('Cause, yeah, that's something I'd NEVER do!)