Preparing for a clean break with some old friends

I will never understand why things happen all at once. We can go along for weeks or months at a time without any remarkable changes only to meet up with an avalanche.

Our avalanche has started.

Surely you remember the angst and pain of the loss of our dear lawn mower (well, for Basil anyway). The morning he came home from Sears with a replacement, our coffee maker decided it needed to decaffeinate forever. We now own one of those Keurig thingies — Basil just can’t resist a new toy. It’s taken a bit of jiggering to get used to it, but we are settling in to this new appliance.

In quick order, though, I think we will have several new friends for the K-cup.

One of the stove top burners no longer lights.

The microwave door hangs slightly askew.

The dishwasher is just phoning it in.

And the dryer seems to think that the hourlong “normal” cycle should end in 40 minutes — wet clothes be damned.

With apologies to Yogi, it is deja vu all over again.

Eleven years ago, when Catherine was 5 we were forced to replace several appliances all at once.

I put a load of whites in the machine, watched it fill with water and then stop. No amount of coaxing or kicking could get the thing agitating, and so there I was on my neighbor’s doorstep with a soaking wet load of dirty clothes and the biggest puppy dog eyes I could muster.

Back at home, the dishwasher was on strike; the freezer was all hot and bothered and when I turned on the oven to bake Catherine’s birthday cupcakes, it remained cold as ice.

I baked the birthday goodies on the grill. Hey: Healthy dollops of frosting and sprinkles complemented the smokey flavor quite nicely.

The final straw was hearing Catherine’s little voice from the living room asking, “Where did Clifford go?” It seems The Big Red Dog had faded to black — the TV was the last to go.

There is of course a four-beer story related to the great deal Basil was able to secure at Sears for all the replacements. He tells it so much better, though (and I don’t drink beer). Suffice it to say we were into America’s  department store for quite a lot of dough for a long time.

I’m hopeful that this time, there will be less collateral damage, but I’m enough of a realist to know this is all in the hands of the appliance gods.

However, for heaven’s sake, if I show up on your doorstep with a laundry basket full of soaking wet skivvies, will you please let me in?