hurricane update and how to clean your washer

It's 9:43 pm on Sunday and we're watching some TV. It's pouring rain and there's the occasional clap of thunder and bolt of lightning. We brought the patio furniture in and the cats promptly sniffed it to death. Sam is laying on the patio table now, and Max is looking out the sliding glass door. He's already sharpened his claws on the chairs.

Brian's work will make a decision at 11:00 am tomorrow as to whether they will open or not. We hope NOT!!!! Then we'd feel like school kids having a snow day. Except it's about 4,000 degrees with like 4,000% humidity. Seriously, it's TOO HOT!!!! I went to the store today and bought lots of water and batteries. Now if we lose power, we can lay around in the closet, drinking water and listening to the radio and/or books on CD, while fighting over the teeny battery-powered fan Mom gave me. Sounds like fun, huh? Don't you wish you lived in Florida????

In other news, I've been complaining for a very long while, at least a year, about a foul smell coming from my washer. It's a smell like soured clothes, you know, when you leave them in there too long? Well, it still smells like that when there are no clothes in there. I've been telling Brian we need a new washer. This one is 10 years old, I got it when I moved to Nashville right after college. I was hoping when we moved, the sour water or whatever was smelling bad would drain out, but no such luck.

When I came home from KY on Friday, the smell was worse than ever. Of course, Brian hasn't done any laundry in 10+ days, and he's left the lid shut. It smelled rotten, but I had to do laundry anyway--you can imagine how it was piled up! B only had ONE pair of underwear left!!!!

So I got out the washer manual and looked up "troubleshooting." There was nothing about sour water, but I continued reading and found instructions on how to clean your washer. And would you believe....it WORKED!!!! My washer smells like new. I'm so thrilled. Here's what you do:

Put 2 cups of detergent and 1 cup of bleach in the washer. Run a cycle with HOT water. That's it!!!! It really doesn't take much to make me happy.

I hope B doesn't have to go to work. He's been working like 16-hour days for about 2 weeks, including weekends. We recorded a few movies from HBO, so we'll have those to watch if we have power. I HOPE WE HAVE POWER!!!!