Peeking into the rock

Does anybody else have a dishwasher that periodically blooms all over in black algae or is it mold? That thing of running the washer now and then with a load of vinegar in it doesn't prevent it, though it seems to make the process slower.

I've taken apart what I could, so far, and scrubbed everything with bleach water (I know, you're not supposed to put bleach into a dishwasher, but I washed the parts outside the dishwasher so the rubber bits wouldn't get (much) exposure, and not using bleach has done nothing for me. But I am stymied by the screen at the bottom of the dishwasher which needs washing at least as much as the rest of the machine if not more, or maybe it should be replaced. It will not budge. I have removed all the things that were connected to the top of it and I have removed the visible screws, but neither turning nor rocking nor lifting straight up has an effect, and for obvious reasons I don't feel that I can put all my strength into wrenching it out.

For added hilarity, the Sears website does not admit that my model exists, and their telephone line appears to connect to R'lyeh. The recording says: "Drge'zhum'...gwump'shwawndruk...shtlum..." and a human voice interjects occasional bits of non-helpful non-information before dissolving into clicks and grunts. I am not making this up. My phone is demoralized by this and flashes me a screen asking if I would like to give the mysterious entities a text message or initiate a hangout. For the love of mercy, no! I cry, and terminate the call.

The phone meanwhile has an urgent agenda of its own. I do not understand what it has been trying to tell me the last week. It keeps "notifying me," as far as I can tell, of nothing. I have gone through every menu I can find and I have turned off notifications for email, chat messages, download completions, updates pending, leaving, supposedly, only notifications for text messages. I have as my notification alert sound a very pleasant bird chirping file that can appearently go on for ten minutes without exactly repeating itself. But this is not desirable at half-hour intervals commencing at two o'clock in the morning, when in fact there appears to be nothing nothing nothing anywhere. Not a new text message: not an email: not a chat message: not activity in my account: not a download initiated or completed: not an update. Just a cheerfully insistent telephone with a (clearly somewhat deranged) mind of its own.

I finished a draft of a thing yesterday, but I think it needs another pass before I submit it. It's meant to be a first conteact story but as it stands I think some people might not notice. I began to look at the other thing that's to be submitted today, but mostly I have been battling mold and begging for enlightenment from inanimate objects.

Oh, and ruining my breakfast, but I already talked about that.

On another front, the dog decided she did not approve of my walk itinerary and brought us home. At least we had two tiny walks, though.

Oh, but there was a good thing today! On our first tiny walk we found that a pinr true had fallen over at "the apartments" (as if they were the only apartments in the neighborhood). That's not the good thing. I asked the supervisor of the crew grnding up the tree if I could have a couple branches. So now I have a wreath on the door jamb and some wee pine branches surrounding my wee spruce seedling which sits in a green wooden bucket on a silver platter. It actually looks cute.

Let's see. Canned plums, check: plum jelly, check. Chinese plum sauce, check: dried plums, check. Plum wine: in primary fermentation. Nice fellow will move to under apple tree tomorrow. I think there are enough good plums still on the tree for me to make more of the plum sauce (it's really good, though it's a color that would frighten you if you came upon it unexpectedly, or in a dark alley), or maybe that plum thing that personhead dragonet2 gave me the recipe for.

Sadly, after spending hours trying to figure it out, I do not have a name for the troubles the plum and apricot tree have. But I do have a remedy, short of euthanasia. So I have a plan, more or less, around that.

Plum madness ends just in time for apple madness to begin. Let's see: I have I think seven quart and three pint-and-a-half jars I can put apple juice into. I do not think this is a good year for me to make cider. Well, it could be. Dried apples are stupid, unlike dried plums which are cool. Apple butter, good, applesauce, better. Apple pie is wonderful. The only problem the apple tree has is worms, which I have been treating faithfully with codling moth traps to no avail. I don't think it's brown apple moth, because the moths I saw were different looking in ways I cannot remember.

Speaking of euthanasia, did I mention that the old refrigerator, which I have roundly hated for the last several years of its life, finally gave us an excuse? The fan motor gave out, or went moribund, anyway, and started making loud noises and stinking up the place with that burnt-motor smell. If your refrigerator does that and you like your refrigerator, you have it fixed. But that refrigerator had tiny cracks all through its structural plastic, and almost everything nonessential was broken: crisper drawers, the shelf that sits on them, door shelves, door handle . . . it was just hideous.

So we got a new one from Sears. We could not afford it: but we're breaking out the last bit of savings anyway to send the boy to Prague, and there's enough left over to buy the fridge. The nice fellow believes to the bottom of his soul that having black appliances is worth an extra fifty dollars, so it's black. To bore you with more details: it was the smallest non-stupid model they had -- 18.2 cubic feet (I know, those of you from countries where they use rational measuring systems are thinking, "what's next? is she going to give the energy usage in poods per fortnight?" but hey, I just live here). It was the least energy-greedy model they had. And let me tell you another effect of a Republican administration: several years ago when I first started daydreaming about replacing the refrigerator, the models that were on display at the Sears store were markedly lower in energy usage across the board than the ones available now. And they varied more. There were more sizes and there were more different options. Now most of the refrigerator models are humongous and take too much energy. One improvement is the almost-universal glass shelf instead of the annoying wire ones. They all had split shelves, which I think is a good thing. The vegetable drawers are tiny, though. I think a large head of cabbage will not fit in one. So I have retained one of the plastic bins I was using to replace the broken vegetable bins in the old refrigerator, and I've put it on a shelf and filled it with leeks, cabbage, carrots, and celery, the things that don't fit into the bins. Also went online and ordered an extra door shelf to put little jars of mustard and pickles and stuff on.

I love having a functional refrigerator and refrigerator light.

Now, if I can get the dishwasher freed from its prison, fixed, returned, and defended from groat, I will be happy.