Mechanical Girl

Just when I thought I would be unable to come up with another nickname for my wife, she gives me the material.  There were two incidences within the course of two days in the past week that gave me the material for the mechanical girl.

One nice day this spring we decided to grill out, and the gas grill had not been used all year. Last year we had trouble getting the grill to light, particularly at the end of the season.  However, the first time, after several flicks of the igniter switch, we were fortunate that the grill light.  Fast forward a week, and we were going to grill again, but this time it would not light, so I started the charcoal grill.  A little delayed, but we had our hamburgers. This would turn to be one of the two incidents where the mechanic girl showed her acumen.  The other involved the wash machine.

The second incident with the wash machine began one Sunday evening. I was reading and my wife was upstairs enjoying a bath.  She comes down and goes directly to the basement. She comes upstairs after a few minutes later out of breath and says that she will need my help to take a panel off the washing machine.  I find it odd, wondering what is wrong with the washing machine and she says there is a drain mechanism that is supposed to be cleaned.  I am not sure what she was doing up in her bath, but it was not relaxing, which proves my point that the woman does not know what the word RELAX means.  Perhaps Aaron Rodgers needs to spell it out for her. Anyway, she says we can work on it Monday morning.

I go for my walk Monday and when I return home, find that she had gotten the off by knocking the panel.  I guess it is like kicking a car when it will not start.  She then cleaned whatever part needed to be cleaned.  She said a musty smell is common with front loading washers unless the drain is cleaned.  I guess it is supposed to be cleaned once a month,  but we have had it several years and never cleaned the drain mechanism.  I guess she looked up online about the odor and found this to be a possible cure.  She even looked up how to find the way to get the panel that encloses the drain mechanism off.  So, I did not need to assist with that chore.  She said there was not a lot of gunk, but it did stink.  I am glad she was not like Frank Barone who "fixed" Raymond and Debra's washer, only to leave a part out when he reassembled the unit.

Later in the week, after a load of laundry to assure she had it put together correctly, she put the panel on, but could not get the lower center screw in place, which is about a finger width above the floor.  I tried, but realized that the panel edge needed to pushed up to align with the hole in the frame, so I pushed the panel up while she put the screw in place

She then turned her attention to the gas grill.  She got the manual and looked at what could be done for the problem.  We then started to clean some of the items noted in the manual.  What a novel thought, to look at the manual for the grill.  It is not like I am adverse to looking at manuals, in fact the day before this, I looked at a manual for how to take a front loader off a garden tractor.  After cleaning the items suggested we tried the grill and it worked.  Of course it worked when we first tried it this year.  A fifty percent success rate is not very good, so we will have to see what occurs the next time we try to light the grill.  Hopefully, the cleaning was all that was needed, although not a lot came out when we cleaned, but perhaps it was sufficient to impede the flow or ignition of gas into the grill.

Whether it be finding information on the washer online, or looking at the paper copy of the manual for the gas grill, the mechanical girl finds the way to solve the issues that arise.  I guess being a mechanical girl was the logical next step following being a land girl.