Darn, the dryer still isn’t drying.

It’s been two months since our drama with the dryer began. It started with a service call to Sears, followed by a service call by a vent cleaning company, which led to water dripping through the ceiling because the serviceman who was supposedly cleaning the vent didn’t properly reattach the washing machine’s drainage hose.

Then, we had visits by two contractors to assess the water damage and hopefully get the dryer working again but when it came to the terms of payment, our landlord got hotheaded and made them angry. So neither of them would come back to do the work..

We pleaded and one of the contractors agreed to come back. He reattached the dryer vent hose which we’ll pay for on our own nickel. It’s just not worth the hassle of trying to work through the long-distance landlord.

The reason the dryer didn’t work in the first place is because the owners of the condo bought a dryer that is too big for the closet-type space that it sits in. The one they bought I’m sure would fit perfectly in their 3,500 square foot house with a separate laundry room but it barely squeezes into the 1,600 square foot condo.

We’ve taken off the louvered doors and moved the dryer six inches into the hallway so that the foil hose that leads from the dryer to the vent wouldn’t be kinked. But the hose still has to have a loop in it and that seems to restrict the air flow to the point that the clothes get dizzy from hours of tumbling but they never get dry.

It’s inconvenient to schlep garbage bags of wet clothes to the Laundromat but in the spectrum of household chores, it’s not all that bad. The Laundromat closest to our house has dryers that even on “low” are so hot that I practically need an oven mitt to take the clothes out after my two quarters worth of time. And since I’ve discovered podcasts, I have actually come to look forward to going. I put the clothes in, hop up on the counter in front of the dryer, and listen a broadcast of “Fresh Air” on NPR or a sermon from a favorite pastor.

Watching dryer drum spin the jeans rhythmically around, listening to a message about God, inhaling the fragrance of Bounce dryer sheets…it’s all a rather Zen experience, if it’s not sacrilegious describe it that way. Laundry and enlightenment – it’s a pretty good combination.