Berck declared that we had to do laundry yesterday, because it had been 5 days and he was out of underwear. Fortunately, the house’s new washer and dryer were being delivered. The refrigerator also arrived, so now we can keep the few remaining cans of Dr Pepper inside it. Unfortunately, the refrigerator wouldn’t make ice. Berck’s dad finally figured out that you had to hold down the water lever until water came out (a really long time, since it has to snake through all the tubing used to make it cold and then reset the ice tray.

I washed a load of sheets in the new front loading washer, after I went out to buy a bottle of HE detergent. Then I put them in the dryer, but the dryer kept saying that the filter needed to be cleaned. Being a brand new machine, we knew that wasn’t the problem, that there must be a blockage in the duct to the vent outside. I finally got the thing to quit beeping and shutting off by pulling the hose out of the wall and just letting it vent into the laundry room.

A guy came out this morning to look at it. He stuck a snake through the outside vent in and announced that he couldn’t get it through. There’s an indentation of the garage that separates the laundry room from the outside wall. This garage is the only one I’ve ever seen that’s painted and spackled. There’s a little hump of drywall along the floor of the indentation of the garage where the dryer vent goes, so the guy hacked through it and exposed the duct. It looked like someone had stepped on it, smashing the duct so that it was a wonder any air could go through it at all. Of course, then some idiot drywalled over the smashed duct instead of straitening it out or replacing it… a perfect example of “it’s not my job.”

As for the other appliances, we can’t use the dishwasher or the range, because when Berck’s dad bought the house, the developer agreed to swap them out for a quieter dishwasher and a gas range, only they haven’t done it yet. Berck’s dad hasn’t bought a microwave yet either, so we can’t even boil water.

Berck called the machine shop to see if the head was ready this afternoon. It had indeed been warped, and now it was all ground down to flat again. We took Berck’s dad’s ’96 Miata back over to South Memphis to pick it up. Berck insisted on putting the top down again. As we drove along I-240, we started smelling antifreeze. By the time we pulled into Napa, Berck announced that the engine was hot and switched off the engine. We coasted into a parking place as steam poured out from under the hood. It was like experiencing deja vu. Berck opened the hood to expose antifreeze squirting everywhere from somewhere behind the engine. With my Gerber and an enormous amount of effort, Berck managed to pull the offending hose out from back behind the blistering engine and was able to get a similar sized piece of hose from the auto parts store, in whose parking lot we were so conveniently located.

$60 (for the engine head shave), $1.07 (for the hose), a bucket of water, an hour, and a lot of grunting later, we were on our way back home. We got to the house in time for Berck’s dad and grandmother ready to go out to a very late lunch or slightly early supper.

We went to a Memphis original called The Half Shell that Berck’s dad used to eat at when he was our age, only this is a new branch way out at the city limits where all the new mortgage farms are being built. Berck’s dad ordered a dozen oysters on the half shell that we wolfed down immediately. I don’t think I’ve had raw oysters since I was seven. I haven’t known what I’ve been missing since. Now I understand why people eat them.

I ordered the crab cakes, which were pretty bad. Berck’s dad complained, and our waiter took them off the bill. Everything else was delicious, including the huge plate of fried mushrooms served with horseradish sauce.

Grandmother couldn’t get out of the air mattress by herself last night, so Berck’s dad made a platform out of boxes to put it on for tonight. He tried to get her to look at beds online today, but she didn’t want any of them.

Berck is going to work I don’t know how long on the car tonight, now that he can put it back together again.