So, my dryer broke again. Actually, it simply stopped drying. This is not unusual, considering our fire-bating-under-the-house-exhaust pipes hadn't been cleaned properly in years. Blocked pipes = overheating = broken dryer. And probably explosions and fire. We were probably saved from catastrophe only by my sloth in staying on top of the laundry.

Nevertheless, we had to replace the doohickey again. Or was it the geegaw? I think it might have been the geegaw. Anyway, another repair cost didn't thrill me - especially when I KNEW the darn thing went out again because of the clogged pipe under the house.

When my husband came home on Friday, I greeted him in my customary manner (a kiss and then intelligible ranting for 20 minutes.) I broke the news: we needed to get under the house and fix The Pipe. And by "we" I mean "he."

He suggested I needed to hire someone to do this. I suggested he needed to get out the crack pipe if he thought I was hiring someone when I had a perfectly good husband who could AND WOULD climb under the house and fix it like I asked three weeks ago. And pretty much every week before that for the last three years.

Ahem.

Stardate, Saturday Morning. I cleared out the entrance to the crawlspace hatch and started making little coughing noises to indicate the time had arrived. Begrudgingly, my husband suited up and prepared to descend the two feet into the hole in the floor and then crawl over to the pipe.

"This is awful. This is HORRIBLE." The husband was making little ppfff ppff noises as he made contact with the spiderwebs.

"Just pretend you're Indiana Jones! It's an adventure!" I offered from the hatch.

He was not all that excited about role playing, surprisingly. Maybe searching for a metal tube full of dryer lint wasn't as exciting as a golden idol. But you know, there weren't booby traps and dead bodies down there, unless you count the time he got his foot caught on the television cable, so I wasn't very sympathetic.

The kids on the other hand, were very excited about crawling around down there. The hubs said it was okay if they came down, so I suited them up too, and lowered them down the hatch. I waited until the crawled away from the opening, and then handed down another light. And then I stood by to hand down duct tape and screwdrivers, and enjoyed the running dialog from my husband and kids:

"This sucks. Jenny, this REALLY sucks."
"WOO! We're under the house!"
"I wanna hold the light!"
"I can see the backyard!"
"This SUCKS, Jenny."

Right about then I thought about closing the hatch, but then again, I've read Poe, and the urge passed.

After two trips to the hardware store, and lots of complaining, The Pipe is fixed. The dryer is restored to working order, and it is unlikely that when the house blows up, the dryer will be the culprit.

Today's adventure involves saws and mud and netting. And twine. And driving a low speeds since we are incapable of properly securing a tree to our luggage rack. Stay tuned to find out if this is the year we either rip the roof off of the car, allow a child to ride on the roof to help hold the tree, or if we launch the tree into the car behind us.

Onward!