Laundry

On Sunday I put a load of wash in the washing machine and got it started (it took me a while to figure out that you have to plug it in with an extension cord to the kitchen…I know plugging something in sounds basic, but a washing machine?!?!  It reminded me of when the first dishwashers had to be rolled in front of the sink and hooked up by hand to the kitchen faucet!) After a long while, I heard a loud beep and figured that the cycle was done.  Then the darn thing started beeping every few seconds – loudly.  When I went to take a look, the little screen had “E20” written on it.  While I was able to get the load going again, the error code just came back , and the clothes were sitting in lots of water.  I was able to finally get enough water out of the machine to remove and dry the clothes on a line – though they were not exactly clean. 

While I had someone leave a message (in French) on the owner’s answering machine, I had not heard back from him and started wondering how many days I should wait until I just went to a Laundromat.  I know it is a bit silly, but I was hoping to wash all the towels and linen myself so that I know everything is really clean.  That is not happening right now…

This morning we woke up to NO running water!  I sent an urgent email to the owner, and decided that the washer would probably take a back seat to a bigger plumbing issue.  So this morning we headed out to the laundromat.

The first location we went to was actually a dry-cleaners, but we soon made it to a real coin-laundry.  The excursion via the dry-cleaners brought us by a little grocery stand that had very small heads of lettuce that Jack was ga-ga over. (too funny) I promised we would return…

Once the washer cycle had started, Owen and I wanted to get coffee and croissants. But Jack was enamored with the washing machine, so we waited for him to get bored

– but he didn’t!  Owen and I got bored of waiting for Jack to get bored, and Owen started to work in his French workbook.

Suddenly Jack was bored, and not entertained by his French workbook.  He got naughty, and I felt pretty un-glad that I had talked Owen into indulging Jack’s whim of watching laundry spin…kids are still kids in Paris and parenting is still parenting…so we started a rousing card-game of War, and things looked much better.

The water in our apartment was back on!

And an email from the owner came, saying that the washer worked just fine two weeks ago (super helpful).  I downloaded the PDF file for the washer, and think the fix is easy (the same one I recently did to my own washer at home)  I forwarded the info to the owner so hopefully it will get fixed soon… (Especially at 8.5 euros – about $10-  a load at the coin-laundry!)  Wish me luck!

Later in the day we got Jack’s adored lettuce and all the other vegetables that the boys wanted for their salad.  Jack was our salad chef, cleaning and cutting the vegetables. He made individual salads on each of our plates catering to the vegetables that each person wanted.  We had some pasta with crème fraiche and ham, and some fresh French bread – yum!   

Jack takes great ownership in dinner when he helps to make it  - calling Owen to the table and naming the ingredients.  Near the end of the meal, Jack said “I am so impressed that you are eating this good salad that I made, Owen!”