An Upside-Down Flamingo in the Office

I have to have my office in my kitchen because there is no other available space in my home. But there are occasional compensations. This was the view in my office midmorning today, just about two feet away from my desk:



















That fine physique—though my crude art-program drawing doesn't do it justice—belongs to my husband, Ed, who is never one to sit still or ask others to fix things for him. (If only I'd thought to take some photos using my cell phone!)

I had been editing in a desultory fashion, wanting to find an excuse not to be working today. Our 25-plus-year-old clothes dryer, which we inherited from his parents, obliged. It began squeaking a bit as it was drying a load of clothes. Then it squeaked more and more. Finally it was squawking so loud that I truly could not concentrate. I buzzed Ed on his business phone's intercom (in an earlier incarnation, his wood shop was the two-car garage that is attached to our home) and begged him to come do something abou the awful racket.

He came upstairs, figured out that the dryer's tensioning pulley needed lubricating, got the tools he needed to do the job, lubed the dryer, then assumed the "upside-down flamingo" position, as he calls it, to reconnect the dryer's vent hose on the back of the dryer. There's not enough room behind the dryer in which to stash a long vent hose to make the flamingo position unnecessary, so every time he has to do something to the dryer, he must turn himself upside down to connect the short hose while the dryer is close enough to the wall for the hose not to disconnect itself again.

Here's a side view of the upside-down flamingo in action:
























Life is rarely dull when you're self-employed.



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