Valentine's Day is not such a big deal in France, but I wanted to do a little something for my fellas, so I made special Valentine's cupcakes this afternoon, inspired by a little book that has 30 recipes of desserts you can make with Haribo "Tagada" bonbons. Then I dashed down to the school for the 4:30 pickup as usual. On the way to school, I stopped in a local hardware store to buy a box of fuse cartridges because our dishwasher blew out a fuse again yesterday afternoon and we were out of them. It's the 3rd time in the past 6 months or so; in the beginning I blamed it on bad wiring in the kitchen because there seem to be an awful lot of things wrong with this apartment (see: 101 Reasons We're Moving Out Despite the Great Views).
I came home and gave the Little Guy his surprise Valentine's day cupcakes for an afternoon snack (huge hit! Score!) Then I replaced the fuses, checked to see if everything was working in the kitchen again, and restarted the dishwasher because it had only gotten halfway through the cycle when the power cut out, and there was a bunch of dirty water in the bottom.
I finished icing a few more cupcakes and tidying up the kitchen. And then I heard this loud POP! Then another loud POP! Never heard that sound before, I thought. Stopped the dishwasher and looked inside to see if something was loose and banging around; no, it seemed fine. A little puff of steam came out when I opened it; nothing seemed odd. Well, except for a strange sort of burning smell.
I closed the machine and hit START again. Continued cleaning up. And again, a series of 2 or 3 loud POP sounds. Opened the machine again and another puff of vapor came out. I wondered this time if it was smoke? I moved the stove/oven to the right so I could look behind the dishwasher; no sign of leaks or flames, so that was good.
Tried to restart the machine one more time. It started, but in under a minute there was one more loud POP and the power cut out again on that whole side of the kitchen, which covers the clothes washer as well as the outlets for the coffee pot and toaster. (Another waft of smoke from inside when I opened the door, but no flames or smoke otherwise. Machine is too heavy for me to move and unplug on my own so that will have to wait for Georges, but I think it's dead despite being only about 4 years old and a Whirlpool brand. Pfft.
The long and the short of it is, I think Georges and I will now be giving each other a new dishwasher for Valentine's day this year. I can get one delivered Thursday afternoon if we order tonight.
Can you stand the romance of it? A new major appliance on Love Day. Oh well... maybe they come in red.