Tag Archives: books

Jackie Wells-Fauth

We were sitting in the living room the other night when suddenly, from the stairs leading to the lower level, came what my grandmother would call, “an unholy racket.”

“What is going on?” Roy, startled from his reading, inquired.

“That’s nothing,” I replied, “it’s just Wanda.”

“We have a woman named Wanda rattling metal in our basement?” he said, astonished. “Why did no one tell me?”

“Wanda! Knock off the noise!” I hollered. “Don’t make me come down there!”

But I was just posturing. Wanda and I both know that when she is making those noises, I’m going to have to go down eventually and slap her around a little. It happens every time.

You see, Wanda and I have known each other for about ten years now. That’s how long she has lived in my basement, washing my clothes.

“Wanda, since you don’t seem to know, is our washing machine,” I told Roy in a rather superior voice.

“You’ve named the washing machine Wanda?” He seemed neither entertained nor surprised.

“When you work as closely as Wanda and I do, you get personal,” I explained to him.

And it’s true. Wanda and I have been together long enough to understand each other. We share more secrets and quirks than coffee klatch buddies.

For instance, I understand that if I want my underwear to not end up wound around the base of the washer, I will wash it on a gentler cycle. That way, Wanda won’t sling it around like she’s a stripper on a pole and twist it irrevocably into the inner workings of the washer.

When I put clothes into the washer, I understand that Wanda is a delicate and well-balanced flower. Therefore, I must lay the clothes in the washer with the precision of a master brick-layer. Because if I don’t, Wanda gets out of balance and throws a very noisy temper tantrum.

Wanda knows that when she does do the “jump and shout out of balance dance,” I will be down to jerk her back into place with a few choice words of my own added. To tell the truth, I think she enjoys my temper tantrums because I often think I see her hiding a smirk in the laundry soap bubbles!

And that brings me to the biggest argument between Wanda and me (outside of “what did you do with the other sock this time?”). We can’t agree on a laundry detergent. She favors the big jugs of liquid, the more additives the better.

I have tried everything (to avoid that). I even went to the pods, but she would chew them up and spit them back on the clothes so that nothing short of a hurricane could get them off. Finally, I thought, “Well, let’s try one of those environmentally friendly sheets or tabs. That should be good.”

Wanda scoffed in disdain. “I’m sorry, but did you mean for me to use that excuse for laundry soap?!” We have ultimately agreed to disagree—meaning we do it her way.

Roy has finally recovered a little from me giving the washing machine a name. “It’s a good thing the dryer is new, you haven’t had time to get hostile with it,” he joked.

“Dougie the Dryer? Oh don’t get me started! He eats so many socks, he makes Wanda look like she’s on a diet…”

If you see Roy at the laundromat, tell him Wanda and Dougie say hello.

Jackie Wells-Fauth

At this rather spooky time of year, I must tell you that I believe a gremlin has attached itself to me. And the grabby little bugger is causing no end of trouble.

On our recent vacation, we spent two nights in Dover, England, where they tell me the spirits of sailors lost in the English Channel wander the streets. I assumed these were just tales designed to enhance the city’s mystique, but now I wonder.

We spent the nights there in a charming old building along the harbor. In the middle of the first night, I awoke because the bathroom light went on. I assumed Roy was in there until I put out a hand and he was in bed.

When you’re half asleep, you really don’t reason things. I got up, went to the bathroom and turned off the light. When I mentioned it to Roy the following morning, he said, “Faulty wiring.”

So, when it happened again the second night, I said, “Roy the faulty wiring is acting up. Go shut it off.” And then it went off by itself. It continued this most of the night until finally I sat up in bed and said, “Casper, knock it off.” That was it. No more “faulty wiring.”

Since then, I seem to have acquired a gremlin, who doesn’t steal my things so much as borrow them. Every time I lose something, Grady (he doesn’t seem to like the name Casper) watches while I frantically look for it, and then, casually returns it to some obvious place where I’ve already looked.

I lost my phone while we were still in Europe, a financial disaster in any case, but also, a loss of our means of communication if we were separated. I looked frantically through every pocket, counter, crevice and my purse, a dozen times. Exhausted, I decided to search the room one last time. There, lying peacefully, in the middle of the mattress, was my phone. I could almost hear Grady the Gremlin laughing.

I said, “Go back to Dover and leave me alone.”

Grady apparently decided he would like to try out the New World, so he followed me home. In the days since I have been home, I have lost and “reacquired” about a dozen items. I could not find the best soup ladle I have ever had and tore the kitchen apart, only to discover that it was sitting ever so sweetly on top of the microwave. I didn’t have soup in the microwave, so it must have been Grady.

My best pair of sewing scissors disappeared out of my sewing bag. I searched and searched, cursing Grady as I went, and eventually ended up using the kitchen shears, which are great for cutting meat, but not so fine for snipping threads. On the second night, I put my hand in the sewing bag, and my good scissors scratched my fingers. They were perched on the top of some balls of yarn. Score another one for Grady.

The latest “Grady grab” was my calendar. I use a paper calendar, in a big purple book that can’t be missed and if I can’t find it, it’s like having amnesia. I don’t know anything that’s going on. I missed it while at the school, so I thought I had simply left it at home. I went home and looked everywhere without any success. I’d already looked at the school, so I was stymied.

Finally, given no other options, I returned to the school and started asking people if they had seen it. (Unfortunately, I don’t write my name in it.) No luck. I was frantic. What would I do without my practice schedules?

Completely frustrated, I said to Grady, “Okay, enough is enough. I need that book, or they are going to put me in the home for having lost my mind.” I walked into the theater and there was the calendar, lying right out in the open where I had frantically searched an hour before.

I have my calendar again, but I am still a little worried: Might they put me in the home anyway for talking to an invisible gremlin? I know you’re laughing, Grady, and you can just stop!