I put a load of laundry in the washing machine a couple of hours ago. I live in an open-concept condo so the laundry closet is within easy hearing distance. Most of it isn’t at all distracting or disruptive – it’s just the final spin that requires the volume to go up on the TV.

So, as you can imagine, I’m quite familiar with the sound of the various stages it goes through.

Tonight…well, there was a different sound. There was a new, high-pitched, whirring sound. It wasn’t super loud or anything. It was just … there. And it’s not usually there. So it caught my attention.

The first thing I thought was, “Dang it… I filled it too full.”

Being the queen of efficiency, rather than having to do two separate, small loads, I put everything into the one load. I thought, then, that I had maybe filled it a titch too full. Not crazy full. But more so than I usually do and a friend and I were recently talking about flooding washing machines and such, so my mind couldn’t help but go to a place of “Uh oh…”

I tried to talk myself out of it for a while – “It’s fine. You’re being paranoid. Don’t worry about it.”

But, after about half an hour, the whirring eventually won out and I got up to go check.

I opened the doors and listened. I could hear the whirring still, but it wasn’t coming from the washing machine. It was coming from behind me – the spare bedroom.

I can’t quite say if I was more relieved that the washing machine wasn’t about to explode and flood everything on the even of my much-anticipated trip to the Emerald Isle or more confused as to what the heckledy schmeckeldy could possibly be making that noise in the spare room.

I turned around and looked in. There are no “machines” to speak of in there – the router, a telephone and a TV. Nothing “whirrable”. But the sound was most definitely coming from there.

Huh.

Then I looked further in. The window was open. Ahhhhhh yes.

There was a lovely cool breeze this evening and I had opened both bedroom windows to get a nice cross breeze going – something other than AC air for the first time in a couple of months.

But I had forgotten the windows were open. Oops!

So, yeah…no explosion. No flood.

Just somebody doing some work outside, with what sounded like maybe a circular saw, oblivious to the state of anxiety and confusion they had innocently caused.

_____________________

If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to follow/subscribe!!