I'm not kidding. I married the greatest detective of our time. The man astounds me.
Yesterday, I found a curious puddle of liquid at the front corner of our stacked washer and dryer. So I had Justin come take a look. "It looks like water but it's got something gritty in it, like salt or sugar or something." So Justin puts his hand in it, rubs his fingers together and then proceeds to taste it. "Hmmm," he says, "It tastes like salt. Not sure what that could be." He takes a closer look and notices that the crystals aren't square, but are flat and concludes that it isn't table salt at any rate.
So I clean up the mess as best as I can which is coming from under the washer and forget about it, until later in the day when the same puddle appears again. I put my hand in it and notice that it's got the grit in it again but that it's "clean" smelling. So I throw a rag on it to mop it up again. I immediately realize that it's bleach as the mustard rag turns to fluorescent orange. (If you know anything about me, you know that I am not allowed to handle, buy or otherwise use bleach in our house because it's very dramatic every time that I do.) So one ruined towel later, Justin walks in the door.
I tell him that the puddle is back and he says, "I know what it is. It's bleach."
"Well how did you figure that one out?" I say.
So he whips out his college chemistry on me and says, "Because I know that table salt is NaCl but that since the crystals weren't in the cubes like table salt, it had to come from something that had Sodium Chloride in it and bleach is the Chloride part of that." Seriously?!?
I had taken everything off of the top of the dryer. There were two jugs that had a bleach type substance. So Sherlock says, "Let's find out where it's coming from. Where were the jugs?" One was sitting on top, the other was leaning up against the back wall a little sideways but not enough for it to be coming out of the lid. He pours a cup of water on the top of the dryer to see where it would drain if something were to spill. It drains to the front so we think it's either draining into the dryer itself or it's not coming from the top. It's obviously coming from the floor in the back.
Meanwhile he puts both of the jugs on dry paper towels in the two sink sides. We go take a look and bingo! The jug that was tipped against the back has a wet spot right next to a pin hole in the side so small that you cannot even see it with the naked eye. A hole that was so small and had been dripping at a rate of a couple drops her hour for the past 2 months. I mean, who thinks to do this sort of thing? So yes, it's left some holes in the linoleum too!
I said, "Well, how should we clean it up since we can't exactly move the stacked appliances without totally emptying and dismantling the pantry?"
He says, "I don't do clean up, only diagnostic. You'll have to hire someone else for that, ma'am."
So as I get on top of the dryer, in the 2 foot space between it and the ceiling and shine a light down behind to assess the cleanup, I am reminded by the webbing of duct tape holding the dryer vent hose to the back of the unit in place of the broken attachment part the moron that installed it had broken the very first day, that it wasn't that long ago that I had a visit from Sherlock Holmes.
PS: I think he gets it honestly. It definitely runs in the family. Can anyone say Oafy Mike?
