I did my ‘first of the month’ chores the other day. These include pouring things down into the bathtub to keep the sewer lines cleared, and running cleaners through the washing machine, dishwasher, and garbage disposal. We hunt for organic, safe things to do this with. I do them every month on the first day to keep it all working well.

That’s the dream, anyway.

All transpired as planned with everything except the washing machine. It stopped, showing an error message.

My wife pointed it out to me by asking, “What’s this mean?”

“What?”

“The washing machine isn’t doing anything. It shows ‘rL’ where it usually shows the time.”

I looked. Not because I didn’t believe her. It’s just habit: see for myself. Helps me shift into ‘maybe I can fix it’ mode.

She was right about what it said. The time is always in green. These letters were in red.

“That’s not good,” I wisely noted.

We pulled out the manual and found the error message. It’s specifically for the cleaning cycle and means, ‘something is in the washer’. Nothing is supposed to be in the washer during this process. The only thing in it is the tablet purchased for the purpose.

My wife and I talked about it. “This is what we used before,” we agreed. “It was never upset before.”

Shrugging, I took the standard modern technology route: turn it off, turn it back on.

And it worked.