Switched, Bothered and Bewildered Read Online Free PDF Page B

off her apron and stomped upstairs, thinking up ways to search for washer manuals on Google. Her pants slid down a bit, and she pulled them back up. Geez, Jana Lee's jeans were a little loose on her. She better find a belt before they fell off. She'd put on these jeans and her sister's clean but ugly pink T-shirt and a pair of old Keds tenny runners. That was the extent of the wardrobe hunt so far. It did feel rather good not to have to get all slicked up for work.
    She should have packed more of her own stuff, but she hadn't really known she'd be coming here when she'd checked into Serenity Spa. What she did pack was dirty from her spa week, and of course to wash it she had to fix the washer. She was in a tragic sitcom loop.
    The door to Carly's room was covered in stickers and Keep Out signs. When Jillian pushed, it creaked open like in a horror movie. Jillian stood
    in the doorway for a moment, too stunned to move. This was obviously the gateway to hell.
    There must be a bedroom here, but stinking piles of cast-off dirty clothes coated every square inch, except those inches that were covered in magazines, makeup, empty soda cans, pizza boxes and take-out drink containers with straws sticking out of them. The smell was bad, way bad. Jillian kicked through the piles and made a path.
    In one corner was an old white-and-gold French provincial girly-style desk. On that desk was the flickering screen of a desktop computer. It looked like a fairly decent model. The screen saver was Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson in her famous bare-boob moment. Well, at least Justin was cute.
    Jillian located a chair and scraped herself a space at the desk. She had a deep, abiding need for charts and lists and databases. She set her coffee cup down, hiked up Jana Lee's jeans, and got to work.
    In one hour she'd downloaded an entire yearly household maintenance master plan off of one site, created a daily checklist on Excel from a site by a gal called Flylady, and pulled up and printed off the mechanical specifications for the Maytag top-load washer. Being capable was a good feeling. She three-hole-punched all those and created several notebooks from binders she found stuffed around the room. At least Carly had office supplies.
    In two more hours,   she'd   taken the entire
    washer apart but hadn't located the problem. That was sort of an understatement. She couldn't really grasp how to reassemble it. Perhaps she'd overestimated her own mechanical abilities. She'd have to call a repair guy. She needed this washer in running order because Carly's Hell Room was on her list of things to do, and so was teaching Carly to wash and dry her own damned clothes.
    She'd tackle her on the reentry run tonight. She'd have to forfeit the bet, though. Would Carly really have taken a full week to realize her aunt was standing in the kitchen instead of her mother? They'd never know now, because Jillian had a plan to implement and she was enlisting her niece first thing off the bat.
    Let's see. If she could get a repair guy by one, he might be able to be out of here before three, when the rugrats came. Jillian went back in the kitchen and looked at Jana Lee's scribbled notes in the spiral notebook with Tweety bird on the front. She and Jana Lee were so different. After-school snacks. Got it. She'd go to Central Market and stock up on stuff. But how would she do that while waiting for a repair guy? Logistics.
    Jillian found the phone book exactly where her mother had kept it, in an open shelf by the kitchen wall phone along with five years of outdated phone books. She picked the most accessible local book, which was about five years old but showed the most use. Maybe there'd be notes.
    She opened it, flipping to the back, and noticed Jana Lee had a list of phone numbers scribbled in the back: school, pizza, handyman. Handyman. That would work. Those guys did everything. Maybe.
    Let's just hope she could get this guy on short notice. While she was dialing she