I’ll happily spend money on lunch dates with friends, fragrant candles, pretty journals and anything for my granddaughters.

I think that makes me quite normal.

Just don’t ask me to buy appliances. I don’t mind if the ones I have are old and outdated, as long as they work. But lately, many of them haven’t.

In the past nine months, I’ve had to replace an iron (which I think belonged to my sister, Kay), a gas grill, coffee pot, toaster, refrigerator, washer and dryer. Maybe that’s normal, too.

While each has a story of its own, let’s focus on the dryer. It was given to my daughter, Elise, when the owner moved to an appliance-furnished apartment.

She and her three roommates used it for a year and, when she moved, she gave it to us.

It worked for a couple more years, gradually declining until it operated on only one cycle.

At that point, last August, I bought a new one.

An hour after the delivery men left, my youngest daughter, Victoria, came in from the garage and asked, “Where’s our dryer?”

“Don’t talk to me about it. I finally gave in and bought a new one. They took the old one away.”

“So where’s the clothes that were in the old one? I’m scheduled to work in an hour. My uniform’s in the dryer.”

My husband called the store to track down our dryer and the last load of clothes it had dried. Since the delivery men were in a nearby neighborhood, he met up with them to recover Victoria’s clothes and made it home in time for her shift at Sicily’s.

Always looking for validation that I’m normal, I said, “The men must have assured you that this happens all the time.”

“On the contrary,” Michael said, “They said this was the first time it has ever happened to them.”

I guess author Patsy Clairmont was right when she wrote, “Normal is just a setting on your dryer.”

I hope this dryer lasts for many years. So far, so good. It even plays a little tune when the clothes are ready.

If my stove did that, maybe I’d cook more often.

Ronny Michel may be reached at rmichel@rtconline.com.