A healthy dose of radiation?

OK blog readers, no lurking now - I need help. It seems in my unobservant, post-baby sleep-deprived state, I failed to notice that our microwave was cracking. D mentioned it a few weeks ago as if I couldn't have missed it. And of course after he pointed out a few small cracks, the situation devolved into major disrepair. We are holding on a piece with two kinds of tape...(actually there was only a crack part of the way through, held together with one piece of tape last time I looked - and tonight when I went to start heating something, I noticed that it must have broken more when D used it and now it's pretty much totally broken off...)

Because really, it's a microwave - pretty hard to live without (I did it once while studying abroad - it involved reheating everything by frying it in oil). And so we continue to use it. But is it safe? I can't imagine that plastic is all that is standing between us and the microwave radiation. But somehow I don't want to be in the kitchen when it's on.

On a related note - it looks like the measurements for over-the-stove microwaves are pretty standard and we could just go to Home Depot, Lowes, etc. and buy a new one. Any insights into the installation? Is it doable by us? Keep in mind that "us" involves a little baby now, so we might not be quite as able as we used to be (or at least that at any given point, one of us might have to go deal with baby drama). And yes, I've googled for this - but what I'm looking for is first-hand experience. Have you done it? Was it hard?

Please help!

Fourth Time's Even Charmier

Back in June after a slight mishap resulting in D shattering a CFL bulb, we decided to cover our exposed lightbulbs with cages. The $3 cages from Home Depot left a lot to be desired. Both in installation (we had to close the cages with twist ties because the fit wasn't perfect) and effectiveness (they were flexible plastic, so a forceful hit to the cage would probably still make contact with and shatter the bulb).

Thanks to a connection from my mom, we got access to a builders' supply company that offered much sturdier choices. So we upgraded to these sturdy metal cages that won't flex. Installation was a breeze and now we can ditch the twist-ties.

We've had these sitting in our basement since July and just finally put them up. We even got an extra to put around the exposed bulb in our walk-in closet. Not that I usually throw my clothes around violently enough to smash a bulb.

Agitator Dogs

The inserts of our pocket diapers haven't been getting cleaned as well recently. We assumed it was because we were being lazy and not removing the pee and poop-ridden inserts by hand. The inserts were coming out by the end of the wash cycle, but they may have been only coming out in the last spin cycle. After I started another wash cycle this morning, I found another potential reason - the agitator wasn't agitating. After some quick Googling, I found a lot of videos which explained the probable cause: agitator dog wear. Below is the agitator.

After pulling the top off, we can see a (scummy) cap. The (scummy) cap can be pulled off.

Now we can see the mechanism of the agitator. It's similar to a bicycle hub, where a ratchet-spline system is used to propel the shaft. After removing the 7/16 bolt in the center we can get at the individual parts.

After pulling out the inner section we can easily see the splines (tooth-looking things) of the agitator shell.

The agitator dogs are the yellow plastic bits on the photo below. On a bike hub, they'd be called ratchets. A local Sears appliance store had them in stock, so we didn't have to wait for an Amazon delivery. This must be a fairly popular product, since the women at the store knew what I was talking about when I asked if they had a "reservoir dog" in stock.

The new agitator dogs have three teeth on them - the older dogs have maybe one tooth left. Once I popped in the new dogs and put it all back together, the agitator was working very vigorously again. It was an easy fix and only cost about $20 in parts ($10 for an extender rod for the ratchet and the agitator dogs were another $10). I'm sure a service call would have cost a lot more money.