Tuesday, March 14, 2006

the great fridge caper

Ya ever break something, find a work-around that isn't convenient but gets the job done, swear you'll get the problem fixed as soon as you can, blink, and it's five years later and you're still using the work-around? Ya ever write run on sentences?

About five years ago, the wife looked at me one evening and said, "We're moving!" I was shocked and started thinking of all the reasons that couldn't happen. I absolutely abhor moving. After my dad being in the Air Force, and us moving every three or four years, then me being in the Navy and continuing the tradition, I was enjoying the luxury of not moving that civilian life brought me. Then she told me the people down the street rented their house out to crack dealers, and a second grader got his skull fractured by teenagers for his lunch money. I argued that we should defend our neighborhood against this stuff and fight back. We shouldn't run from this kind of thing. The wife was adamant though. The youngster was a second grader at the time. The situation hit home hard and she wanted out. We went looking for a new place to live, eventually found where we are now and feel a lot more safe. Somewhere in all that, we ended up building a new house to live in. Well, that's partially true. We didn't build the house. We had it done by people who had some expertise in that regard. Somewhere in that process came the new appliances. The wife decided she wanted black ones. The people who bought our house didn't want the fridge, even though it was fully functional (if a tad old), so we figured we'd keep it in the new house and save a few bucks for the time being. The fridge was white (so it didn't 'match', which apparently is an important woman thing), but after we settled in, we'd get a new black one. After all, it was creeping between one and two decades of service.

We moved out of our old house, and rented while the new one was being built, and hauled the fridge with us. Somewhere in there, the ice dispenser broke. The ice maker was fine, but it wouldn't feed the ice through the door. I wanted to get it fixed, but the wife insisted, "We're not paying to get that fixed. We're getting rid of it soon." So we held off for the new fridge. It wasn't a huge deal. You just had to open the door to get ice. The only bad part was the ice in the bottom of the bin rarely got touched, which got a bit nasty if you ever dug down there. Occasionally you just had to clean the whole mess out. A year passed. Winter changed into Spring. Spring changed into Summer. Summer changed back into Winter. And Winter gave Spring and Summer a miss and went straight on into Autumn...until one day...last week, John reached into the freezer to get ice for his water and said, "Enough! I've been putting up with this fridge we're going to get rid of 'soon' for five years now, and either we get this thing fixed, or we get the new one we've been saying we're going to get ever since we moved." Now, let me say, this wasn't the first time I've made that decree. I've made it several times in the last few years with not a whole lot of success. Always, there was something of a higher priority in the budget. This time, however, someone looked back at me and said, "Yes, it's about time we got a new fridge." and so, this Saturday, the Cadillac of fridges (as far as I can tell...I can honestly say I didn't do the research. I just went "Oooooooooooo" and "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh") will grace our kitchen, and I will once more be able to get ice without opening a door.

It's a new dawn.

ps. Aren't you glad you tuned in for this installment of blog-dom?

pps. Yes, there is a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference in there somewhere. Now that you know, it isn't that hard to spot.

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