This spring our toddler refrigerator ( 3 years old) decided to throw the ultimate in fits and shut down completely after making some rather distinctive noises at 11 o’clock at night.
Unlike real toddler tantrums this one lasted 6 weeks. I wish I was kidding.
Of course it shut down at 11pm. Perfect timing! We heard the noise and by the time we pulled it out to have a look it sputtered and just shut down. I suppose the smart thing would have been to take everything out of it and down to the basement refrigerator but we just threw up our hands and decided everything would stay cold and frozen over night and it did.
The next day started a series of calls to the repair people and repeated trips to our 20 year old basement refrigerator that was purring like a happy kitten. Nothing like a dead refrigerator to force me to clean it out which is one of my least favorite things to do. Bill Nye the Science guy would be impressed at the number of science experiments I found.
My doctor would love the fact that I either got lots of time up and down stairs in order to feed my face or just decided it wasn’t worth another trip down and then up again to get whatever food I needed. And of course none of this made my scale move to a lesser number. Sigh
This is the part where I say “They don’t make them like they use to” and while it is true it makes me sound old so not going there.
We are now on first name basis and cell phone buddies with the repairman who we may have to invite to all future family events.
We learned that some people do not like their job and should maybe not be dealing with the public on a regular basis. I may or may not be referring to the person who took all of our phone calls that started with…well that didn’t work, frig is still on the fritz. How many different ways can you spell cranky?
Also we quit counting how many times we opened the dead refrigerator out of habit.
I say dead but it was just resting until we could figure it out and we did figure it out. That is Paul, me and our adopted cousin Mark, the repair guy.
We got the refrigerator going just in time for visitors and I promptly went in to baking mode. No worries I’ve got this. I have been baking bread off and on for my entire married life but this last year I have been in high gear with sourdough, regular bread and some surprising fluffy and beautiful sandwich buns.
I swear I did nothing different but somehow I managed to make a nice batch of hockey pucks. What?
So I am not a quitter and while the squirrels and birds feasted or choked on the first batch, I was busily making the second batch. I mean how I could fail twice.
Wrong.
They were a little better ( bigger) than the first batch so I had progressed from hockey pucks to mini curling stones.
This is what I wanted:
This is what I got…and trust me they could have sunk a ship!
I gave up on the buns and proceeded to soothe my inner Julia Child with a batch of chocolate chip cookies ( my recipe with the secret ingredient) and voila they were as good as ever and I felt a little better …until
I made a recipe called “Marry Me Chicken”. Um, no one would have married me after that and maybe run the other way. It must have been a bum recipe ( this was my first time making it..a virgin try oops)
And earlier this year I made the rookie mistake of making a dessert for the first time to take to a friends house. It was Olivia Waltons Applesauce Cake, I mean how could I go wrong. AND I got the recipe from the real Waltons Mountain here in Virginia.
It was so dry it crumbled like the turkey in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation.
Argghhh. I later googled it and found a real life baker that had to make it three times to get it right. I felt vindicated and then a friend asked me if I got the recipe from the Walton museum or from the cranky guy down the street who runs a Walton Gift Shop. He was very cranky and that’s where I got it from!
Obviously the baking and cooking gremlins are having a lot of fun with me. I will keep you updated if I ever get out of my hockey puck era.
Also I did pray to the appliance angels to make my refrigerator fixable. You see it would have been bear to get that refrigerator out of the house and another back in. It could be done but our kitchen is on the second floor, long staircase and a tight turn. We chose not to be here when they installed it while we were building the house.
And yet we were here when the movers brought in our sectional. Paul has declared we will use it forever or take a chainsaw to it if we have to replace it.
That wall its leaning against got damaged and fixed and I agree with Paul about the chainsaw!
In the words of Gilda Radner..”it’s always something”! Stay tuned. I’m sure the summer will bring more fun adventures !!!!
As Always Keep Triing!!
Jennifer