These Trials Are Sent To Test Us

This afternoon, I opened my freezer and a lot of liquid splashed onto the floor and onto my feet. Startling. It looked to be water from melted ice and some purple juice from a huge bag of frozen blueberries. Except the blueberries weren't frozen anymore. It was 38 degrees in the freezer and a pleasantly cool 46 in the fridge. What the what? I swear that just this morning, everything was fine inside there. I mean, I didn't look at the thermometer display, but my half-n-half felt cool. Coolish. I mean, I don't know, I was more focused on the coffee.

As I write this, it is 69 degrees in that box.

I slammed the freezer door, much like you would slam a coffin lid if you'd just opened it to reveal the daytime resting place of Nosferatu. I said some ugly but necessary words and started mopping the floor with a beach towel. Then I opened the freezer door again and more goo dripped out. More mopping. And fear set in. WHAT DID IT MEAN?

I recalled that one time this thing in the back of the fridge got dusty and that we cleaned it with this really weird brush on a long bendy wire. I wasted no time in hollering for Matt to please come and pull the fridge out of its little alcove and do the thing with the brush. Which he did. But the thing in the back wasn't all that dusty. I had pinned my hopes on dusting that thing with the brush and it didn't look like it was going to make any difference. Matt pushed the fridge back in.

During a lot of this I was kind of wailing. Like, not crying, but sort of vocalizing through the pain. Like, "Oh no, why is it doing that, what do you think, what are we going to do, this is not good, what in the hecks, craaaaaaap, did you say a flat head screwdriver?"

Once the heavy lifting was finished, Matt went back down to the basement to work and left me to deal with the emotional aftermath.

I don't know, when something goes wrong in the house, it gives me a momentary crazy dread. One of my first blog posts ever was about this. For just a second, I panic. Like, my frozen organic berries are thawing out and we will all probably die alone.

Part of the emotional context of this moment is that I've been counting calories the last few weeks, or really now it's counting proteins, fats, and carbs. Whatever, zzzzz. But I have a more, like, deliberate relationship with food and nutrition throughout the day. The foods that work for me--my Greek yogurt, my hummus, my baby carrots--feel like my friends. And my friends were in trouble. (I know, see? Crazy.)

I steeled myself to open up the doors again and was disappointed to see that both compartments had actually gotten warmer. I threw away some things. Then I got reusable shopping bags and loaded them up with everything salvageable. I schlepped it all downstairs and crammed it in the NEW AND WORKING FRIDGE IN THE BASEMENT. Oh yeah. Well there is that. Awful convenient to have that.

But still! Still! If I want something that's kept refrigerated I have to go down there where all those boys are working and get it. Then I have to either use it there or bring it upstairs and then take it back. Insupportable, GAH.

I took a break from my cursing and schlepping to pick up Laura from school, where she had stayed late for chorus. On the way home, I filled her in on the fridge situation. She said, "It will be like Little House on The Prairie where they pack ice in cedar shavings. Or like in the Boxcar Children where they kept their food cold by putting it behind a waterfall."

Yes, we are just like the Boxcar Children.

I called a guy and he is coming tomorrow. Fingers crossed that the fix will be quick and cheap. Because obviously we cannot go on this way.