blairmacg | Mundane Miscellany (Reply)

Well and so, last night I came home from teaching a fabulous women's karate class and mixed a simple drink, went to grab ice cubes from the freezer, and instead stuck my hand into slush where the ice cubes should have been. The fridge was dead, and in its murder-suicide, took out a ton of the meals -- meats, fruits, and veggies -- I'd frozen for the coming two weeks.

I ran out to get ice and the little fridge we keep at the dojo, then Dev and I salvaged and packed what we could into coolers which we then packed into the still-a-bit-cool fridge. (The icebox theory must be working because this morning revealed very little melting of the ice in the coolers.) What we couldn't really keep got handed down to the dogs who gorged themselves into canine bliss on chicken, bacon, sausage, lamb, and beef. Ty even added tomatoes and strawberries to his feast.

I think we have the problem isolated to a burned out compressor relay -- a little switch that tells the compressor to pump out cold air. Dev said he wanted to try fixing it himself, so today he took himself to the appliance repair shop, ordered the part, and got a little advice on what to do. Thursday or Friday, he'll try to fix it.

Whether he succeeds or not isn't the point. It's the fact he's willing to try. (And how cool would it be to save either $300 in repairs, not to mention oodle-hundreds for a new fridge!) The greatest side benefit to living on limited funds -- and trust me, there are scant benefits to that -- is learning to repair rather than replace what's broken. True, our fridge is older. True, even the repair might buy us only six months. But that six months will make a huge difference.

While cleaning out the fridge I realized my cooking habits would be much better served if the space given to refrigeration was instead my freezer, and my freezer space a mere refrigerator. Really, my fridge is for milk and cheese, condiments, leftovers meant to be eaten within 48 hours, a few days' worth of fresh produce, and whatever I have defrosting from the freezer. It's the freezer that's crammed with made-ahead meals and stored ingredients. Alas, there is no refrigerator unit made to those specs. But there should be!

We'll be eating out of coolers for at least another day, which isn't a big deal if one just expects it as the current state of affairs. A little annoying, a little bit of a hassle. But compared to Real Problems, it's a blip. That's what I tell myself, over and over, because even a short time of indulging crappy thoughts is enough these days to make me want to curl up on the couch and do nothing by pet the dogs and play Tetris.

And I do really and truly think it's awesome my kid wants to try his hand at fixing the fridge.