The Refrigerator Curse

Over the last few years, two of our refrigerators have chosen extremely inconvenient times to go out. I mean the sort of really bad time when it's most difficult to obtain a new one. Prepare a mug of glorious, lovely hot cocoa, then put your feet up and get comfortable, because there's some stories ahead.

(I mean, unless you're the sort of person who's easily grossed out by things. Then don't get hot cocoa, because I'll be complaining about spoiled food and describing it in depth.)

It was December, and the last year my mother and I were living in California. It was occasionally rainy, as winters in California are (when it can be bothered to rain at all, considering clouds sometimes make an effort to avoid that particular chunk of land). With recent events, it wasn't one of the greatest holiday seasons I had. Far from it, really. And that was without taking into consideration... the fridge.

Yes, folks, the fridge. The evil, horrible refrigerator, which had chosen that time to have issues. Because our holiday season wasn't crummy enough.

It started slow, with subtle little things. Was it just my imagination, or did this can of soda not feel as cold as I expected it to be? Maybe it's just me. (shrug)

Then, as the fridge got less efficient in cooling, it became more noticeable. "I think the fridge is going out." Mom said.

Then, to add insult to injury, some pork we bought went bad. Let me just say, raw pork that has spoiled is not pleasant. It made the whole refrigerator smell. And it seemed to permeate much of what was in the fridge. We needed to eat what was left in the fridge before it went bad, too, but it seemed like half the stuff in there had the spoiled-meat taste from that foul air in the refrigerator.

Since it was getting close to Christmas, naturally the entire world decided appliances were the gift to buy. We also lived in the middle of nowhere. As a result, we couldn't get a repairman to look at it, nor could we order a new one. Everything was out of stock, back ordered, not available until next century. In the meantime, some of our food and beverages were in portable ice chests. Want a drink of juice? Go outside and open the blue cooler. It should be in there, half-buried under ice cubes.

After a great struggle, we finally found a new refrigerator we could buy. Only trouble was, it couldn't be delivered. We had to drive down and pick it up. A family friend offered to help, and with his incredible man strength (Don't you hate how they make us females look like pathetic weaklings?) he got the new appliance into the house, and hauled the stench box, er, our old fridge outside.

When we moved several months later, we had no intention of bringing some of our larger appliances with us. We ended up giving the new fridge to the family of one of my friends.

Then there was the problem we had this year. It seemed like things in our refrigerator weren't as cold as they used to be. We tried adjusting the temperature control, which didn't seem to help. Things still remained sort-of cold rather than properly cold.

Oh, and the milk. I had drank some of the milk, and it was fine. The next day, I decided to get milk, went to pour it, and it came out in chunks. Chunks. It wasn't even near its expiration date and it was chunky. I started to pour it down the drain, then gave up and just threw the carton in the trash. It's got a lid, it won't stink up the house if the ex-milk remains in the bottle forever.

We called someone to look at the fridge, and he informed us that our refrigerator had a pinhole leak somewhere, and the coolant was escaping. Fixing it would mean sending it in to test where the leak was, which would take a while. And the repairs would likely cost more money than it was worth. Which meant we had to replace the refrigerator we'd bought less than three years ago.

With the pandemic going on, everyone's been panic-buying. Hoarding enough food to last until Doomsday, and apparently buying new refrigerators and freezers to store all that stuff. As a result, a lot of the refrigerators were out of stock, and finding one we could buy was difficult. We eventually purchased one, and got rid of the old fridge.

Made all of our cleaning kind of pointless, really.

So that sums up the tale of our refrigerator curse. I mean, technically we've been having issues with things in general, but that's another story for another time. We won't talk about the fuse for the dryer outlet, or the kitchen lights, or our inability to put furniture together, or anything else of that nature. Everything's groovy, no problems to report here.

Tune in next week to see what I write about next. (I'm not even sure what next Wednesday's post will be about.)