Hey lady, is your refrigerator running?

Remember that crank phone call that goes, "Hey lady, is your refrigerator running? You better go catch it!"?

Well, if you had called my house earlier this week, my reply would have been, "No, it's not. Want to come fix it?"

What do you do when you open your freezer one morning (Monday) and find that the ice is melty? If you live in a house with many little kids, you probably do what I did and assume that someone left the door ajar (happens often) and shut the door firmly after turning down the cool.

What do you do when you open up the refrigerator door a few hours later and find that the milk (and everything) is not as cold as it should be? If you are like me, and your hubby is on swings this week (and thus, home until noon), you thankfully holler, "HONEY! You've got to come look at the fridge! Something is wrong with it."

What do you do when you discover that neither the freezer or the refrigerator are turning on properly, so you call the home warranty people to send someone out, and find that they have somehow misunderstood hubby's request for a better rate and canceled appliance coverage instead? If you are like me, you MIGHT start panicking a little bit, thinking of all the food in the fridge and the cost of replacing it, let alone the cost of calling a repairman to fix it, especially with three family birthdays in the next two weeks.

So, when hubby unplugs the fridge, cleans under it a bit, plugs it back in, and it miraculously starts working again, what do you do? Jump for joy and send him off to work.

And then, what do you do when, a few hours later you go back to the freezer and the new bag of ice hubby bought for you (because fresh ice is essential to tasty Dr. Pepper when served from a two liter...my one indulgence) is melting and dripping everywhere...and hubby is now at work over an hour away? You call hubby and beg for help. Alas, Herr Navy thinks nothing of keeping him late as you morosely watch your carefully made jars of freezer jam and collected berries and beans slowly unfreeze...you don't have a cooler (unpacked), and you can't afford to go buy enough coolers to store everything...ho hum.

Thankfully, Poppy comes up with the idea to have hubby swing by at one am and pick up his spare refrigerator (thanks Poppy and Nanny!), load it on the truck, and ride over to our house in the wee hours of the morning, to unload it at three am and transfer the not-quite completely thawed foodstuffs (covered with some of the remaining ice) from the old fridge to the working relocated one. Thanks guys.

How does it all end? The next day, hubby calls an applaince repairman to come service our fridge. While we wait for him to show up, he and Poppy clean at least a cubic yard (well, maybe a wee bit of an exaggeration) of dust from around the coils, and we all pitch in to clean out the drippy fridge and freezer (mostly Poppy, as I am teaching and doing dishes, etc.). The repariman shows up and takes a whopping five minutes to figure out the problem, another five to fetch the part from his truck, and another five to fix it, and a final five to repair our broken ice maker (might as well, while he is out here!). What was the problem? The starter was bad. The fridge is now icy cold, and the freezer is happily freezing.

The tab? Well, let's not discuss exact numbers, but those guys make GOOD money. If any of your children do not seem to want to go to college, have them learn to repair appliances and open their own repair business. I know folks who work all day for what that guy charged for twenty minutes of labor. And his rates are average for this area.

Did I loose the jam? No. It made it. I lost a roast, and saved some chicken by cooking it right away. We lost some other meat that I wasn't too unhappy to lose (a brand we wound up not liking), but the veggies all fared okay, and the frozen berries seem fine. Hopefully, they won't be freezer burned since there wasn't any moisture in with them.

What's the moral of the story? Hmmmm. Well, teamwork is a good thing. Many hands make light work. I am still working on cleaning the rest of the shelves, transferring the food back, and dealing with the dirty dishes from the food we lost (an emergency run to WalMart for milk, bread, and diapers last night interrupted clean up), but I will be getting a nice, clean, super-cold fridge out of the experience.

My dad said it was time to change out the artwork on the doors and sides anyway, so there is a new start in that as well. It won't take my kids long to fill it back up and it will be just like it always is...a slightly cluttered reflection of our colorful and busy lives.

Hey, kid, my refrigerator is running now. I'd go catch it but I am too tired today. Want to come over and catch it for me? You can chase after the chickens and put them all back in the pen when you are done with that, and hold the horses while the vet is here, then wash all these dishes in the sink from the food we threw away (because the dishwasher is broken, too, only it's not fixable). Oh, you mean didn't really want to know? It was a joke? Oh, I get it now...Okay. Well, I'd still appreciate your help, if you want to swing by sometime. There's always plenty to do here at Blessing Farm! We'll keep you too busy around here to make prank phone calls, that's for sure.

Thanks to all who helped us through our refrigerator emergency!!

Blessings,

Heather