I woke up this morning and found the fridge strangely quiet. When I opened it up, there was no light and no rush of cold air to meet me. Since everything else in the kitchen was working fine, I suspected a blown fuse. Sure enough, replacing the fuse made the motor start humming again. “Phew”, thought I, “good thing I had an extra fuse, since it would be hard to get one today.”
So I went about my Christmas business, receiving guests and cooking my turkey dinner. We ate, unwrapped presents, and had a lovely time. As I was putting leftovers back in the fridge, though, I noticed that it wasn’t all that cold in there. I went to the freezer for ice cubes, and all I found was a tray full of water and a bunch of thawing meat.
I start panicking just a little bit, and call my uncle for advice, since he knows about this sort of thing. I unplug, empty, play with tubing and a vacuum cleaner, all to no avail. Meanwhile, he shows up at my door with his tool belt and starts pulling pieces out of the mechanism behind the fridge.
Despite our best efforts, the compressor gasped its last around 8pm on Christmas day.
So now we have a balcony full of half-frozen food, and we’re trying to think of ways to keep squirrels out of our plastic laundry bins overnight. We may ship it all to my aunt’s tonight, since she has an extra freezer at home.
But wither way, it’s not the loss of food that’s a problem. We’ve lost stuff to power outages before, and while that’s depressing, it’s just some food. We need to buy a new fridge tomorrow. Thank goodness for boxing day specials and my uncle who’ll come with us to make sure we don’t get screwed, but I just don’t know how we’re going to manage this. We’re already having a lot of trouble making ends meet, and a fridge is a big purchase.
This isn’t supposed to happen at Christmas. Little bells are supposed to give angels wings and people are supposed to be merry. It’s supposed to be a time of hope and happiness. I guess I was naughty this year. 