I bought these flowers for a friend. John and I were going to go to her house for dinner on Saturday evening. It was a big deal for us, for John to do something pre-stroke normal line socialize with friends on a Saturday evening. 

So many things yesterday.

Our current refrigerator was bought during the lockdown of 2020, purchased and delivered with no pain other than the hit to our wallet. We were replacing a 7 year young Samsung. Luckily the only shortage this early in Covid was toilet paper. Appliance shortages wound come a full year or more later.

This new refrigerator has always been a little wonky. Ice builds up behind the pantry drawer and occasionally we have to pull the drawer out and let it defrost. Definitely not something a modern fridge should require, but we’ve never had it looked at or fixed. 

On Saturday John decided to defrost the accruing build up. 

Then he decided to make chocolate chip cookies.

These things are big endeavors and require a lot of energy for him right now. In the middle of baking cookies he realized the refrigerator was warm. 

When serious trials and tribulations occur in my life, I truly never ask why. I have a deep belief that these things are just part of life for everyone. No one escapes. I have been in shock about John having a stroke, but never I have I felt why me, why us. My ability to accept whatever is, is pretty strong. Unless you count my personality trait that requires me to try and fix whatever I’m dealing with, then maybe that is the opposite of acceptance? But what I’m trying to convey is I don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out why. I accept reality and try to figure out how to move forward. 

Why am I telling you all of this and what does it have to do with my refrigerator?

Because when John told me the refrigerator broke yesterday it nearly did me in. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, except I’m the camel and it’s my spirit that is breaking.

After calling several appliance repair companies and getting the soonest available appointment as Tuesday afternoon, and one asking for the model number and checking their inventory to tell us they did not have parts for our particular model, I was waving the white flag at life, at God, at everything. I wanted to get into my bed and never get out. To be fair, we could have Monday afternoon but John has a doctor and lab appointments. Tuesday morning was available but John has PT and OT. 

When it comes to this sort of thing my way of fixing it is to run up to Lowe’s and have a new one delivered as soon as possible. 

John on the other hand enjoys a good mechanical challenge. Did you know that the manufacturer hides the diagnostic code program instructions in the top right hinge of the refrigerator? See that hole? There’s a screw and if you unscrew the cap over the hinge you will find neatly folded sheets of paper in there.

The good news was that the freezer was working. I was able to take ice packs from the freezer and put them in the refrigerator in an attempt at an old fashioned ice box.

After running through the diagnostics and doing a hard reset we accepted that we weren’t sure if anything was fixed or not. We have the repair person scheduled for Tuesday. We decided to sleep on it and maybe just go get a new fridge in the morning.

On Sunday morning everything seemed cold in the refrigerator but the ice maker wasn’t working. We decided to wait on the repair appointment and see what comes of that. Thinking about buying a 3rd refrigerator in 11 years, I can’t help but think we need a Lee Iacocca of appliance manufacturing.

I put the flowers in a vase, made coffee and grabbed a cookie. We made it through Saturday, and that’s good enough.