Descent into Madness, Hunger, Disappointment, Premature Elation, Creative Meal Planning, More Disappointment, and Overly-Conservative Eating Habits:

How a family of 5 survived for 3 weeks with a mini fridge. Part 1

Reality Bites

This story is so shocking, so poignant, so full of twists and turns and unforeseen aggravation--it just has to be told. I never thought it was possible. I never thought about it at all, because I always hoped that this type of horrible experience would never touch my own life. But it did.

It started on a Saturday afternoon, about 3 weeks ago. My family was just returning home after being out all morning. When I took some meat out of the freezer to defrost for dinner, something seemed wrong. The carton had little white droplets hanging from the bottom, and there were tiny puddles on the next shelf down. I pressed my finger into the side of the ice cream carton, and it was soft. I dismissed it as the freezer trying to defrost itself (does that even make sense?) and started to prepare lunch. A few minutes later, I mentioned it to my husband. He said, “We must have left the door open when we left this morning.” OK, I guess.

About an hour later, my oldest daughter asked me, “Are you defrosting the freezer?” I told her about my observations and the general conclusion that the door had just been left open that morning (although I wasn’t really convinced yet—I just couldn’t scrape up a memory of it being cracked when I came home). The uneasiness started to close in on me, but tried to ignore it. That evening when I took out the ice cream, it was totally melted.  I checked the refrigerator side, and it was room temperature. The milk was room temperature. The yogurt was room temperature. The cottage cheese was room temperature. My fears were confirmed—the refrigerator was dead.

Let’s take this opportunity to reflect on my life at this moment—today. Before you go thinking I am going to over-simplify my refrigerator-to-mini fridge debacle, I must point out that I didn’t have a chance to blog on Saturday…or Sunday. So this is going to be long. “A long story,” as they say (technically, a 3-part series with 2 cliffhangers). But I will discipline myself to stick closely to the necessary details. And if you do belong to my growing online following, please forgive me for not blogging daily. I really do try. The adventures of James just unfold far too quickly than I can type.

Upstairs, we keep a little black mini fridge, apartment sized. It has come in handy in the past when we had company. Perhaps they wanted to keep ice and bottles of water or cold beer in their room (or whatever snacks they don’t want my children to gobble). All we had to do was sit it in the guest room and plug it in—instant refreshment convenience. I admit that this mini fridge is a purely utilitarian appliance with absolutely no design presence whatsoever. But if you’ve been driving for 13 hours and you don’t want to put on a robe and go downstairs in the middle of the night for a drink, it is a welcome presence in the room. This is the mini fridge that went from dearly cherished domestic device to bitterly despised object of hatred in a matter of days. This is the mini fridge that my daughter and I carried from her bedroom upstairs down into the kitchen. At the time, we had no idea that we were about to plug in our family crucible.

Be sure to check back for Part 2: Space Jam