Refrigerator Saga

March 2006 – We buy a fridge. We are happy. It’s shiny. I give it cheese and sweet tea and I put my Café Du Monde magnet and pictures of the children on the front.

One year later – Fridge makes a horrible noise. It is obviously in some sort of horrific pain. We have the fridge repaired under warranty. Something about the motor? I don’t know, but it runs again and we didn’t have to pay anything. All is well.

July 6, 2009 – The fridge decides not to work. I try to think about what I could have done to cause this defiant behavior, but I think it’s not my fault. It’s 3 years old. I know how 3 year olds act. Maybe that’s it.

Day 1 – I call Samsung. They ask me lots of questions and take all my information. They tell me that a repair person will contact me within 24 hours. I wait.

Day 2 – Nobody calls.

Day 3 – I call Samsung again and explain that I have yet to be contacted by the repairman. Guess what they said? They wanted to know if I had called the repairman myself. I said, “No, I didn’t, because you told me the repairman would contact me.” They said, “Oh no, you need to contact THEM.” I said, “Then WHY did you tell me to wait for 24 hours on a call from somebody that I was supposed to be contacting and then not even bother to tell me who to contact?” They really just mumbled some crap right here but long story short, she gave me a number to call for the local repair company that we were to use. I call. I get a machine. I leave a message. I wait.

Day 4 – Nobody calls me back. So I call again and finally get a person on the phone. I make an appointment for someone to come out that afternoon. Said repairman arrives, takes a look and says “Hey! This motor has no fan!” We are all amazed that it has run 2 years without one. He orders a part and vows to be back tomorrow.

Let me stop here to point out how incredulous the guy was that it had been running for two years without a fan. He was so incredulous, in fact, that at one point I did feel the need to reassure him that I had never, no never, pulled the fridge from the wall and removed the fan for any reason. I wonder if it’s an important enough miracle that we should contact some religious faction, but somehow I sort of doubt it. It did, after all, eventually stop working. The real miracle would be if it was STILL going. But, I digress.

Day 5 – Repair guy replaces motor and fan but apparently is missing a tiny part he needs to complete the job. He leaves the house to get it and actually returns by 5:00 to finish the job. He says he is all done and it should be cold pretty soon. We pay him $200. By the time we go to bed, our fridge is not cold…

Day 6 – Not cold. But it’s Saturday.

Day 7 – Not cold. But it’s Sunday.

Day 8 – Called the guy to come back and try again. He says he’ll order a compressor.

Day 11 – Guy comes to weld in the compressor but runs out of something he needs to finish the job. Vows to return first thing in the morning.

Day 12 – Guy arrives around 2:30 in the afternoon and finishes welding in the compressor. He hangs around in the kitchen for a long, long time before he sheepishly calls for me to come talk to him. He pronounces the refrigerator “condemned”. Condemned to what, I do not know. Hell maybe? A life of hard labor in a work camp? At any rate, he says he will start the paperwork to begin the process of getting a new replacement fridge. We are still under warranty. I wait.

Day 13 through Day 22 - These days are not worth talking about, really. There was a lot of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. There were many bags of ice purchased and many phone calls made. There was lamenting over lack of cheese and cold tea. There was gaining of weight due to take out food and the feeling of camping out in a perfectly good house.

Day 23 – We are actually able to ORDER the new fridge. It is NOT the fridge I wanted because the one I wanted will not fit in my teensy-tiny kitchen. At this point, I truly don’t see renovation as an option. That’s okay. My second choice in black will be fine. Wait….are you saying I can’t have this black one delivered until Day 43? FORTY-THREE? (Aug 17). So, you say I can have the same one in white delivered on Day 27? I’ll take it.

I’ll let you know on Saturday whether we have a fridge and whether I am able to give it sweet tea and cheese and place my Café Du Monde magnet and the pictures of my children on the front. (because I know you care)

What's cooler than bein' cool? ICE COLD

I've been without a refrigerator since Monday morning. I can't begin to count the bags of ice we have purchased since that time. I have now decided that it's TOO MUCH trouble trying to save the contents of the fridge in ice chests and I intend to take it all to my mama. My kids seem to be living over there with their cousins anyway, so their food may as well live there too. The thing I miss most is my tea pitcher. I'm so used to drinking cold tea all day long. I guess I could make a pitcher and stick it down in the ice chest with the cheese and the mayo, but when I pull it out, it'll be all drippy and gross and there'll be a mess to clean up every time I get thirsty. I'd rather whine about not having any tea.


I've been without it before. During hurricane season, we inevitably have to live without a fridge for a bit, but it's very sunny outside right now and it seems so wrong. It's like everything's been put on hold in what I feel is such an unnecessary way. And dealing with Samsung (I KNOW...who knew Samsung made refrigerators?? That was the FIRST mistake I guess) and the repairman has been nigh unto murder provoking. I'm trying VERY hard to talk nice to people, but my patience is wearing thin.

I had a friend tell me to put the fridge under my pillow tonight and the refrigerator fairy would bring me a new one in the morning. I'm very excited about the possibilities of that, but I think it would just be easier to take my pillow to the kitchen and camp out on top of the fridge instead of trying to get the fridge into the bed. I wonder if that would work just as well. Something tells me that it will.

Way too hard

Tonight I got a call from my friend, Coco. She was letting me know that "60 minutes" was on and although it was a rerun, Bon Jovi was the featured subject. She tells me this because she cares. So I go to the den, so unassuming and naive, to turn on the TV to CBS, which should be channel 5 if I remember my days of watching "Survivor" correctly. I turn the TV on and there I find only static. I turn to channel 5 and there is still static. I remember that we are now digital and make sure that crazy box on the top of the TV is showing a green light instead of a red. It is green, but there is still static. My first instinct is to call one of the kids for help, but alas, they aren't home. In fact, they won't be home until Tuesday. Dirty Larry is off running an errand. I gather up all the remote controls that I can find, hoping that one of them will blink something at me that seems familiar or maybe, if they are worth anything at all, they will just start speaking and tell me how the heck to watch Bon Jovi. I start pushing buttons willy-nilly but only have luck in making the static much louder.

Because God is good to me, even when I don't deserve it, Dirty Larry walked in the door right at the moment I was about to commit a crime against an electronic device. He very calmly did some stuff....I don't know what (later he admitted to me that it was what Litkia had taught him to do), but it worked and I was able to bask in the glow of the TV while Jon Bon Jovi was speaking such nice words and looking so pretty.

I hate TV. And, I hate it even worse now that it's digital. What a waste of time and electricity. Don't people know about Netflix and Facebook? Now THOSE are worthwhile time wasters....sheesh.

Things I found..PLUS...visual aides

I'm very intrigued because I found this unidentified object on the floor in the hallway. It's very hard plastic and has a hole in it lengthwise, all the way to the center on either side, but not all the way through. Nobody in the house recognizes it or claims it. I don't really think it was planted by aliens for purposes of spying, and I don't think it has any value....I think it's possibly just a piece of trash. But, for some reason, I can't bring myself to throw it away. It's driving me nuts.



I also found THIS thing. Only THIS thing was outside. I knew IMMEDIATELY what it was and it was NOT mine so I told it to go away.
I found this bag of homegrown tomatoes and peppers on my mama's kitchen counter. They are now on MY kitchen counter. Look at those little yellow ones...those are my favorite.


I found these impatiens at a local flower seller. She didn't take debit cards and I didn't have any cash with me. She told me to take them and pay her back another time. I couldn't believe it. Do people DO that anymore? It felt a lot like stealing but she was so insistent. Since I had already stolen my mama's tomatoes, I figured I was already in trouble so I took her up on her offer. I'm leaving to pay her now, but...


....I need to find some money first.

I just got a call...

My children left this afternoon to go to Waterville in Gulf Shores, AL with the youth group at church. Litkia is new to the group and Pateriko is an old hand. They both seemed pretty excited when I dropped them off, though. My instructions were that they were to be picked up at 9:30 this evening, but at about 7:30, I got a phone call. It was Pateriko saying that they left earlier than they planned and that I should come get him NOW. I said...."NOW? As in right this second?" He said yes, they were on their way and almost home. I told him no problem, and hung up. Then the phone rang again. This time it was Litkia. "Hey mama! We left early, so come get us at 8:15!" I said "8:15? But Pateriko said to come right now!" "No, they said come at 8:15, here's Pateriko..." She hands the phone to Pateriko but for some reason, the call ends before he gets on the line. At this point, I have no idea which one to believe. All I know is that I'm not going over there and sitting in that parking lot for 45 minutes. The phone rings again. It was Pateriko, again. "Sorry for hanging up on you mama, I didn't know you were still on the phone." "That's okay, but Litkia said to come at 8:15. That's 45 minutes from now! Where are you?" Suffice it to say he has no idea where he is and neither do any of the other teen-type people on the van. I'm not going up there until 8:15 and I'd like to see somebody try to make me. I'm almost thinking that life was easier when I was growing up and you couldn't call your mama until you got home because there was no such thing as a cell phone. It never hurt us to sit and wait for our parents to come pick us up. My kids are spoiled. I should make them sit there and suffer for 8 whole minutes (which is about how long it will take for me to get there from my driveway). Then when I pick them up I'll tell them about how things used to be when I was kid and bore them out of their minds with my stories of the horrors of having to pick up the phone with NO IDEA who might be on the other end because caller ID was a thing of the future or how if you wanted to call your friend you had to stick your finger in a hole and DIAL the number, and if it was a number with lots of 7's, 8's, 9's or 0's, you could be an old person by the time you got done. They just don't know how good they have it.

I know you're sick of hearing this - don't even read it

Hardly a day goes by that I don't have to type about someone who has just had bypass surgery. I think it's a crying shame that my job forces me to relive the death of my father over and over and over again. Some of these patients seem to be doing well, and others, not so much.

Tonight, once again, I find myself back in the hospital, sitting in fear and watching the nurse come into the waiting area, shaking her head, telling us she doesn't think he's going to make it. I'm watching my mother get on her knees in front of the chair she's sitting in and begin to pray even more earnestly, as if that was even possible. I'm exchanging a glance with Carol Baby, my mouth wide open, shocked and wondering how this could be happening and she mouthing words silently and privately to me that I will never forget as long as I live. I'm walking back to where he is laying and I'm standing and watching the nurse sew up his chest as I stand there in disbelief, looking back and forth at my sisters, willing it to be some horrible nightmare that I will wake up from. I'm standing there looking at my Mom who asks us to leave her alone with him and I'm stalking out of there so numb and angry and wondering why in the world they let us back there before they were done sewing him up. I'm sitting at the table with my family when mama asks us, "what do we do now?" and I have no idea what to answer. And although I honestly do feel better about the whole situation, my job really and truly sucks.

Fool me once...shame on me...

I don't like cantaloupe. I just don't. I like the color and the smell and I like how it looks on a plate straight from the cold fridge, but when I put it in my mouth I am surprised each and every time that I just do NOT like it. I think I probably should. Oh! And what about the dessert bar at a Chinese restaurant? It all looks pretty nice, but seriously...none of that stuff is worth putting in your mouth.

And then there's mustard potato salad. I assume that I don't like it, but when Dirty Larry buys it and then offers me a bite, I decide that I do like it after all. I would NEVER buy mustard potato salad on purpose. My brain immediately tells me no. But like I said, my tongue inevitably decides yes.



Here's the part that I just don't get. Why do I have to go through that process of convincing myself EVERY STINKIN' TIME it happens? It's like a brand new thing I've never experienced, even though I've experienced it numerous times in the past. It's a new, brilliant revelation each and every time. You know, it's kind of like childbirth. If a woman who gives birth is willing to go through that process YET again, it's more than likely because she's totally forgotten what happened the first time around.

I think since this is MY blog and I get to make up the rules here, I'm okay with comparing childbirth to the taste of a stale fortune cookie. And yes, I do eat those things even though the majority of the population apparently does not. You know why? Because EVERY TIME I get one, I think...it's a cookie! I'm bound to like it.

Ooow...my noggin!

My boy, Keifer Sutherland, who is on probation, (probably for killing somebody), has now gone off and head-butted a guy and he's gonna be in big trouble. Now, my question is...why, why, why in the world would a person make Jack Bauer mad enough to cause him to want to head-butt them? Does this person never watch television? I KNOW for sure why he's such a bitter, frightening man. His parents named him Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland. That's plenty enough to make you want to murder people.

The saddest part is that this unfortunate head-butting event happened so close to Jack Bauer appreciation day which falls on May 9th. Please my friends, let's think about our amazing friend, Jack, together, one last time before they cart him off to jail.

You know it really doesn't matter. He'll escape.

Wanted...Dead or Alive

What a smashing weekend my blog friends. My high school buddy and I made a trip to New Orleans to attend the fabulous Jazz Fest and see my old flame Jon Bon Jovi. I thought I'd go over some of the highlights for you. The big let down for the weekend was that my back stage passes did NOT make it through the mail in time and I was subjected to the crowds like everyone else. Jon was singing to me, but I just couldn't get close enough to the stage to talk to him and he was pretty much brokenhearted.

Anyway, we arrived Saturday morning and joy of joys they let us in the hotel BEFORE 12:00 when the check in time wasn't until 3:00. It was the first weekend miracle and was on the list of weekend miracles at #3. We immediately set out for the french quarter to find food. After a bit of walking, we ended up at the Palace Cafe, where you have 7 waiters that all love you very much and only have your happiness in mind. Then we tried to determine how to get to Jazz Fest without getting lost or breaking the bank. We ended up on a bus and paid the nice driver $1.25 for the lift. When the bus stopped, we actually had no idea where we were but we acted very cool and just followed the crowd. That many people couldn't all be wrong at the same time. Sure enough, after a few blocks of walking, they led us to the fairgrounds where we began our next adventure, which was trying to figure out where a person might find the Gospel Tent (Aaron Neville) or the Lagniappe Stage (Bobby Lounge). We walked and we walked and we walked some more. Luckily, it wasn't terribly hot and I'm in smashing shape (shut up). The music was great, the company was pleasant and the people watching opportunities were amazing. Who knew there were so many people who thought those long spaghetti strap dresses looked good enough on them to wear out in public! After we had our fill of music, we found ourselves back on a bus, listening to the interesting conversations around us, ready to begin our search for dinner. We found ourselves back in the quarter and visited the Gumbo Shop, where we sat under the stars while we ate okra gumbo and red beans and rice, and rested our tired feet.

The next morning, we planned to meet our old pal Gnutcase at Cafe Du Monde for the obligatory french donut and got the bright idea to catch a street car to our destination. I hopped on one and my friend was right behind me. Sadly the mean driver person told her she couldn't have her coffee, so she hopped back off to discard her cup. In the meantime, mean driver lady tried to shut the danged door on me. It was unnecessary to say the least. The picture you see here is the picture I took while we were still both pretty happy about our TROLLEY ride. I'm calling it that because we were specifically told NOT to call it a trolley, but I'm a little disgruntled, so....anyway, we finally were both seated and on our way, when suddenly out of the blue, the street car (trolley) turned a corner and started going in a direction that we did NOT want to go. Now we hated the mean driver person even more. Eventually we did disembark, but it was WAY FAR AWAY from where we needed to be, so we walked and walked and walked some more. Miracle #2 is that I didn't maim/dismember that mean driver person. We did finally find Gnut and eat our beignet and we sat and watched the river for a bit and once again rested our sad, tired feet. Gnut was kind enough to drive us back to the jeep for our departure out of the city. I do want it said that my Tom Tom tried to take us everywhere BUT Interstate 10 on the way home. I have no idea why, but we were smart enough to ignore that British accented voice and got the heck out of Dodge without her help at all.

That leads us to miracle #1, which is that I STILL woke up this morning and ran two miles on aching legs. You are proud. Don't pretend not to be.

You guys come next time...was fun!

*pats herself on the back*

Today, I am proud of me. In fact, I've been proud of me for quite a while now, but today, especially, I'm impressed with myself. Let's go back over the years of this blog and try to remember that I am mostly known as a sedentary soul. My job offers me no prospects for moving around. I sit at this computer all day and type away with no office mates or lunch buddies. I just sit. But, back in September, I joined that gym, remember? That moment has changed my way of thinking about some things. Not only have I dropped some weight, and changed my eating habits a little, I have now convinced myself that I can run. Well....I can run on the treadmill at least, but I promise you I'm thinking further into the future and it really does involve being outside. So what is my grand accomplishment? I ran 2.25 miles today without stopping. It took me 30 minutes at a very steady and obviously slow pace, but I did it. And, on top of that, I feel confident that I can do it tomorrow and the next day and again and again. So I will. And maybe, just maybe, one day I'll go faster or farther, but for today....just look at what I did!