Let it be clear, I am NOT talking about our fridge behind its back. I'm more of a in-your-face sort of person, so I've already said my piece while standing nose to door with the fridge. We had to function without that glorious piece of machinery for two weeks when we moved into this house, and I don't ever want to pretend I don't need a fridge again. Me without cheese is a bad idea. A bad, bad idea.
In other words, Karma can back off. There's no need to boomerang my way right now.
Mmkay? Mmkay.
The fridge and I got into a tussle of sorts about a week ago. It was one of those days when the Bulldog was attacking the vacuum, a spider had invaded the half bathroom, and Alexis was causing utter and complete destruction. A Calgon sort of day, if you will, which was kind of convenient since the fridge was trying to draw me a bath right in the kitchen.
I don't know about you, but I prefer to take baths in the bathroom. Crazy talk, I know, but the fridge was certain that I wanted a giant puddle in the kitchen. Water was dripping and dripping and dripping from the ice maker, and I had no clue why. At first I thought maybe the freezer door had been left often. Then I wondered if someone had turned up the temperature by accident.
And THAT was when I noticed it. Our fridge has a display that shows the current temperature in both the freezer and the fridge. Instead of showing their usual six degrees and thirty-six degrees, there was gibberish on the display.
Ruh-roh.
Mr. Husband was at work, which THANK GOODNESS. He's the type of person who immediately jumps to the worst case scenario. Tell him you have a headache and he'll wonder if you have a brain tumor. I'm not kidding. At all. So, an error code on the fridge display could only mean one thing in his mind: PANIC! OMG! WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO SPEND THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO FIX THIS!
We paid $900 for the fridge, btw. His mind works that way. Whatever the reasonable worst case scenario is, he doubles it. And then he carries the one and multiples by six and adds two and takes the average of the sum of all multiples of seven.
I land on the exact opposite of the Panic Spectrum. Tell me you have a headache and I'll suggest you close your eyes for a few minutes--it'll go away! Whenever something seems broken, I figure turning it off and back on again will fix it.
So I turned the fridge off. I counted to thirty and turned it back on. Success! The temperatures were displaying again! The freezer was registering at a perfect . . . uh . . . twenty some degrees. The fridge was headed for the fifties.
That explained that, of course. The fridge was leaking water because everything in the freezer was melting. I opened the door and quickly emptied the little bit of ice that hadn't already made itself comfortable on the kitchen floor. As I was doing that, the error code returned to the fridge display. Mocking me. Laughing at me.
I did what any reasonable person in my position would do--I consulted Dr. Google. I suppose some reasonable persons would call their spouses, but I wasn't in the mood for the tumor diagnosis. Even WebMD was less likely to tell me the world was ending that that man was.
Minutes later, I had a possible diagnosis. Either that thing was broken and would cost $75 to fix, or this thing was broken and would cost $400 to fix.
I was firmly on team That Thing. I didn't want to part with $75, but it sounded better than the alternative.
Armed with my information, I finally called Mr. Husband to give him a heads up. There was no sense in calling a repairman at that moment since it was Sunday and I wasn't paying emergency rates. Considering the pitiful amount of food that was in the fridge, it was all good if we waited a day.
He flipped out before I could squeak out the words, "$75 to fix it." Of course. He went into full Panic Mode and I just sort of held the phone away from my head and sang the Jeopardy theme song. He was just about to leave work for the day, so finally I cut the "conversation" (Does it take two people to have a conversation? If so, that did not qualify.) short, grabbed Alexis, and ran away. I figured it would be better if we weren't home when Mr. Husband and the fridge went to war.
I was right. Since Mr. Husband can't take my word for anything in instances like that, I knew he would repeat every step I had already tried, and probably a few more. He just likes to do things the hard way, if you know what I mean.
When Alexis and I returned, it was clear the situation had gotten Very Serious while we were gone. Tools were strewn about, the fridge was pulled out into the middle of the kitchen, and colorful language filled the air.
But the fridge was displaying temperatures instead of error codes.
Mr. Husband had kicked the fridge's ass and was victorious in his mission to fix it without any help at all.
He cleaned all the fans and vents and intakes and blah, blah, blah. Apparently when there is half a cat stuck to them, they stop working so well. And, apparently, instead of just flashing, "CLEAN YOUR DAMN HOUSE, YOU SLOBS," Frigidaire fridges prefer to display fancy error codes that allegedly mean you HAVE to call a repairman.
To review, my jerk fridge likes to cry wolf. My husband also likes to cry wolf. And, yet, somehow they managed to become friends.
And I didn't have to clean up the half cat that was stuck in the vents and fans.
Gratuitous Cute Kid Photo Which Has Nothing To Do With Anything