The thing about fridges...
The thing about fridges is that, of all electrical appliances you have in your home, they’re the most urgent to replace once they break down. Washing machines - there’s the laundromat; irons - looking crumpled might be taken as a fashion statement; electric kettles - you can boil water on the stove until you have a chance to duck out to the shops. But a fridge? The second it dies your food starts to die along with it. And that can end up being a rather a nasty, smelly business. And expensive too.
The thing about fridges is that they tend to die quietly, unobtrusively. You may not even know that they’re dead until you go to pour milk into your coffee and it’s lumpy. Or (if it’s first thing in the morning) you spend valuable waking up time wondering if it’s just you, or does that coffee taste really, really horrible?
The thing about fridges is that when they die, they tend to do it in the early hours of a Friday night/Saturday morning, so you’re left trying to decide whether you can cough up the out-of-business-hours service call fee as well as parts and labour...and wondering if the cost of doing that will be more or less than cutting to the chase and just buying a new fridge. Especially if the fridge in question is 13 years old, hence pre-historic (in fridge terms).
The thing about fridges is they’re not cheap. And they’re not the kind of thing you read about ahead of time just for the fun of it. So trying to quickly a) find out about; and b) compare different models to decide which one might be right for you, and c) find one of those within an acceptable price range, is an exercise in speed knowledge acquisition.
The thing about fridges is that when you do manage to front up to the shop (which, given the 9am - 5:30pm nature of both Saturday and Sunday due to choir commitments meant having to rush in just on closing), they will never have the one that had identified online as being in stock. Instead there’s the effervescent salesman who’s keen to sell you this model, for this price...he has one just like it at home. So do his parents. It’s fabulous. Yes, it’s $200 more than you’d planned to pay. Oh, and you’ll need delivery, and removal of the old fridge. And he highly recommends surge protectors for the power point. (Etcetera, etcetera and so forth).
The thing about fridges is that even when you’ve taken that big deep breath, made that decision, handed over your credit card (tried to work out in your head how many pays it will take to pay it off), even when you think ‘Oh well, that’s done...only four days to wait until it’s delivered’...
...the thing about fridges is that, having done all that, having reluctantly but inevitably decided that there was nothing else for it but to spend money on that rather than on any of the hundred preferred things you could spend money on...
The thing about fridges is that it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll wake the very next morning to find that the stupid old fridge has started working again. Working perfectly. Cold as ice. Just as it should be.
So. What do I do with this thing of a fridge? Do I cancel the new one? (If I can, not sure if that’s possible at this stage.) Or do I take this as a Sign? Would I be worrying for evermore that that first sip of coffee in the morning would be sublime, or...the polar-opposite?
The thing about fridges is that they tend to die quietly, unobtrusively. You may not even know that they’re dead until you go to pour milk into your coffee and it’s lumpy. Or (if it’s first thing in the morning) you spend valuable waking up time wondering if it’s just you, or does that coffee taste really, really horrible?
The thing about fridges is that when they die, they tend to do it in the early hours of a Friday night/Saturday morning, so you’re left trying to decide whether you can cough up the out-of-business-hours service call fee as well as parts and labour...and wondering if the cost of doing that will be more or less than cutting to the chase and just buying a new fridge. Especially if the fridge in question is 13 years old, hence pre-historic (in fridge terms).
The thing about fridges is they’re not cheap. And they’re not the kind of thing you read about ahead of time just for the fun of it. So trying to quickly a) find out about; and b) compare different models to decide which one might be right for you, and c) find one of those within an acceptable price range, is an exercise in speed knowledge acquisition.
The thing about fridges is that when you do manage to front up to the shop (which, given the 9am - 5:30pm nature of both Saturday and Sunday due to choir commitments meant having to rush in just on closing), they will never have the one that had identified online as being in stock. Instead there’s the effervescent salesman who’s keen to sell you this model, for this price...he has one just like it at home. So do his parents. It’s fabulous. Yes, it’s $200 more than you’d planned to pay. Oh, and you’ll need delivery, and removal of the old fridge. And he highly recommends surge protectors for the power point. (Etcetera, etcetera and so forth).
The thing about fridges is that even when you’ve taken that big deep breath, made that decision, handed over your credit card (tried to work out in your head how many pays it will take to pay it off), even when you think ‘Oh well, that’s done...only four days to wait until it’s delivered’...
...the thing about fridges is that, having done all that, having reluctantly but inevitably decided that there was nothing else for it but to spend money on that rather than on any of the hundred preferred things you could spend money on...
The thing about fridges is that it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll wake the very next morning to find that the stupid old fridge has started working again. Working perfectly. Cold as ice. Just as it should be.
So. What do I do with this thing of a fridge? Do I cancel the new one? (If I can, not sure if that’s possible at this stage.) Or do I take this as a Sign? Would I be worrying for evermore that that first sip of coffee in the morning would be sublime, or...the polar-opposite?