Dead meat

It's been a week of frustration as we tried and tried to save our dying refrigerator.
At first, it looked hopeful although expensive.
The repair guy thought he could swap out the compressor in our 8-year-old Maytag machine and keep it running for another decade or at least a year.
He sent for one from Las Vegas and promised to put in in right away.
That meant we had to store our meat in a neighbor's freezer and limp along with a barely working fridge for the weekend.
We bought lots of ice and changed it out daily.
But after the new $400 compressor came in and was put in, things did not improve.
The ice cubes were water and the frozen juices were soggy in their cardboard containers.
We reported the bad news and the repair guy came back.
He wondered if the relay thingy was bad and replaced it with an industrial strength kind.
That heated things up, literally.
The freezer unit was now hot to the touch.
Inside the fridge, warm air was blowing through.
I moved all the meat out again and bought more ice.
Now, two more days later, I'm tossing all my meat.
We fired the repair guy and called R.C. Willey who kindly brought us a brand-new refrigerator for a mere $700.
It isn't as fancy as the one we lost.
It doesn't have all the removable shelving and the little light in the freezer but it freezes and it keeps things cold.
For me that's good enough.
And I'm resigned to throwing out approximately $100 worth of once-fresh meat. (It's especially hard now that it's refrozen and looks just fine.)
I've tried to tell myself it didn't get that warm or that thawed.
On the other hand, I don't want me, my husband or anybody I invited to dinner to be the dead meat in this story.