The puddlement

The fridge and backups

Somehow I foolishly expect appliances and techie devices to live forever.
It always surprises me when they wear out, break down or simply stop working. I somehow expect more from machines with wires and chrome.
So when we came home from the movie Friday to find a puddle of water beneath the fridge door, I was dismayed.
I was also a little panicked because it was the weekend, everything would be closing or closed, and everybody who could possibly help us would soon be home in bed.
I tried hard to believe that maybe we'd just left the door ajar or maybe overfilled the freezer so it couldn't circulate properly.
I mopped up and waited only to find water drip-drip-dripping in a continous stream.
The freezer definitely had a problem though I couldn't for the life of me figure out how water was coming from the door.
I check the ice cream I'd just bought and it literally sloshed in the box.
So we started bailing, tossing what was old, liquified and not worth saving like a bag of popsicle juice.
We put all the newly purchased 2-packs of chicken and the pork roasts and bacon and fishsticks into a picnic cooler.
We put the cans of juice and the mushy frozen vegetables in another.
I called a repair service at 7:30 a.m. and left a tearful message.
Still hoping for the best, we vacuumed the back of the fridge, thought positive, maybe that would fix it.
Fortunately the repair guy picked up his voicemail and came out around noon, cluck-clucking as he checked things out.
The good news was he knew what was wrong. The bad news was it was the compressor and he couldn't get the one he wanted until Monday which meant he couldn't put things right until Tuesday.
Meanwhile I had all this frozen and semi-frozen stuff melting at my feet.
I emailed ward members who offered freezer and fridge space.
We bought ice to put in the freezer area so cold air would keep blowing into the fridge area.
I crossed my fingers harder.
It's not a biggie kind of crisis. We can eat other places and buy new food. I know we can even repair the bank account but I keep looking at this pretty, black fridge we bought new only eight years ago.
How can it be broken? It still looks new.