So, our fridge died.

To tell the truth, I should have seen it coming. It’d been making death-throttle sounds for a few months now. It was only five years old, though, and I was in denial. I kept telling myself that it was only the ice maker acting flaky. I’d give it a good kick when I walked by and the buzzing-grinding noise would stop for a few hours and I’d think, “See? No big deal.”

But sadly, it turned out to be a big deal.

On Friday morning I noticed that items in the freezer were frosty and soggy. We quickly moved all the freezer items to our wee little secondary freezer in the basement. Within an hour or so, though, we realized that the fridge was slowly losing its cool as well. Happily, it’s gotten a lot colder here in Ottawa — Saturday’s high was only 4 degrees — so the essentials went in a cooler outside.

Non-essentials, meanwhile, went down the drain and into the recycling. See, FameThrowa, there’s a positive side to it all — I got rid of all the expired salad dressings! Also getting tossed: that bottle of sundried tomatoes I used once two years ago; that jar of peach jam that I swear moved into this house with us five years ago; and that bottle of mayonnaise that did not have an expiry date on it, so I kept convincing myself that that meant that it would never expire. No?

Anyway, the fridge is a lot cleaner. But also a lot warmer.

You know what’s extra bitter-making? Just a month ago I was defrosting our little freezer in the basement. I carefully moved all the food outside (this was back when it was still well below zero outside) and took a day to melt all the ice build up. Then I carefully reloaded the freezer, and forgot to plug it back in.

STUPIDO.

So the next morning, I went to get something from the freezer and everything was soggy and soft, and after that little incident, we had to throw away tons and tons of very expensive meat and other frozen foods, which GACK, totally sucked.

So having to wash a whole fridge’s worth of fine sauces and leftovers down the drain really, really sucked.

Anyway, we made an emergency call to some very nice repair people (Action Repair Services, if you’re ever in need). They rushed out and replaced a small part for a small amount of money and we were overjoyed. They said that in 95% of cases, that would do it, but in about 5% of cases, the real problem was the compressor, so we should keep an eye on it for a few days.

Then two hours later, as I was reloading the fridge, it suddenly and completely CHA-CHUNK died. Blown compressor.

To the coolers, gentlemen! To the coolers!

As I write this – Monday evening – our friends at Action have come and gone (I’m planning on having them to Christmas dinner, we’re best buddies now) and have completed a second repair. This one was bigger and much more expensive, yet still less than a new fridge so we are grateful.

I’m not allowed to touch the fridge. Between the freezer incident, and the fridge, and me breaking the camera the very first hour on our first day at Disney (conveniently left that little nugget out of my glowing reviews of Disney, didn’t I?), and several other recent breakages and damages and injuries, I am CUT OFF. Sir Monkeypants says I’m not to touch anything else expensive in the house, EVER.

Of course, this means he will have to take over the laundry. And loading of the dishwasher. And the cooking. That vacuum was pretty pricey, too.

(I suspect a very quick re-evaluation of his plan. At least until the fridge starts making that CHA-CHUNK noise again.)