On Wednesday, I had to throw the last third of a trifle away as it had gone off in the bottom of the fridge – usually the coldest part of the fridge apart from the door. I couldn’t understand why it had gone off so quickly and put it down to a sloppy topping or perhaps the milk.
On Thursday, I had to throw a pint and a half of milk away because that too had gone off, this time in the bottom of the fridge door – usually the absolute coldest part of the fridge.
On Friday, another pint of milk had gone off and I was putting 4 new pints in the fridge that the milkman had delivered only that morning, at about 4am that morning. They were icy cold but the bottles in the door of the fridge felt warm. I didn’t want 4 new pints of milk going down the drain.
Puzzled, I closed the door, and just as I did so I thought I felt a draft of warm air coming from the fridge…And so I investigated further. Our fridge is a freestanding larder-style fridge-freezer with the fridge at the top and the freezer at the bottom, both parts the same size as a full-sized under-counter fridge. I checked the freezer, and that was working fine. But the bottom of the fridge as I closed the freezer door felt warm, and when I felt it further, it was actually red hot.
The base of the fridge was red-hot and the part where the door fit was the hottest, thus warming everything in the fridge door as well. And that, my friends, is why the milk was going off in the fridge. It was being cooked!
What a shame this couldn’t have happened in a few weeks’ time. No, it had to happen now before we even know what kind of fridge or freezer we’d like in the new house. I really, really didn’t want to spend money on a fridge that might be useless at the new place, although there’s always the garage if it doesn’t fit in the kitchen. At a push. Like we can afford to buy another fridge then too…(not!)
Fortunately, there was another freestanding larder-type fridge-freezer in this house when we moved in, but we put that in the garage and put ours in the kitchen. Ours had been stored for the previous 2 years as the last house had a built-in fridge-freezer and we were delighted to get it out of mothballs. We’ve been using it for almost 4 years, so I suppose that isn’t bad when it was in storage for 2 years. Before then we’d used it for at least another 2 years at a previous house.
But that meant that when the poet came home from work on Friday, instead of going out to do the shopping, I’d be helping him swap the fridges around as well as the contents from the one going in the garage. I’d have to do the shopping on Saturday instead.
I moved all of the milk bottles onto the coldest shelf in the fridge, sent him a quick text message warning him, then made my first dirty cuppa of the day. I couldn’t enjoy it in peace, though, because the puppy’s belly was gurgling, he refused to eat his breakfast, and he kept asking to go out. Of course, I had to keep letting him out as well, I mean, belly? Gurgling? At least he was asking to go out.
My first cuppa went cold and I made another while I wrote my morning pages. I set the timer for 15 minutes, chose a prompt from one of the books of writing ideas, and started to brainstorm a short story. The puppy stayed quiet until the last 2 minutes and then he wanted out again. I’d managed just under 300 words, though, so that was good enough. But my second cuppa also went cold.
I got dressed but the puppy started to nag me to go for his walk. He hadn’t had any breakfast, his belly was still gurgling, and he was asking to go for a walk. As he’s still learning, I was more than happy that he was actually asking to go for a walk. So off we went on a route I think will form the basis of our permanent route for as long as we’re still here. We’ll stick to this one for a few days and then I’ll add the final bit of circuit to take us up to the full 30 minutes.
He was very good, his best behaved walk yet. And when we got in he finally had his breakfast and I finally got to have my quiet reading hour. Then I made a fresh cup of tea, noting the milk was still icy cold this time (yay!), and I headed to my desk, where the first thing I did was start today’s blog post. And reader, the tea didn’t last long enough to go cold this time.
I managed some work when we got in. I did my weekly finances, which I hadn’t done since 20 Feb, so there were a few weeks to catch up on there. I did my weekly backup. And I did some of the editing. But I also played with the dog in the garden and I did some more washing.
When the poet got home, he emptied the garage fridge, gave it a clean, and I helped him bring it into the house. Then I gave it a clean inside and emptied the house fridge. We got the garage fridge in place first, and I filled that back up. Then we manoeuvred the house fridge into the garage. There were boxes and boxes of frozen blackberries from last summer’s harvest, so I brought those in and put them back in the now-house fridge. And to think, I almost bought blackberries last weekend to go in a crumble…
The dog didn’t like being shut away while we had an outside door open, so in between cleaning and filling the now-house fridge, I had to keep checking on him as well. Fridges both in place, I hung up a wash load on the clothes horse and came back to work, only to discover it was way past my home time!
So I closed everything down for the weekend and called it a day.
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