Picture me standing next to our brand spanking new fridge! Can’t see it? Me neither! It’s not here yet! Recall about 3 weeks ago, when I wrote an Ode to the Washing Machine because our fridge was broken, and I attempted to thwart the washer gods’ vengeance). We figured out it was a $60 part, and waited 4 days for the part to come in. The part came in 5 days, and unfortunately wasn’t the only thing that was fried. A $400 part was also fried, and the repair guy threw in the towel and told us it wasn’t worth fixing as by that point other parts could have fried as well. He recommended a new fridge. Crushing! I know appliances are valuable but never something you enjoy using your money for. I had remodeled the house less than 5 years ago and treated us to a very expensive $3500 fridge. That lasted 5 years. Ouch! Apparently something went bad in the outlet and fried the fridge. Or my personal theory is a large animal crawled up inside the fridge and died, and shorted out the outlet. (The fridge started smelling. Really, really, bad. By the time we had it off for a week, we had to move it outside. This was no musty smell of a fridge that had been closed up and turned off.)

Anyway, we counted our blessings that it is winter and we happen to have a breezeway that is uninsulated. We still hosted 15 people to Thanksgiving dinner. We shopped for a new fridge that weekend and didn’t even complain that it would take 10 days to get here. At least I was getting steps in going all the way across the house to get food! And it was nice and cold! I was rocking this positive attitude!

Yesterday, the long awaited day finally came. I envisioned writing this thankful post about how nice it is to have this convenience again and appreciate it for all it’s worth. Then the Sears guy called. Apparently the guys in Denver didn’t remember to put it on the truck (apparently this happens a lot?) but it would be in NEXT Tuesday! Sure! Because a fridge isn’t really that necessary, right? And Denver’s terribly far away (a whole 2 hr drive). I dejectedly took the news like a sad housewife. Ok, thanks for calling. Luckily my better half reasoned with them and got us a bit of money taken off the price. (Thanks hon!) It’s still going to be another week without the fridge. We’ll survive but it is getting a little old. And take note, this may be the first time in history I am frustrated that it will be warm the next couple days!

Hopefully next week we will be happily dancing in joy at our new fridge, but my take home lessons are: Be thankful for what you have, especially the things you take for granted, be thankful that things could be worse (it could be the middle of the summer), and things that seem terrible sometimes aren’t and there’s really no reason to complain. I’m willing to take this lesson for all of us, if it helps anyone avoid having to learn this lesson through experience. I’m also working on this positive attitude thing, and I know the last 3 weeks would have been slightly miserable for the people around me if I hadn’t.