Case of the Reluctant Refrigerator or "Waiting for Godot" Redux

VLADIMIR:

Ah Gogo, don't go on like that. Tomorrow everything will be better.

ESTRAGON:

How do you make that out?

VLADIMIR:

Did you not hear what the child said?

ESTRAGON:

No.

VLADIMIR:

He said that Godot was sure to come tomorrow. (Pause.) What do you say to that?

ESTRAGON:

Then all we have to do is to wait on here.

                From Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett


We moved to our present home many years ago on a shoestring with two young girls and a baby boy.  The home was roomy, with a nice sized yard and a huge downstairs family room, making it ideal for people with children. The size and the affordable price came with some sacrifices. Namely accepting that everything wasn't in tiptop shape and beautiful.


The kitchen may have been the most ugly. It was old. The stove was gas and had open flame burners on top of somewhat dubious safety. There was a built-in wall oven, also gas, that worked for perhaps one week after we moved in. There was no dishwasher and a small sink, with a garbage disposal, which quit perhaps a month after the wall oven. The lights were ugly, especially the bizarre yellow and brown chandelier over the eat-in corner. The side walls were covered with a greenish tile and the cabinets were a very heavy dark brown wood, which was beginning to separate.


But it was what we could afford and so we lived with it for a decade and a half. In that time those old heavy cabinet doors, repainted many times and a lighter shade,  began to fall off. We would screw them back up, but their weight and the old splitting wood reached a point where nothing would keep some in place. By the mid-1990s we were cooking in a kitchen Ghetto. Even the refrigerator we had hauled with us from hear and there over the years had lost a handle and looked defeated.


Then the gas range became more erratic and we began to fear either an explosion or dying in our sleep from leaking gas fumes. We could live in this mess no longer. It was time to tear out and rebuild and so I borrowed from my 401K (something that would have repercussions a few years down the road, but that is a tale for another time) and we ordered up a new kitchen.

And so they came and ripped away and all the hanging doors, non-working or dying appliances and threatening ranges were gone. That old gas oven sits forlornly in the rumble waiting to be toted away to the gas range happy baking ground with the old non-working garbage disposal atop it.


Soon the transformation took place.

This was not without hitches, of course, one being a fowl-up on the backsplash for the counters. Somehow it got lost in translation and thus the wallpaper. Eventually the wallpaper was peeled away and the Little Woman got out her tools and tiled the back wall behind the counters. 

Everything was new. We replaced the old gas range and wall oven with an electric range and built-in microwave. We installed a dishwasher and a working garbage disposal. We even got a new refrigerator.


All back in the mid-1990s.

Several months ago our new-now-old refrigerator began to do an odd thing. Water began to puddle on the bottom shelf and in the meat drawer. Just a bit of moisture at first, but over time the water grew deeper and more frequent and we had to be constantly emptying the meat drawer into the sink. I even put in racks on the bottom shelf to keep things above the rising tide. Very annoying and certainly a possible health hazard.


There was also the knowledge that whatever was going wrong, this fridge could stop fridging at anytime. And thus I set out one day to surprise the Little Woman by buying a new refrigerator.


Off I went to a very famous big box store that use to have two names but now goes by only one. It has existed for a long time and was once very famous for catalogues. It was having a refrigerator sale. They had many, many brands and units on display, all with good markdowns.


I had to eliminate many from possibility because of size. We have two cabinets above the space where the unit must go, so this limits the height to less than 68 inches. Not at, but less than 68 inches, and most of the refrigerators I examined were at or above that height.


I also wanted something a bit different from what we had always had, that is a white or almond unit with two big handles on the front. I finally settled on a right sized, black refrigerator and summoned forth a salesman named Babu. 


Babu clicked all the information into the register and then he made that familiar "Hmmm" sound. Hmmm sounds when you are purchasing something are never a good thing.


"Ah," he says, "this particular model is out of stock. Is it an emergency?"


No, it isn't an emergency since it was more of a whim and spur-of-the-moment to come here, but who knows, next week it could be.


"It must be ordered," he says. "Can you wait perhaps 15 days to three weeks for delivery."


"Sure," I say. This is all happening on July 8.


So I buy the black refrigerator and pay for it on a credit card, we shake hands and everybody is happy.  I go home and print a picture of the new black refrigerator off the Web and then I show and tell my wife and now my wife is also happy. Three weeks is not so long to wait. There is a number to check at what time they will show up at the home that you can call the night before delivery. You can also call to see when delivery is scheduled, nice little convenience that.


And so we go on with our lives, dealing with all the other problems that have assaulted us this summer, the leaking faucets and the car inspection and other things I will someday tell you. The three weeks fly by. It is sometime around that fifteenth day and I decided I should call that number and see when delivery is scheduled.


It is all automated. It almost sounds like a real human woman talking to you, but it isn't, but it knows what I want as soon as it answers and says I have a refrigerator scheduled for delivery on August 2.


So okay, that is more like 25 days after I purchased this thing, not 15 or even three weeks. But close enough and I will call Sunday evening next week to get a time frame for the Monday delivery.


We wait out the next week and I come home from work on Friday and there is a message that the store delivery service had called. I call them back and a lady answers, not a mechanized voice, but a real woman with a heavy accent very hard to comprehend compared to the nice clear automated voice. 


"You have a refrigerator scheduled for delivery," she says (I think that was what she said) after I explain I am calling regarding a message, "for August 5," she continues.


What? August 5, I thought it was coming August 2.


"No, no, August 5. You call night before get exact time window. Thank you for shopping..."


Oh well, what the heck. It's only an extra three days. Maybe this is better. I work on Monday, August 2, but I am off on the fifth, so I'll be home for sure when they come. The Little Woman likes it if I can be there for these things even though she is real good of handling such matters.  It just makes her more comfortable.


I do not call on Wednesday evening, I do not pass go, I do not collect $200 dollars, I go straight to jail.


I am up bright and early, as usual, on Thursday morning August 5. I have no idea when they will deliver the refrigerator, but I am not going to wait until the last minute.  The Little Woman had already cleaned most of food from it and we had been eating out almost every night this week rather than buy new groceries until after the new unit arrives.


Still there is stuff remaining.  I carry the frozen items downstairs and push them in our freezer, which is getting pretty much full.


I come back and now I take the milk, eggs, butter, a dozen or so yogurt containers, some cheese and a couple other things and ram these in the small fridge in the computer room. This little fridge is actually my sons and we use it for our personal beverages. He has some beer and soda in it and I have my own soda, chocolate milk, iced tea, water and orange juice there. There isn't much room, but I get the essentials from the kitchen in there as well. Fortunately neither my son or I had stocked up on our drinks lately.


I now remove the kitchen table to allow more room for the delivery guys to maneuver. I take out about a dozen wine and other beverage bottles from the fridge and set them aside on a bench. Now I go out to the shed and get a large plastic tub to put all the condiments from the door shelves in and as I begin this process the phone rings.


It is about 7:o0 in the morning.  I look on the Caller ID and it is the store. Perhaps the refrigerator is this very moment a few miles away and they will be here by 8:00.


I answer the phone and now I am speaking to Anna or something like that, who is another real woman with another real heavy accent and it ain't a Boston accent and it ain't a Georgia drawl and it ain't even a Tennessee twang.  It ain't the King's English either and she is saying something about there was a delay problem with the manufacturer, but the manufacturer does have a refrigerator in their warehouse with my name on it and it will be delivered August 14.


"You call night before, get time window. Thank you for shopping..."


I didn't do well in math in high school, I admit. But I was an accountant for several years. I think I can add and subtract. Tell me what you get, but I get something more than 15 days between July 8 and August 14.


I'm glad they called to tell me. At least I hadn't gotten all the condiments out of the old refrigerator.


I spend the next half hour reversing all I did. All the wine bottles and such, back on their shelf. The milk and eggs and cheese and yogurt back from the computer room. The ice cream back up from the downstairs freezer. The plastic tub back in the storage shed. The kitchen table back where it belongs. The new refrigerator somewhere in limbo.


Now we must wait another 9 days.


Waiting for Frigdot.

ESTRAGON:

Then all we have to do is to wait on here.

VLADIMIR:

Are you mad? We must take cover. (He takes Estragon by the arm.) Come on.

He draws Estragon after him. Estragon yields, then resists. They halt.

ESTRAGON:

(looking at the tree). Pity we haven't got a bit of rope.

VLADIMIR:

Come on. It's cold.

He draws Estragon after him. As before.

ESTRAGON:

Remind me to bring a bit of rope tomorrow.

On Friday the Thirteenth (how is that for foreboding) I again call that number and get the mechanical woman with the gentle voice and that gentle voice says, "You have a refrigerator scheduled for delivery between 4:45 and 6:45 tomorrow..."

"The sun'll come out

Tomorrow 

So ya gotta hang on 

'Til tomorrow 

Come what may 

Tomorrow! Tomorrow! "

Maybe.


I mean, would you trust it to happen at this point?


I am up bright and early Saturday morning, tomorrow is today, and I have moved the frozen stuff and the essential stuff and the wine bottles and the condiments. I have removed the kitchen table. I have carried a large cedar chest up four steps from the entry way and placed it well out of the way of the delivery people. I have moved the dining room table and chairs to clear the easiest path for them to go. 


I am scrubbing out the innards of the old drippy fridge when the phone rings. It is about 7:00 in the morning. I look at the Caller ID and it is the store, de javu all over again.


Man, oh, man, am I starring in a remake of "Groundhog Day"?


I answer and a male voice with a heavy Spanish accent says, "We are delivering a refrigerator today. Please make sure someone is there between 4:45 and 6:45 this afternoon."


Now, we usually go out to dinner on Saturday evening and this may make us leave late and lose the chance of getting into our favorite restaurant, but who cares if this reluctant refrigerator just shows its face.

A minute or so before 4:00 PM a truck magically appears out front. Two nice Hispanic gentlemen carry -- that's right -- carry out my old fridge and carry in the new fridge. 


Now we must just wait 24 hours for the refrigerator to cool before we can put food in. This I will be doing this afternoon. My one though is, what if it had been an emergency? What if the refrigerator just died? Thirty-seven days without refrigeration would be worse that what they had 100 years ago. 


Black beauty is finally corralled. Welcome to our kitchen Godot.

Samuel Beckett waiting for a refrigerator.

End of a Perfect...Ha!

Just a quick follow up on this gloomy day. It was a day off, a time I get to take a good walk, which you know if you read my last post, did not happen.

As if to taunt, the wild winds, which lashed the trees and almost blew a sneaky squirrel out of the bird feeder it had invaded, by mid-morning blew out our power.

We remained in the dark-ages until late afternoon. Oh, how dependent we moderns have come on electricity. Everything in my life today resides in a computer and our entertainment in a wide box.

Habit also rules. Each time I entered another room of this rainy day dreary house I would flip the wall switch; how futile, how foolish.

Then in late afternoon a mysterious voice came out of the air. It wasn't God, it was something through the system modem. But at once I knew it was back. I now tried a wall switch and voila, light.

This was followed by the modern ritual known as resetting all the digital clocks in the house.

But all was not right. The TV came on with sound, but no picture. That's not good. I could display the channel guide. I checked the cables. No change. I could put a DVD in the player and it would play perfectly, sound, picture, the works, but trying to watch TV, no picture.

I called my provider and got a message there was a problem with service in my area, they were working on it. Still now late into this evening the same message, the same condition. Hopefully all will be right with the world in the morning.

Still and all, I feel certain the problem lies with the cable provider, not with my TV. I am in no position financially to have to replace that TV.

And then as I am all snuggled down for a long night's sleep, just drifted off to that far from troubles land, I am jarred awake by the Little Woman. It is pouring outside, I can hear the drain pipes rattle. It is not quite midnight. Will this day never end? My son's driver side window has dropped into the door and he can't get it up. Water is streaming into his front seat. Do I have anything to plug the dam.

I struggle back into my clothes and get a large plastic drop cloth from the basement. This we drape over his car door and shut it. This will keep the rain out, but he will have to get his window fixed and tomorrow I will have to run him to his job and back.

I return to bed with these incomplete problems dancing like rotting sugarplums in my head. I am soaked. I towel off and lay down and sing the Tomorrow song from Annie.

Yes, the perfect end to a something or other.

On the Flip Side

I suppose I need a follow up to my problems during the great storm of last Thursday. Granted mine pale in comparison to how some suffered, certainly my tiny inconveniences are insignificant next to those people whose only access to the greater world was a bridge and that bridge washed away. Now several dozen families can only escape from their environs by climbing a steep and slippery hill. The state has said it may take months to replace the bridge.

Sometimes it pays to live on a hill with more than one entry-exit, even if you occasionally slide sideways in winter snows.

I worked on Friday and had no issues. Some were late because their streets were flooded. Several of the rivers and creeks crested on Friday. We got nine inches of rain where I live.

I got my morning walk in again on Saturday morning. I don't want to miss many of my hikes. I have dropped two belt sizes since I started these jaunts a few weeks ago. I was rather intrigued coming across a battered black bumbershoot laying along the path deep in Bringhurst Woods. I can't believe someone would have believed an umbrella would protect them from rain with the high winds that blew through these lands all day. There's not a brolly in existence that would have survived. Certainly this one didn't.

The coattails of Hurricane Nicole were too much for many trees, a fragile bit of wire and cloth had little chance, There were freshly fallen branches and logs all through the forest and the paths were strewn with all sorts of leaves and debris.

One poor tree had been blasted apart, half of it a prone corpse across the path. The top was blown to who knows where.

The innards of the standing stump was hollowed out and in was fried.

The hollowed part and the peeled off bark upon the ground were covered in black soot. This was most likely the victim of a lightning strike.

I made a few miscalculations on my Saturday outing. My first was the decision to go to Bellevue direct.

A number of state parks charge a fee in season. Saturday began chill, the second of October, early morning. The park is listed as open from 8:00 AM and I stopped at a store and got gas on my way, arriving at 20 after.

Here I discovered the season runs until November 1 and thus I paid $3.00 for the privilege to walk the woodlands inside. Too late to escape, I paid my fee and drove down the twisting road leading far back to the first parking lot.

As I reached this lot I was stunned to see it nearly filled. In the many times I have been to this park with the Little Woman and the children when they were children I have never experienced this lot this full. I had to park in the very last section down near the entry road and as I trudged up the hill noted others also trudging.

What is going on? And if the park only opened 20 minutes ago, how did all these cars get here so quickly?

Frankly, I like my walks to be fairly unencumbered by others. I like the quiet and solitude of these forest paths in the early day. All these cars promised something less desolate.

I do not know what the rallying force behind it was, but this park was full of vigor, vocal youth this day.  Out in the great green they had swarmed like buzzing bees on a mission.

Down another path, edged at cross paths with little orange pylons dashed teenage girls in some mini-marathon, people cheering them on by name and waving arms.

I soon discovered the further parking lot, one even larger than where I parked was also full of cars by now and out along the entry road I stood to one side watching people in safety jackets directing vehicles up into a field, which was also becoming covered by cars where before only clover bloomed.

It was rather obvious I should flee off of the main track and down the side trails to the more peaceful desolation of Bringhurst Woods.

And so I did and once again found some semblance of tranquility.

But having to forego my morning walk on Thursday was the least of the problems I left you with, wasn't it. I had finally crawled off to bed with my son's car missing its side window and the TV missing its picture. What happened there?

What a difference a day makes, right?

I drove my son to his work place just before leaving for my own job. His car sat sadly in our drive with the front driver's door encased with a hugh plastic drop cloth. It had done the job of plugging the dam, but he could hardly drive with it flapping about.  It occurred to me there might be a simple solution in the meantime, until he feels he is willing to take it to a shop and have this window situation more permanently resolved. What happens is his driver side window will slip down in the door and not come up. The wind drove it down Thursday night. He can pull it up with a coat hanger, but it just isn't staying.

I went to Home Depot when I went that evening to pick him up and bought a box of shims. I told him to tap a shim between his window and frame and see if that wouldn't keep it up. He did, it worked. Now it will be a nuisance if he has to go anywhere with a tollbooth, but for now it solves his runaway window problem at a cost of $1.35 for twelve shims.

The TV was frustrating and scary.

When the electric returned after being off all Thursday day, everything worked, except our main TV had no picture. The scary part was the possibility the electrical outage had damaged the set. I am in no position right now to replace that TV.

But it made no sense to think it was the TV. When I turned on the cable I not only got sound, I could bring up the program guide. I also put a DVD in our player and the movie played perfectly on the TV.

I deduced it was a provider problem.

I called my provider and got a recorded message there was a service problem in my area, technicians were working on the problem and sorry. This was a relief. It was a provider problem. Now it became how long a problem.

I called again late Thursday evening and got the same message. Perhaps by morning it will be resolved, I thought, but when I turned on the TV the next AM there was still no picture. I called the provider and got the same message.

I went to work and when I came home, still no picture, still the same message, but this time I chose to talk to someone. I didn't have to wait long until a rep answered, a nice friendly guy living in Newark who had worse problems than me. His place had flooded, he was up bailing out till midnight and had a carpet like a wet sponge now. He ran whatever tests they run and found I was getting a signal. There was a big service problem two streets over, which is probably why I kept getting that message.

He asked me to try unplugging the cabal box for five-seconds. I know, they always ask that. Well, I did and dabnabit if when I re-plugged that picture came back like it had never been gone. TV problem resolved, car window problem resolved and I am back on my walks and the sun has been shining.

Of course now we are supposed to have four days of rain.