Over a week after David developed a fever, both C&D have almost returned to their playful selves.  A little snot and a wet cough keep them restrained only occasionally.  Matt sounds like he has a head cold, because he does.

So, in case we were bored, the refrigerator had to break this morning.

It took me a while to figure it out.  Half-asleep, I started the oatmeal for C&D and grabbed a bowl of last-night’s zucchini from the fridge.  I took a bite, swallowed, and then realized I had just eaten something awful.  My zucchini tasted bitter, and felt warm.  I called Matt.  Was his food warm this morning?  He hadn’t noticed.  Did he adjust the thermostat?  No.  I wondered if he had left the door open this morning.  I couldn’t remember if I had found it that way.  I drove to Target and bought a thermometer; I couldn’t believe my food wasn’t cold.  The thermometer said I needed to believe it, and get on with it.  I turned the thermostat down; maybe the fridge was on the blink.  Maybe I was missing something.  Maybe I didn’t need to spend a thousand dollars today.

One naptime later, my soymilk felt like it had been left out all day.  Matt came home and we looked at the fridge manual (useless) and looked at refrigerators online (a little less useless).  Meanwhile Carmen and David drew with their crayons, cut up their notebooks ("look what I MADE!"), ate some grapes (which I had to peel for David), and then began wrestling.  Naked.

Matt and I started taking the refrigerator apart.  Fan behind the little plastic plate?  Turning.  Thermostat?  Hunk of plastic intact, check.  (So that’s how that worked?)  Thermostat work?  Seems to when we slide it back and forth, because we see the fan turn on.  Freezer?  Food frozen.  Okay.

"The fan is turning, but I haven’t heard," I realized after an hour of our  think, think, think session, "the hurmmm of the compressor."

Doh.  It made sense.  Any minute, then, and the contents of our freezer would start defrosting.  Matt pulled out a loaf of bread from a lower shelf.  It was soft.

I made a happy dance.  So what we were going to spend a bunch of money for something that’s going to break in ten years?  I figured it out!  The compressor is broken!  I figured it out!  Woo-hoo!

We grabbed C&D, got them dressed in whatever was clean,  and sped off to our local Sears.  The store had a great fridge on clearance, but couldn’t deliver until Tuesday.  Best Buy could deliver Saturday.  And Lowe’s . . . could deliver tomorrow.  Matt paid while C&D played cooking with the appliances and turned all the knobs.

That done, we sped back home and picked up two blocks of dry ice (Central Market!) to keep our mostly-frozen food frozen until tomorrow.  I hope it works.  Now, we just wait for the delivery truck tomorrow.

David is excited that a truck is going to come and deliver the refrigerator, sort of like UPS (his favorite delivery service next to USPS).  At Sears he suggested, when I told him we couldn’t bring home the fridge we liked because it didn’t fit in the car, that we should just get a smaller one.  A delivery truck, though, is even better.  Remind me to ask for the box.

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Do you know something?  On our way to Sears Matt and I had to acknowledge we are in a really good place in life to be able to dance a happy dance about buying a new refrigerator.  It’s true.

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I’m sure the compressor is fixable, but eating out (or eating canned soup) for several days and throwing away a fridge full of food while we waited for someone to come and charge us $300+ to repair an energy-inefficient, decade-old fridge that will break again soon doesn’t make good math.  It wasn’t always that way, was it?