Casualty

Yesterday, our fridge stopped working. Just...stopped. The dial to turn up the coolness sort of spun like crazy, and the massive glacier that was the "freezer" (it's in quotes for a reason) began to thaw. So I did what any reasonable person would do in a town without air conditioning in June.

I panicked.

I began the frantic phone calls to Dr. B at work, our landlady (who didn't want to fix it because she was replacing it anyway in September, and seemed completely overwhelmed that I was speaking in English, despite the fact that she is a retired English teacher), and Darty to set up a rendez-vous for an estimate (who, this time, had a very nice customer service representative that didn't make me feel stupid because it's hard to describe things when the aren't working when you have to do it in another language--who learns that stuff in class?) These phone calls, of course, left me feeling even more frazzled. I dashed out the door to head to pick up my girls after school, leaving Lucy with a chunk of glacial thaw to gnaw on, and cursing her for letting small chunks melt all over the floor and causing me to slip on my way out.

Dr. B called later, saying he had "fixed" it. Basically, he touched it, and the thing started to work again. I don't know why this happens, but it always does. (I've learned to just step away from anything attached to a cord--there can be no good that comes of me meddling with it.)

Which of course, left me to call our landlady again this morning (this time I spoke in French, and she seemed much less frightened), and Darty (who cancelled the appointment with only one question. "So it works now?")

Today, around 1:30, I went to the fridge to pull out the camembert, which I had been desperately trying to eat yesterday when the fridge had its little tantrum. Camembert is a lovely, wonderful cheese that Jeff calls "butt cheese"--in other words, it really, really stinks. The longer you leave it, the worse it gets, so I knew I had to finish it today. I tore through the several layers of ziploc freezer bags encasing our cheese stash, eager to spread its melty, creamy goodness on some pain aux céréales, tranché.

But all that remained was 2/3 of a slice of Fourme d'Ambert and a sad little dry hunk of Mimolette.

Tonight, the interrogation began.

"Where is the camembert?"

(Guilty look from Dr. B.) "Um, I had to toss it. It was...all...really bad...water... everywhere..."

He desperately looked at his laptop screen, as if something would suddenly pop up to save him, or maybe distract me from the questioning.

"Ah hah. Really bad, huh? Water, is it? Water everywhere."

"Yeah, it was soaked. Lots of water. The paper was wet and everything."

"Mm-hmm. Yep. In its two Ziploc freezer bags. Soaked. Riiiight."

He began to visibly color around the ears, and a smirk appeared at the corners of his mouth.

"You thought," I said,"you had a pretty good excuse, huh?"

"Yep," he admitted.

Little does he know, that just when he least expects it...WHAM! His peanuts are going to have a leettle accident... [Evil Laughter]



***Note: I think we've discovered that the grey thing in the middle of the turney thing is actually a defrost button. Now we feel really stupid.