I still don’t know what to make of it: Fitting end to a hectic year, or an omen of what’s to come for 2019? Geez, universe, couldn’t you be a little more clear?
Or less cruel?!?
It happened on New Year’s Eve, as I finished cooking for my wife and daughter. Nothing too elaborate – a pork loin braised in milk, Italian-style. All was going according to plan – the timing, the smells, the taste. Right how I wanted it. In my mind, the perfect night.
Until the refrigerator started making noise.
If you’re at all familiar with refrigerators, then you know they’re not supposed to make noise. They’re supposed to cool and preserve and keep your beer the exact temperature you want it. And they’re supposed to do it super quietly. The microwave can make noise. The toaster can ding. The blender can sound like the house is coming down. But ever since our forefathers first said, “you know, a lot of us won’t get botulism if we put this here meat in an ultra-quiet box that keeps it cool,” fridges have been silent as dead church mice.
But mine had suddenly started making noise. A LOT of noise. The kind of noise that makes your wife ask rather rhetorically: “Is it supposed to sound like that? Because it sounds like an airplane is about to crash into the house.”
No, honey, it is DEFINITELY not supposed to sound like that. And certainly not on New Year’s Eve. Not when I’m cooking and thinking that the beer I’m keeping in there is the perfect temperature for consumption. Because that would just be cruel. Because a night meant for fine-tuning New Year’s resolutions, for celebrating the old year and for looking optimistically to the new one shouldn’t include a fridge that sounds like it is about to blast off for Mars.
And it certainly shouldn’t mean you’re about to spend the better part of the night waist-deep in it with two hairdryers as you hand-defrost the iced-over evaporator coils.
I knew this was the problem because I’m a quick-action Googler. When I couldn’t sit and eat, pretending like I couldn’t hear it, I ducked off to the computer and typed in: “Jerk face refrigerator making noise like plane crash … on New Year’s Eve. Super cruel!” (I like to be detailed in my searches.)
Up came videos of people with something akin to the iceberg that sunk the Titanic taking over the nether regions of their fridge. This spot could only be reached through an epic, “Lord of the Rings”-style journey that included relocating all perishables, pulling all the shelving out, removing screws in nearly unreachable locations, carefully extracting a delicate back panel and then de-icing what looked like an arctic icefield. All while going out of my mind and cursing and yelling and dropping things down unreachable crevices to the point that the dog started quietly packing up her things and considering a quick getaway out the back door.
Happy New Year!
Fitting end to a hectic year? Or an omen of what’s to come? Only time will tell. But it’s quiet in there again. And the beer – thankfully the beer! – is its old temperature again.