Appliance Malfunction Saga: Part the Second in which other food-related appliances quit working

Part the First is here.

We survived Thanksgiving, somehow. We muscled our way through the visit to the in-laws, the saving grace there being Superman's brother and his wife. They're the sane ones in Superman's family and we stayed at their house. Superman spent Friday afternoon and much of Saturday with his parents. I "had plans" with my favorite sis-in-law. I won that round.

Home again after Thanksgiving weekend, and our bottom oven has a burned out element. Complicating factor #next, I promised to bake a bunch of cookies for the bake sale our Hospice Care organization holds in conjunction with one of their biggest annual fundraisers. Cookies due at 3:00 p.m. Thursday. My top oven is fully operational, and its size works wonderfully for baking cookies. I'm spoiled. I want to bake two sheets at a time. In two ovens. I asked Superman to order a replacement element once we were hooked up to the internet at his brother's place, but of course one needs the make, model, serial number, oldest child's SSN to order the replacement. No go ordering it Friday. But I remembered. As soon as we got home Sunday evening I asked again. After pulling the oven out from the wall, finding frightening things underneath it, and finally locating the necessary numbers, my wonderful husband ordered the replacement elements. He ordered both, though only the bottom element was burned out. A few months ago the top element in the top oven burned out. Since these things seem to be happening now at the oven's advanced age, we figured better to replace both top and bottom elements for the bottom oven. But will they arrive in time for baking day Thursday?!?!?!?
  via GIPHY

Yes. The package arrived Wednesday and my wonderful Superman installed them Wednesday night. Thursday I made 5 batches of cookie things. It was thrilling.

Oven repair achievement unlocked.

But wait, there's more! No, not the oven. It works fine now. But remember all the turkeys from the previous post? When Superman got a great deal on turkeys and bought four? Because we like turkey and we have a nice upright freezer in which to store food, shopping wisely when prices are low and all that good responsible stuff? Well, we had a freezer.

Thursday afternoon (iirc) I snuck into the freezer to get myself a bowl of Great Value Low Fat Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream.* I like to keep it in the deep freeze so it's good and hard (giggle) rather than in the smaller refrigerator freezer. I opened the carton, positioned the scoop preparing to fight for a chunk of hard frozen dairy delight, and the scoop almost fell through to the bottom of the carton. Oops. And Oh Shit.

I keep a lot of water bottles in my freezer. We like the Bolthouse juices, and the empty bottles store water well. Frozen water bottles are useful when packing coolers, for instance, or to use at the beach/park/lake/hike/mowing the lawn. They also provide thermal mass to help keep the freezer cold. Good thing, too.

I filled our 'fridge freezer with as much of the food from the deep freeze as would fit. We got one of the turkeys in there. The other three I put in the refrigerator and surrounded them with frozen water bottles, then turned down the temperature in the 'fridge. Thursday night when Superman got home we debated our options. We needed a freezer SOON. The current one is a few years old, but is kept in the garage that gets super hot in the summer; not an ideal location for such an appliance but it's what we got. No idea when a repair person might be able to get here. The freezer still has power. The light inside works. The electronic display on the front still has something on it, but not the 5 indicating its cooling level. The internet was vaguely helpful, telling me how to run a diagnostic using those buttons on the display panel. Two buttons, up and down. Hold both for three seconds, then the display will blah blah blah blah blah. Some kind of code signs. I don't know. They mean nothing to me and I haven't the tools to do anything with it.

Thursday morning, and also Wednesday morning at about the same time, the power in the house did one of those BLIP things, where everything shuts off and restarts immediately. Makes my refrigerator beep, resets the settings on my dryer, blanks out the clock on the microwave (but not on the coffee maker or the stove, interestingly). Is that a power surge? Anyway, I suspect that might have knocked out the capacitor on the freezer. Where is the capacitor on the freezer? How does one get to it? Where does one get a replacement? Oh fuck it. Why not just buy a new one? We have the money for a modest freezer, and don't need a huge one.

By the time we figured this out, Lowe's was closed. Lowe's and Sears Hometown Store (only appliances and lawn care equipment) and one independent store are our local options for freezers. Lowe's opens at 7 a.m. and has the best prices, so there we go. Seven o'clock on Friday morning is a good time to go to Lowe's, in case you're wondering. The freezer selection was minimal, but we found what we need for a reasonable price. And Superman has a pickup truck, so Bob's your uncle and we have a new freezer at home. The tricky part now is getting it off the truck by himself. He had help getting it up there. I tried to call Twitch to come help, but he was unavailable. Superman, being Superman and an engineer, got it done without hurting himself. I'm so proud. (No, really)

We got it in place (I helped without hurting myself, too!) but can't load it up until it pre-cools** for 24 hours. The only thing I'm concerned about is those damned turkeys. I did all I could, so I let it go. When we were finally able to load up the new freezer, all but one of the turkeys was still frozen. There's another turkey thawing in my refrigerator now. Turkey dinner this week! Again! After we finally finished off the turkey soup my dear husband made from the disastrous Thanksgiving debacle. Good thing we like turkey. Perhaps we'll have Twitch over again.

Freezer replacement achievement unlocked.

And this afternoon, because this is my life, or something like it, the microwave died. More detail in the previous post. I've lost track of how long we've had that microwave. We've lived in this house for 11 years? 12? It moved in with us, and was old then. No question about whether to repair it. Can microwave ovens be repaired? Ours sits in the bottom shelf of the upper cabinet to the left of the sink. Superman measured the space and heigh'd off to Walmart (again) for a replacement. He found one the exact size of the old one. The light in this one works so now I can watch my food cook again! Finally! Gotta find some Peeps for a jousting match. Are there Christmas Peeps?***


YES!! I figured out how to embed a YouTube video!

Microwave replacement achievement unlocked!

*A bowl full of this delicious ice cream with a generous shake of chocolate Ovaltine powder applied to the top - Yum! Don't stir it in much, though, at least not at first, but be careful not to inhale the Ovaltine powder. That hurts.

**The opposite of preheat?

***There are!!

I can't stand the taste of Peeps, though, so I doubt I'll get any tbh. 

Then there's this:  

OMG

OK, I'm done. 

I'm restless

but not bored!

This is the first full week of summer break for the kids. I made it to the second day before I lost it. Sproing was the instigating factor, he and all, I dunno, ten of his noisy friends who were in my living room all day playing video games in the dark. And he was R-U-D-E to me. He does that sometimes, then other times he's as nice and gentle as can be. I wish he'd be gentle and considerate all the time, but what's a wish worth? And he's 16 years old, so that ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Anyway, I had a good long cry, part of it in front of him. He's been nicer since then and I feel better, too. And on the third day, yesterday, I opened the back door and the curtain to bring natural light into the living room. He left it like that most of the day, so I'm pleased. Ish.

So, the restlessness. I think this is part of the Abilify medication. Seems I've more gumption to do stuff than I have stuff to do. And last night I woke up just before 3:00. I did some laundry, Faceborked a bit, found that thing I knew I had but didn't know where. Do you ever have a thing and there's something else that goes with it, or is necessary for it to work, but you don't seem to ever find the two things together at the same time? Yeah, that's me a lot of the time. Well, since I've been organizing some of my junk (and throwing some of it away) I actually know where some stuff is. Not everything by a long shot, but some stuff. And last night I found that thing that goes with the other thing that I cleaned up off the front porch recently.

Yesterday evening Superman and I transplanted sunflower seedlings into the small fence garden we have in the front yard. Don't know if they will survive because they were kinda young to transplant, but I'd started them in the little peat pellet things which are too small for starting sunflowers. I also have some marigolds started in the peat pellets and they're progressing just fine. Maybe one day I'll get some pics up here.

I never got back to sleep last night/today. I got dressed and went to the gym at 5:30. Last night I was thinking I wouldn't go today, but what the hell else can I do at 5 a.m.? So I spent half an hour walking a mile on the treadmill. Not much, I know, but I'm starting where I'm comfortable. I did sweat, so there's that. And the shower once I got home felt really good. Oh, and I stepped on the scale at the gym and I'm down a couple more pounds. I haven't been this low since sometime last fall, I think. Still not to the weight I achieved last summer, but I'm about five pounds from it. This feels good, except for the hunger part. And I'm not often hungry anyway. I'd love to have a bowl of cereal, but we're off grains entirely for the first two weeks. We've got about a week and a half until that bowl of cereal happens. tick tick tick tick

Diva finished her "seat time" at school yesterday at 11:00. So the meltdown I had on Tuesday didn't involve Diva at all as she wasn't even on her summer break yet. Gagh! She got out of school late yesterday morning and went directly over to her friend's house. Not Morq in Abbeville, but the girl who lives within walking distance. She spent the night there last night. Yippee!!

Late in the day Monday I realized our big freezer wasn't working. It's been acting squirrely for a few weeks, and it finally died or whatever. So Tuesday morning after dropping Diva at school I went to Lowe's and bought a freezer. A congelateur. Multilingual boxes are fun. Guy shopping is fun, too. I went into the store, picked up a 35 lb. bag of birdseed on the way to appliances. I found the freezer I wanted in about three seconds. Was looking for a smallish upright freezer. There was one small one at the end of a row of big ones. Ba-da-bing. Found the lady working the department, told her what I wanted, she did her computer thingie and ta-da. She told me to go to the checkout and give the phone number associated with our account and there it would be. So I did. As I was checking out the nice young man (cute, brunette, slender and quite strong) came up front with my freezer. I pulled the truck to the entrance there and he loaded it. By himself. Picked the thing up and put it on the tailgate. I was impressed. I got my ratcheting tie-downs around the box and secured it in the truck bed. The whole affair, from parking to driving away, lasted maybe ten minutes. Less than fifteen, anyway. I love efficient shopping like that.

Oh, I had to get some new athletic shoes for this gym thing we're doing. I despise shoe shopping. Superman went with me and I found a shoe I liked in relatively short time. It would have taken much longer if I'd gone alone. I'm glad he was with me.

I'm itching for a road trip. I want to go visit Light and see my other friend who lives there. A fabulously tall gay man who sometimes is a woman. I can relate. I'm a woman (not all that tall, not terribly fabulous) who is sometimes a man. Anyway, Nik has become a good friend. We can spend hours and hours talking. Way into the night. The night before I have to get up and drive in the freezing cold from western PA to Delaware. Hence the need for a nap Friday afternoon, to those bloggerpalooza participants. Oops, got distracted again. So I want to take a road trip back to western PA. Again. And it's time for my annual escape trip. School is out and I need to take an emotional breather to survive the rest of the summer. Thing is, though, what with buying a freezer and getting my truck fixed recently, road trip money done got spent. My truck works, but I can't afford to take it anywhere. Also it still needs the new gasket on the lifter place. And my guy says it'll cost at least $400 to do that. So here I sit. I might be able to finagle a road trip in a month or so, but I'm not sure.