I don’t like warm milk – not one bit. I will make the exception for oyster stew, but I only have the once a year. Yes, I like my milk very cold, and it is my disdain for warm milk that finally taught me that “Is your refrigerator running?” isn’t just a joke for children.

We spent a few days last week living out of coolers because our fridge was having trouble maintaining a temperature much below sixty degrees. This was not an inexpensive appliance. We bought this back in the days when we would spend money like the owners of a bull that has ventured into a china shop. I was not looking forward to replacing this thing. After a little bit of research; it was decided that perhaps something had frozen over and the device needed to be defrosted. I couldn’t get to where the actual coils were, but there were vents behind the ice maker that were filled with frost and the freezer was working just fine.

I took the kids up to the QuikTrip and tried to load six bags of ice into the van without either of the children getting run over, stepped on, or knocked out by a door. This wasn’t going well, but the most excellent man behind the counter came to my rescue. After right about 24-hours, we fired the fridge back up and it was making nice cool air again. I did pick up a couple of thermometers from HyVee. They have ranges printed on them for what temperature the fridge and freezer should be. I have the fridge up as cold as it can go, and it sits right at the top of that range – forty degrees. The freezer doesn’t quite make it to zero, but pretty close. The most important thing; however, is that I didn’t buy a new fridge!

Regular maintenance is important.

That goes for cars and appliances. I noticed the other night that my allegedly super-charged Regal was acting awfully sluggish. It’s been acting a little irritable for a while now, but we finally got it to our mechanic. It turns out that the super-charger belt had become much too hot, warped into some molten abomination that will never be straight again, and flown off of its assigned position along with a few a tensioner or two and another part whose name I cannot recall.

I’m told that I’m pretty lucky nothing else got ruined. That does make sense – I imagine those pieces came away from the engine at pretty high speed. What I can’t figure out is how didn’t hear it happen. The wife may know something…

All in all, I’m feeling rather blessed today. I got away from a refrigerator malfunction and some significant car repairs for just over six hundred dollars. Here’s to another 140,000 miles!