How I wrecked my daughter's refrigerator and other stories from the trenches.

I am living at the elder daughter's house this week, looking after Little Stuff while the ED and spouse are at a conference.  This should be quite an easy task as Little Stuff is now almost seven and can look after a lot of things herself.  Grama's tasks include putting together a huge lunch including three snacks and a main noon meal, finding something a starving kid wants to eat for supper, delivering her to school, picking her up from daycare, listening to and helping with homework, and keeping the menagerie fed.

It is this last task that was the undoing of the refrigerator.  This house resembles a small zoo.  There are lizards, snakes, fish, a tortoise the size of a punch bowl, a quite demented cat (of whom more later) and Charlotte Ann, the guinea pig. She lives in Little Stuff's bedroom in a well appointed cage and gets fresh veggies twice a day to supplement her kibble (or whatever - dried guinea pig ration, I guess).  On the first evening, Little Stuff opened the frig to get out some greens and ripped the front panel off the crisper.  Oops.

Well, Grama decided that fixing this ought to involve disassembling the three drawer pile and cleaning it all up, then putting the front panel back on and reassembling.  All went well for the first two steps as I carefully took out all the food, took the parts out and set them in order and cleaned.  The last step was a big disaster.  I could not get the pile reassembled in a way that allowed the door to shut.  I tried over and over.  Meanwhile the food in and out of the frig was getting warmer and warmer and so was I.  I needed help.

Now the ED is without doubt the most organized person I have ever known, even more so than my mother whom she resembles a lot, and so I knew that the manual for the refrigerator would be stowed somewhere logical.  I am not logical, I guess, because I could not find the dern thing.  I found labelled and dated photo albums, art supplies, correspondence supplies, camera manuals, a neatly stowed drawer of scissors and other necessary bits and pieces, an alphabetized disc collection, with notes and dates, a stash of cards and other games, financial correspondence, all neatly stowed and handy.  No frig manual.

Food still getting warmer.

Finally, in desperation, I stacked all the bins back into the frig, with the food in them, piled one on top of the other.  And the door shut.  Daughter and spouse return home tonight and will, alas, be greeted by an almost unusable refrigerator.  I have stacked the beer and diet pop in the front where they can get it easily.  Logic tells me this mess will seem less annoying after a nice cold brew.

As for the cat, she decided last night to abandon Little Stuff and sleep with me, having fallen in love with my dressing gown as a cat bed.  At approximately 1:00 am she jumped up onto my bed with a resounding thump.  Startled out of a sound sleep I flailed out with both arms and sent the poor kitty flying off the bed and onto the floor.  And then she disappeared.  I was afraid I had hurt her and so I got up and searched for her to see if she was intact.  Cat was no where to be found.  This morning she reappeared, her usual sinuous self, and when she saw me she arched her back and hissed.  I am persona non grata in cat land.

And here I thought I was going to have a fine, easy time.