Waiting for Death

I cry a little each time I go near my fridge. We’re trying to eat up the frozen food before they all go bad, but it’s a losing battle. Yesterday I tossed out all the bags of fruit and about half the vegetables, and this morning I already tossed 2 bags of vegan meatballs, both leaking all over making a mess. I don’t want to keep the freezer compartment open too long or else the temp goes above 30 – 35 degrees, so I just quickly mopped up the mess and grabbed the bags that were obviously the offenders and slammed the door shut again.

Yesterday I bought those juice-box sized containers of Rice Dreams so I can have my warm beverages again. The tiny boxes fit on the freezer door, a space that’s now hovering in the upper 30 – low 40’s and perfect for the milk and other items that used to be in the refrigerator, like the tub of Earth Balance and container of Tofutti cream cheese my son is working on.

Did I mention we’ll be going through this until the new one comes on Sunday? That was the soonest Sears could deliver my new refrigerator, and that was only because we’re paying the extra few bucks for weekend delivery. If we wanted the regular delivery for only $10 less we would have had to wait until June 15th. We’re just glad they had a refrigerator to fit. We first ordered one from Lowe’s but after we got home and remeasured we realized it wouldn’t fit up the staircase or through the arch between the living room and back hall and had to go back and cancel. We measured every refrigerator there and none would fit. The salesgirl said we could special-order one, but it would probably be way to small for the needs of three adults, even a couple. So we went off to Sears, driving on crowded city streets on a holiday weekend to a mall that charges for parking and has about only half the stores rented at the present time. We found the perfect refrigerator in seconds, measured twice to make sure, and were checked out right away. We were in and out of the store in less than 20 minutes. It took almost twice as long just to drive the 7 miles to the store.

(ours is white, not black like this one)

So we started moving furniture. Our apartment is in an old multi-family house in a congested urban area, housing built for people who worked the factories and refineries that were located here a century ago. Our apartment was built out of an attic, so the rooms are smaller than those in the other 2 apartments in this house, so our furniture that fit beautifully with room to spare in all the other apartments we’ve lived in since we got married over 30 years ago is now chock-a-block together, some of it partially blocking windows and doorways, so to get a refrigerator from our front door to the kitchen wall in the far back corner we have to move one bookcase, 4 DVD racks, the shelving with our stereo unit on it, the shelves in the back hallway, a shelving unit that holds fresh produce, a bookcase with my cookbooks, our kitchen table . . . plus all the stuff that’s ON all those shelves and bookcases. This is why we put off buying a new refrigerator all these years, even though the shelves started cracking soon after we moved into this place 11 years ago.

We couldn’t fit our queen-sized box spring up the stairs, front or back, and had to sleep on the mattress on the floor until we found a place that sold split box springs. There were no Sleepy’s around when we needed it and found a mom & pop store that made custom mattresses that could special order one for us.  We’re in desperate need of a new mattress now but keep putting it off, either because of finances, lack of time, or better things to do than deal with mattress salespeople. Now that we know even Sleepy’s has the box spring with no hassle we need we’ll probably order one after the refrigerator is paid off.

But this week, food is uppermost on my mind, the storage of it, the eating of it, the wasting of it. And I continue to cry each time I open that freezer door.