Today the new fridge-freezer was delivered.

The delivery guys called me in the morning and gave a window of 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. for their arrival.

So at 3:15 p.m. I was just finishing my shower (washing the chiggers off after mowing the yard) when the doorbell rang.

Delivery drivers, early? Never! Apparently, that is unless I’m in the shower. (My in-laws are quite good at arriving when I’m in the shower too. It must be something in the local water).

I was concerned that the delivery people would go on their merry way if I didn’t answer the door quickly. Which would mean I would be without a fridge for yet another week. I grabbed a towel and sprinted (okay, walked fast) to the door. I’m sure delivery drivers get to see all sorts of things, so a dripping Brit wearing a towel should be no real surprise. I let them in, showed them the old fridge and left them to get on with it.

It then occurred to me that I needed to sequester the cats, lest one of them take the opportunity of an open door to do a runner. Blue Kitteh is well renowned for this, and Sprinky is not to be trusted either. Tubby has never shown any interest in the great outdoors, but the silly half-blind and deaf creature could wander off by accident.

I found Blue Kitteh in the bedroom, unhooked the strap ‘thing’ we use to keep the door open, and shut her in. Sprinky was where she’s been every day for the last week or more — on my desk. I just had to round up Tubby, and then we’d be all secure. I found him in the ‘Sparkle Zone.’ I swept him up and carried him to the bedroom to be shut away with Blue Kitteh.

Shoot (or similar expletives).

The bedroom door was locked. I tried it several times to make sure. There certainly weren’t any keys in my pocketses. In fact, there was a distinct lack of a pocket of any sort in the towel I was wearing. Not only was I locked on the wrong side of the door that provides access to my clothes, but I’d locked Blue Kitteh in there too.

Getting to the unruly collection of keys that we keep wasn’t easy. They were beyond the kitchen, which was currently blocked by the Behemoth (our old fridge/freezer) and two guys debating whether or not they’d have to dismantle it to extract it from the house (the answer was yes).

Fortunately, the new fridge is only a baby Behemoth (isn’t that a bit of a contradiction?) because now there’s only two of us instead of five, we don’t really need a huge fridge. So at least we were spared having to dismantle that as well. Anyway, I had to wait until they were otherwise occupied, and dash past to grab a pile of keys.

Labeling all the loose keys is a job we have been putting off …

None of the first bunch I grabbed opened the bedroom door. The front door, yes. Don’t ask why I felt compelled at this time to check which locks the keys did fit. I have no idea, and I had nothing to label them with anyway.

I had to run the gauntlet of the kitchen to go back and search high and low for more keys. I ended up with over a dozen. Finally, after many false starts, I found a key that fitted, let myself in and got dressed.

Fast forward two or three hours, and I have finished removing all the awful sticky plastic wrapping stuff they mummify modern appliances with, and I’m done prizing off strips of blue tape. I even found the bits they’d carefully hidden behind the ice dispenser. After playing a few minutes of shelf Tetris I stood back to admire my work.

Hold on. That’s not right. Where’s the grill that goes at the bottom of the fridge? They had lost it. I called the delivery driver, who searched the back of the truck. No, it’s not there. Ho hum.

So today (Tuesday) I went back to the store, and a very helpful shop assistant got down on the floor to prise a ‘Toe Grill’ — as the user guide calls it — off a display model. Thank you, Michael!

Addendum

Why do we have a full-blown deadlock on the bedroom door?

Children. Well, actually one particular child who, a long time ago, in a mindset far, far, away, was prone to being light-fingered. The door originally had a standard internal door lock on it. When we realized things were growing legs and walking off, we locked the door, only to discover that things still disappeared. A quick check with some sticky tape showed that our budding criminal was using a card to get the lock open — yes, that old trick really does work with some locks. So I fitted a new lock with a built-in deadbolt, rendering it childproof.

In fairness, it must be pointed out that the said child is now an absolutely wonderful adult who brings a tear to her stepfather’s eye every now and then with the things she says and does. But for Pete’s sake don’t tell her that. I’d never live it down.

Post Script

Apparently, the skills learned in her youth are still of value. A few days ago, one of our daughters managed to lock herself out of her bedroom in her apartment. The other daughter used the card trick to get them in.

Copyright © 2018 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.