Sunday, May. 21, 2006 - 10:52 a.m.

My Trip - the Epilogue

So no trip that has been as enjoyable, relaxing and fun as mine can end with everything being absolutely perfect and no glitches.  Seems the week I left, the power company did some rolling blackouts in our area and a few days later, when my mother in law came to the house to feed the fish and water the plants, she walked in and a HORRIBLE smell hit her in the face.  Well, the fridge was out.  The power to the fridge was on, but not cooling.  Needless to say everything in the freezer had melted and spoiled, and everything in the fridge had spoiled.  She threw away the rotten food and turned the fridge off.  I got home to a mold and sludge covered monstrosity with tons of food left inside, mostly stuff in containers.  So unfortunately, the first thing I had to do when I got home on Wednesday, was start taking care of getting it cleaned and fixed.  Made a call to the store we bought it from and they scheduled someone out the next day.  The pool of primordial ooze at the bottom of the freezer made me retch the minute I tried to start "sopping" up.  I waited til the next day to clean it, and went to unpack my luggage instead.  I talked to the hubby and told him that the inside was pretty bad and that my initial reaction was that it might not be worth cleaning.  He was not that disappointed because, for whatever reason, when we bought this fridge not even 5 years ago, we decided on white.  Well, he actually wanted a black fridge to go with our other appliances, and why we didn't go ahead purchase such is a mystery to me and lost to history.  The repair man came, took a look, and diagnosed it with a burned out regulator, a $15 part.  Of course the service charge and labor were $135.  Oh well.  Still, it beat having to be inconvenienced with having to go purchase a new fridge and dispose of this one.  I cleaned the thing out which took several hours, and everything is pretty much hunky dory.  There is still a bit of a funky smell, and the water coming out of the door still smells and tastes funny.  I suspect that it will just be a matter of time before that goes away.  There are mass quantities of baking soda in both sides to absorb the funkiness that still lingers, and I will have to keep an eye out for any recurrences of mold growth as it is near impossible to reach every single solitary nook, cranny and other mold hiding places.  I also had to go make a massive purchase at the grocery store to restock, but it wasn't that painful of a trip.  In fact, I think I got off light.