Three months after the weekend spent melting a chunk of ice the size of overhead luggage, I’m back glaring at Beelzebub’s machine (see Parts 1 & 2). I shiver. Something horrible is going to happen. Curse. Pour a glass of wine. Stare at the hell beast again. Put down the glass undrunk. Praying, I open the fridge.
Attempt to pull out the ice tray. It should come out easily—I turned off the ice-making option sometime last spring. Yell “Fudgsicles”—the ‘Ice Bucket and Auger Assembly’ is frozen solid. Again.
This can’t be happening. Curse like the Alabama dock worker I was in my 20s. Fluff my non-existent platinum hair. (Does anyone else remember having cleavage under our chins?)
Outside, a bluebird flies into the window. Probably wanting to investigate what sounds like a mortally wounded animal.
Update the cursing with some millennial epitaphs learned from the twenty-something that returned home. At least I learned something from that year of… delight.
Sing my siren song, “Looking for Pecs in All the Wrong Places,” a la Elmer Fudd. Not one random man with upper body strength approaches.
But I am not deterred.
Go to the nearest home repair store. Find a man holding an ax. Buy him and ax. Oops, sorry. Buy ax. Lure man back to house…
After a few hours of blow dryer use and whacking ever more forcefully on the Samsung Attempt-To-Reverse-Global-Warming, the man pries it out.
Inch long pellets of ice, elliptical with pointy ends at both sides, skitter across the floor.
I collapse, sobbing. The man pats my head.
By now, my wine is warm, no ice, and there’s a concussed Bluebird of Happiness outside my window.
This is personal.