So. As I may have mentioned a few hundred times, the R.C. and I have been occupying this same apartment space for the last two decades.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but most of them boil down to laziness. What with one thing and another, this place is almost always conveniently located just about halfway between our respective places of employment (when such things exist), and it's bigger than the newer apartment spaces they've been building, and it's cheap (because we've been such long-term tenants).

And, you know, we don't have to go through the pain and expense of moving.

Stuff wears out from time to time, of course. We've had to have new bathroom fixtures (shower and sink faucets). We wanted a new dishwasher once, but they fixed the old one :( and it's still chugging along. We have gotten a ceiling fan, a couple of new disposal units, vertical blinds in the living room, Venetians in the bedrooms, and a new fluorescent light fixture and then new tile on the floor in the kitchen.

Recently, the refrigerator has been acting up.

Today, the R.C. called the office and they promised to send someone over to fix it but warned that if we needed a new refrigerator, they ones they use are on backorder and we'd have to wait a while. Maintenance called back and said they'd come and take care of it.

We left. We came back. (Can't sit around here waiting on non-existent refrigerators all day.) We found a note from maintenance.

"Will be back after lunch with new refrigerator."

Ah, the excitement! Would they be back or would they not?

Are refrigerators available or on backorder?

Should we clean out the refrigerator or not?

(Does the universe have some kind of bell or something, that lets it whack your refrigerator with a big, ol' spoonfull of entropy the day after you visit the grocery store and stock up on cold things?)

They came back. With a new refrigerator.

"Refrigerators exist!" We squealed.

"Big 'uns do," they said. (The new refrigerator is a Beast. Bigger, by a considerable amount, than our old one.) "We were going to send this one back but your needs come first."

They stood, patiently, even making jokes, as the R.C. and I scrambled to unload the old appliance, stacking food on all the counters and in the sink. And then taking down the wall-hanging spice racks and potholders and other debris a kitchen accumulates. And removing the rugs. We hustled and finished in something under ten minutes.

They measured. Measured again. Debated. Listened as I promised that if everything had to go back into the old refrigerator, we'd be standing over them as they did it.

They measured a third time. Concluded that The Beast would, just barely, fit into the space.

They pulled out the old refrigerator, leaving a trail of oil as they went. I'd like to think it wasn't sitting there, leaking gunk for the last month or two, but who knows.

Such nice men. They tried hard to wipe up the trail they were leaving on our light-gray linoleum. They waited while we spread a carpet protector (one of those things you use in your office so that your desk chair will roll smoothly when you're playing Jedi Knights with your cubicle neighbor and two rulers) between the kitchen and the front door, both so they could roll their dolly more easily and to protect our light-beige carpet from the dirty black oil. Waited again as we cleaned the walls previously hidden behind the appliance and mopped the filthy linoleum previously hidden under the appliance.

Then they moved The Beast in and, yes, it barely fit. I estimate there's a clearance of, maybe, 1/4 inch between the top of it and the bottom of the cabinet above. (It seems clear that my days of cleaning the top of the refrigerator are at an end. I can't imagine how, short of taping a damp washrag to a yardstick, I can get a cleaning cloth into there.)

They assembled the shelves, declined my polite invitation to feel free to restow all of the food for us, and left.

The R.C. and I scrambled again, this time to get all the food back in before it all melted. (Fortunately, no raw meat or ice cream products were involved.)

We stood back for a few seconds to admire the spacious interior of the new machine before closing it up solidly and waiting for it to achieve coldness.

"It's frost-free," I said with glee. "No more defrosting!"

"What do you care," the R.C. said bitterly. "It's not like you ever defrosted it."

"No more defrosting," I repeated. "No more of the usable space getting smaller by the day as the ice pack accumulates on the walls! No more defrosting!"

"What difference does it make to you?" The R.C. repeated with even more bitterness. "Anyhow, it only needed to be defrosted two or three times a year."

I get no credit for my pain.

When it had been a while since the R.C. had defrosted the old refrigerator, sometimes I'd be hard-pressed to find enough space to keep my ice cream and frozen veggies.

Sometimes I would have to not buy any more freezer items because I didn't have enough space for them.

No credit.

______________________

P.S. Also? We don't move because of refrigerators.

When our refrigerator wore out, the apartment folks sent a couple of sturdy men over with a new one.

When you homeowners lose an appliance, you have to go and buy it and even if someone delivers, you have to uninstall your old one and reinstall your new one, or pay someone extra to do it. We stood around and made fun of the maintenance guy who almost got stuck behind The Beast after plugging it in.