I am making some modest resolutions for May. This is the time of year in which I am always most energetic; it's the combination of longer, brighter, warmer days and the predictable need for a reboot at the end of the academic year.
This May I want to make some music every day, even if that just means I sit down at the piano for 5 minutes. And I also want to take a daily small step to push back against entropy around the house. I figure even if I bail in 10 days I will have addressed 10 small annoyances that would otherwise have continued to annoy me.
Yesterday it was the groaning freezer. A week or two ago I woke up out of a sound sleep at 3:30 in the morning. There was this unfamiliar noise. Was it an alarm somewhere on our block? It had to be some kind of emergency, I thought. But no, it was just the freezer. Perhaps it was singing itself a little ditty called Pandemic Dirge or COVID-19 Blues -- it was not a happy tune. I was up for the day, it turned out, and none too pleased about it. The noise stopped as mysteriously as it began, but it started up again yesterday.
I thought it was the evaporator fan; Elwood thought it was a problem with the defrost cycle; neither of us knew what to do about it. Near the end of dinner I sprang up from the table. "No singing at the dinner table" is a firm rule in our family, but the freezer was not listening and suddenly I was D-O-N-E with the noise. I went resolutely to the kitchen and started taking everything out of the freezer. After I unplugged it I began unscrewing the bolts at the back, but I needed a little help with the stickier ones. We took off the rear panel and inspected the fan. ("Yep, that's a fan," said Elwood incisively.) He was skeptical about whether WD-40 would have a salutary effect, but he agreed that it couldn't hurt. So I fetched it and he applied it. We reassembled the rear panel and plugged the unit in again, and LO the noise was gone. Our fingers are crossed that it stays away.
HUZZAH and FAREWELL to Lockdown Threnody for Solo Appliance.
Today we are tackling the dishwasher, which has caused us a long string of small annoyances. For EIGHTEEN MONTHS now it has needed to be secured in position so that it no longer gets jiggled in a way that interrupts the wash cycle, and for EIGHTEEN MONTHS we have failed to complete this task. I think, fingers crossed, that today is the day. Step 1, the careful repositioning, is done. Step 2, the test wash cycle, is also done. Step 3, the screwing-in, is happening as I type.
I also excavated the stovetop today, a process requiring most of a Magic Eraser. When I reassembled it afterward, one of the burners wouldn't light. The igniter would spark and the gas would flow, but somehow they didn't seem to connect. Elwood gently rotated the burner top a quarter-turn as I was grumbling about this, and what do you know? It worked again.
"Maybe we should go into appliance repair if the pandemic kills our jobs," I said, and we laughed together at the idea of starting an appliance repair company where our MO is looking perplexedly at mystery parts, applying WD-40 liberally, and giving things a hopeful twist. Maybe we'll call our new business Fingers Crossed.
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