8:30 a.m. Pour a last cup of coffee. Sit down. Put feet up. Lift computer onto lap…and
ONE RINGY-DINGY
TWO RINGY-DINGIES
THREE…
“Hullo?”
It’s the newly discovered refrigerator repairman. Now that he’s on his way over, I’ve got to get up and heave around.
The endlessly annoying contraption has stopped making its buzzing noise. I will say that its motor runs pretty loud, far more so than any previous fridge in living memory. It’s probably supposed to make the roaring noise it’s presently emitting. But… that is different from the rattling and the buzzing.
Okay, here he is: dog is barking him up the front sidewalk…
***
You know the outcome, right?
The minute he walked in the door, the damn thing quit buzzing!!!!
He must think I’m a nut case.
And…
Betcha know what happened next, eh?
The minute he drove off down the street: BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Yeah.
*********
What to do, what to do?
Welp… I walked up to the thing and gave it a SHOVE! And forthwith it stopped vibrating.
No kidding.
Well, on the bright side: the repairman was about the cutest young fella I’ve ever seen. That was delightful. 😀
On the “meanwhile” side… Arrrghhhhhhh!
I guess what to do is wait another two or three days and see if it eventually quits vibrating. Then, if the noise continues, schlep up to Home Depot — where they DO stand by their goods — and buy another fridge in some other brand.
Since no one will take this thing as a donation, the options for dealing with it are..
a) to move the table holding the washday gear and assorted junk out of the garage, put the rattler in that space, and use it as a storage bin; or…
b) to have Gerardo haul the thing off to the dump.
In either event, I’ll have to pony up another thousand bucks for another fridge.
Can you believe this?
Life in the 20th Century: ain’t it grand?
So where was I, in my infinitely more worrisome rumination? Yes: my son, and his buddy. And…the asbestos issue…
My son has a lifelong pal with whom he has remained in touch over all these years. They went to grade school and high school together; then off to different colleges. Eventually pal married a lovely young woman, and they moved back to the Midwest — Michigan, I believe — where her mother and extended family still live.
Everyone here missed them, of course. But so be it: life in Today’s Modern Times. They’ve been living back there for several years, raising a lovely family and generally living the Good Life.
However. Recently the pal was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a spectacularly deadly visceral cancer. And, interestingly, it’s caused by exposure to asbestos, which was used in structures built in the 1950s and 60s around here. And…they both went to the same schools, built in that time period. And they both lived in the same type of housing, built in North Central Phoenix during…yes!…the same time period.
You realize what that means… If Best Buddy developed a cancer resulting from environmental conditions, M’hijito is at risk of developing the same cancer. Or one like it.
Wondrous: something new to worry about! Don’t we all need some more o’that?