Fort Baiffet

"May I have his dinner?"

Our fridge died in July. It’s ok, please don’t mourn for it. I learned from Kermit in the Muppet Christmas Carol that, “Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it. I’m sure that we shall never forget Tiny Tim, or this first parting that there was among us.” And yes, I looked it up, that is not how it reads in the original Dickensian text. (What, are you surprised I have a Charles Dickens book in my house? I promise, that’s the only one, everything else he wrote was the same crappy story over and over again. “Pip, how ‘ere you, Pip?”)

Luke, Mom, and Dad hanging out in a box - you might say, "stuck in a box" if you liked mimes. You might be (are) lame if you like mimes.

Anyway, our fridge which had been with us since the beginning of our marriage had passed on (Brenda notes that we haven’t had it since we got married.  I guess I wasn’t as attached to it as I thought.) To paraphrase a wiser man than I, it was definitely deceased. Demised. Passed on. Ceased to be. It expired and went to meet its maker. It was a stiff. Bereft of life. It rests in peace. It is now pushing up the daisies. It’s rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-fridge.

Luke makes good use of the box. What do you expect? He's only 9 months old, he's not turning it into a transmogrifier yet.

There was a small amount of consolation in this dire time. Fridges come in boxes. Big boxes. A large box would afford Luke and myself a new play area. If I were clever, you might accuse me of unplugging the fridge to make Brenda think it was dead just so I could get a new play toy/area. (You would, of course, be wrong, for as we all know, I am not clever.)

That bright, silver lining was blotted out later that night when we received our fridge. It did not come in a box. It came in . . . well, basically, it had styrofoam on the corners and came in thick plastic wrap (which is neither a fun, nor a safe toy for Luke, although I probably could have handled the danger.)

How cheerful was I, however, when before we left on our Michigan Trip that a frozen Marie Calendar pie (razzleberry I believe) in the door of the freezer in the garage was discovered melted and leaking all over the inside. We were headed to Michigan the next week, and decided that we did not wish to return to a garage full of stinky, rotted beef. Remember the beef post? So, we went and purchased a new upright freezer. When they wheeled it out of the back, a chill ran through my body! At last, a freezer size box. It’s been sitting in our basement ever since (the box, the freezer is in the garage.) I reinforced it with duct tape and some supports from inside the box in hopes of getting it to stand up unsupported. Sadly, it doesn’t. I suppose there’s a reason I teach history and not engineering.

Luke and his cousins up the street also make great use of the box. Ok, not really, they've only all ever been in it when they posed for this picture. However, Melanie was nice enough to come take these pictures for us, so I wanted to say something nice in this caption.

Anyway, I scribbled Fort Baiffett on the side in magic marker (Baiffett = Bailey’s and the Moffetts, our friends up the street) and it become a permanent fixture of the house . . . until it gets wet, ripped, or stolen.

"Pining for the fjords?"

Thanks Mel! Here’s her take on Fort Baiffett, by the way.