Appliances and other minutiae

Yes, I did mention the incredible spark-shooting refrigerator incident from late last month/year/decade (pick one). We packed the other fridge as full as we could, and things that didn’t absolutely have to be kept cold (e.g. coffee can) went in the pantry. Over the last couple weeks, we slowly winnowed out leftovers and I was starting to think we really could live like normal people who only have one fridge in the kitchen… then Mrs. Fetched caught the neighbor (who does appliance repair, among other things) and asked him to come have a look. It took him about 20 minutes to see, find, and fix the problem: there’s a rather elaborate wiring harness going into the door, to support accessories we never had, and something in there shorted out. He took the direct approach, cutting it all away and capping the wires. The ice dispenser no longer runs, but it wasn’t that useful anyway. Rats… I was going to try locating one of those old bread-making stations with the pull-out kneading board and flour dispenser; it would have fit nicely into that space taken up by the (now working anew) fridge and given us a little more work space.

A while back, the garage door opener gave up the ghost — or the “up limit” switch did, anyway — and we’ve not had cars in the garage since then. Mrs. Fetched happened to run into a guy who works on garage doors and the like, and I got him the make and model of the unit to see if he had a working switch in his bonepile; he didn’t. But I learned a while ago… if you wait long enough, stuff you need to come to you. Some guy on Freecycle offered up a garage door opener, but someone else claimed it pretty quickly. But more often than you might think, whoever claims something doesn’t ever come to pick it up, so I emailed the guy anyway and asked him to let me know if that happened. Sure enough, a couple days later he emailed me and told me to just come pick it up out of his driveway. Then we got snowed on and I asked for a little extra time, no problem. This evening, I borrowed a pickup truck, grabbed The Boy since his apartment was on the way, and we went and got it. Now we just need to contact the garage guy and have him come put it up. And get a couple of remotes.

Mason had his checkup yesterday. He’s continuing to get ever bigger (we know) and he’s been cleared to eat more than formula (cereal and veggies, no fruit yet) — big milestone there! I don’t know when we’ll try giving him anything, but if I have the opportunity you know I will get a cereal-spackled face picture. He’s been pushing the limits of fighting sleep lately, but when he’s up past 11 we have a pretty good chance at a full night’s sleep, hooray! We’ve had two full-nighters this week, and the way things are going tonight we might get another one. The Boy and Snippet say they’re going to start moving into the manor this weekend, which for me is a big ol’ pile of mixed emotions. It’ll be nice to have them taking care of their own kid, but there’s going to be no small amount of friction. Maybe I’ll get to do some more writing again; I haven’t had much opportunity in the last couple of weeks, but I haven’t worried about it too much because White Pickups is really slow going. The good news is that I have 5 months’ worth of episodes in the can, and I’ve started going back to fill in some details of the Sondra-Cody-Kelly triangle. The big issue is that a major change happens, but I’m not sure why. I know how the story ends, pretty much, but there’s a long stretch of middle/late stuff to get through. It’ll happen.

Now Mason is kaput, I hope until at least 6:30, and I need to get in bed myself…