This Was Our Friday

Yesterday was just loads of sequential vortex fun, here at the house.  See, it all started about a month ago, the (hot) day of Zoe's birthday party.  I realized that our refrigerator's ice maker, which has been in service for five whole years, had kicked the bucket.  There were bigger things to deal with, though, and we haven't really had a chance to deal with it or figure out just what the problem was, until yesterday.

Shane said it could be as simple as the water line being frozen, so he unloaded the whole fridge and freezer, stocked our other fridge downstairs (the 30-year-old "beer fridge" that never has any beer in it) with our perishables, and unplugged our kitchen fridge to give the line time to defrost.  Since there wasn't anything else he could do while we waited for things to thaw out, and since Zoe was taking a nap upstairs, he decided to go to NAPA in search of lightbulbs for his car or whatever guys go to NAPA for.  And I thought I'd impress the daylights out of him by having the refrigerator all cleaned and shiny when he got back.

It started out smooth enough.  Both the fridge and freezer were empty, and my Scunci Steamer, a bottle of half-and-half white vinegar and water, and a microfiber cloth and a Magic Eraser made easy work of the spills and such that accumulate in a refrigerator between Big Cleanings (read: in the five years we've had it- oops!)

And then I noticed, sticking out from under the refrigerator, a ball of white dog hair.  Geeze Louise!  If I'm going to clean the refrigerator, I ought to clean around and under it, too!  So I got our central vac's 30-foot hose and commenced to prodding blindly under the fridge.  Then I heard what sounded like an area rug getting sucked up inside the hose, and I stopped short.  I also stopped because I suddenly had no suction, but I could hear the unit downstairs really revving.

A clog!  NOOOOOOOOOO! 

Well, I still had the refrigerator bins and removable shelves to wash, but a plugged-up central vacuum hose counts as an emergency in my world.  Otherwise, I'd just stuff it back in its cubby and forget about it until I have a big mess to vacuum up, and then---- no suction!  So I set out to try to find out where the clog in the hose was, and to push it back out.  I knew WHAT the clog was- dog hair!- because after my hose got stopped up, I took the face plate off the refrigerator grate and had a look.  It looked like quilt batting under there.  No wonder things got plugged!  Big wonder we haven't had a fire here because of it!

Shane still wasn't home- how long can it take to find stupid light bulbs for a car, anyway?  So I had to muddle through and try to figure this out on my own.  First off, I duct-taped all the Swiffer Sweeper handles together that we have in the house (3 of them), which got me a third of the way through the sweeper hose, if I was lucky.  I spent way too much time trying this tactic, when it dawned on me that since the hose was clogged with a batting-like hair ball, maybe if I sent a bunch of quarters down the hose, and shook it really good while doing so, the money would dislodge the hairball, and all it would cost me was a little dignity and some dirty quarters, since I'd need to perform this delicate surgery out in the yard, where I'd have enough room to really stretch out that hose and not beat up the floor while I flailed it around. 

In went 50 quarters.  I counted them as I sent them down the sweeper hose.  And I shook and shook the hose, making sure to agitate whatever was in there loose.  When I got the hose collected back up on the porch, I got all 50 quarters retrieved, and.... just some residual dust from inside the hose.  So again, with the quarters and the shaking, and.... same thing.  If that hairball somehow let two loads of quarters through without getting dislodged and forced out, it was a magical hairball, for sure!

I was starting to feel that sick, panicky feeling, though.  That meant the clog was not in my hose, but somewhere in the ductwork between the outlet in the kitchen and the vac unit in the basement.  And Zoe was upstairs crying because she'd woken up from a good, long afternoon nap, it was five o'clock, and she was ready not to be up in her room anymore.  And how could I bring my sweet little girl back downstairs to a house with a plugged-up central vac unit?!  And where was Shane?  Damn that car, and damn his cell phone, sitting and mocking me on the kitchen island!

Just when I was building up a good head of steam, I caught the back end of a bright snot-green car rolling through the intersection.  On a good day, the car is something-something official green.  On days like today, when I'm frustrated, the car's snot-green, and a big time-suck.  I have a love-hate relationship with Shane's hobby, in other words. 

But, I had to remind myself as he put the car in park in front of the house, it wasn't Shane who'd sucked up a giant hairball in the sweeper and plugged it up, so he didn't need me to start yelling the minute he got out of the car.  And he seemed to be in a good mood, which is the kind of mood the car puts him in, and I didn't want his trip to have been all for naught.

"Ummmm, I sort of plugged up the vacuum," I said, and proceeded to tell him all about my repair efforts.

"Oh, not a problem.  We just need to snake it," he said, almost cheerfully.  That snot green car has magical powers.  If I'd said this to him on a work day, when he hadn't been driving the car, I would have gotten his "Shane look," which Zoe also gives me if I do something she doesn't like.

Within fifteen minutes, he had the duct all snaked out, and the big quilt-batting-like dog hair ball sat in a big pile in the middle of the basement floor.  And the central vac hasn't had this much suction in ages.  And after I washed my declogger quarters, I've never had cleaner parking meter money.

But there was still the thing that set all this off to begin with.  The ice maker.  After we got everything cleaned the rest of the way up (the refrigerator and freezer are SPARKLY inside!), we plugged everything back in, and.... no ice.  So the thing is really, really dead.  But happily, Shane thinks it might be the sensor, and that with the $40 part, he could maybe fix it himself.  So there's one on its way, as I type. 

And just in case there's really no fixing the ice maker, we've already talked about what our endgame is.  We're just going to buy a portable ice maker unit to make our ice, and fill up the tub in the freezer, to continue with the through-the-door ice service we've become accustomed to in the last five years, because first of all, I LOVE my refrigerator, and I'm not about to go looking for a new one, simply because the ice maker, which is really kind of a fragile, pain in the butt little part of the entire unit, broke, and more importantly because we're afraid that if we got a new fridge, we'd end up remodeling the kitchen, which would make the rest of the house look shabby, and next thing you know, this house is gutted again, and us, the kid, and the dog are living in the yard in a travel trailer for the next ten years while we work on the house.

It's the way of the Sequential Vortex, people.