Frozen

My husband is a night owl and I am a morning lark, therefore, our usual routine is early to bed for me and late to bed for him. I often hear him puttering around between the kitchen and his man cave in the garage after I've settled in for the night. A few nights ago, I awoke to a little extra noise in the kitchen. Further investigation revealed an unwelcome intrusion as my husband declared the dreaded words, "The chest freezer in the garage isn't working."

Apparently, he had reached into said freezer for a fudgesicle, only to find a puddle of brown goo. The canary in the coal mine had spoken. No more freezer. He didn't want to waken me (too late) so he started wrangling foodstuffs into our refrigerator freezer. He went to the 24-hour convenience store to stock up on ice for coolers and loaded them with less fragile freezer items. Thanks to my husband's nightly ice cream routine, the problem was detected before all was lost. That being said, some items needed to be tossed and other food, such as the baked goods, had to be eaten before staleness set in. Bring on the cookies and sweet potato bread.

The next morning required a decision with our morning coffee, to fix or not to fix. A nanosecond of thought resulted in the fate of our faltering friend, time to unplug. R.I.P., dear Whirlly, you served us well. Whirlly was purchased shortly after we were married and, of course, her only repair happened a few months later. Because my husband and I are incredibly lucky people, the part needing replacement was a few weeks past warranty so, ouch, another expense during the lean years. It was smooth sailing after that and despite being a little worse for the wear, she put up a good fight during her forty years of chilling.

Whirlly was home to countless packages of home baked cookies, bars and breads. She hosted containers of chicken soup, wild rice soup and vegetable beef soup, awaiting a rainy day. Bags of frozen pesto cubes saved their herby pungency for the dead of winter. Pork, lamb and beef kept each other company until it was time for grilled chops, lamb stew or our family's "comfort casserole." Whirlly often came to the rescue for occasions such as the annual cookie fair fundraising event at my daughter's school when twelve dozen pecan tassies had to be baked and stored for a couple of weeks. Umpteen bags of ice spent time with Whirlly, as well as fudgesicles, popsicles, ice cream sandwiches and buckets of Schwan's vanilla ice cream. And she never passed judgment when a stray package or two got lost in the shuffle and had to be disposed of rather than used in a timely manner.

When the appliance store truck "deet-deet-deeted" its way back into our driveway and loaded up dear Whirlly, I resisted the urge to play the theme song of Frozen but I did nod my head with a farewell of thanks. I hope her shiny new replacement hums along as well as she did.

Time to bake a few more cookies.