Lucky Dorito

… but NOT the mold we found behind the wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom.

Nope.

Stop reading NOW if you don’t want to know the REAL truth. Because…. I’m going to tell you.

You’ll never look at me the same again.

The fact that I am a horrible person with a very DETERMINED stubborn streak will be clearly evident.

And…. although a teensy weensy part of me is PROUD of myself for holding out this stinkin’ long – part of me is mightily embarrassed to have to reveal the truth. But, since I shared the pic of my precious hubby, all decked out and ready for battle – I must now confess the whole truth.

In order to fully understand – you should read the following:

Originally posted June 21, 2007 (on my former blog):

Slightly Used Refrigerator for Sale: CHEAP

I swear – I’m always starting blogs with a confession of sorts…. and this one is NO exception. I recently realized a really icky, yucky, smelly, awful thing – that shocked and surprised EVEN me! So, of course – I have to share it! What else is there to write about but my own short-comings?? And there’s enough of them apparently… I certainly am never lacking for things to tell on myself! Shannon promises to harass me until I blog about it, so I might as well bite the bullet and go for it!

For Easter this past spring, I planned to make a big meal for us. No company this year, just us… but I decided to bake a small turkey anyway – we all love it, it’s easy and there’s leftovers for lunch! But I also thought, since I was making a semi-big meal – what about making a dessert for the day too? We rarely have dessert around here – so it would be a nice little splurge. I wanted to make a brownie trifle … (YUM!) and started looking for that trifle bowl I got from my sitter for Christmas a few years ago, with the tall straight sides, like this: But of course, it was no where to be found. Now as you know, I have a really lousy short-term memory. I was thinking, “Have I even seen that dish since we moved?… maybe its still packed away in one of those MILLION boxes in the garage or maybe its in the storage building with the other half of crap I can’t find….Hmmmm, I wonder. ”

As I was standing in the kitchen, being perplexed – Beebo comes in and asks what I’m doing. (She’s used to seeing me with a vacant look on my face as I’m trying vigilantly to recall something I should know!) I told her that I couldn’t find that dish and that I assumed it was still packed away. She said “But Mom, you made one of those at Christmas… for the party we had for dad’s office.”

“I DID??”, I ask incredulously… really NO memory of this surfaces in my head, whatsoever! “Are you sure?”

Beebo does her usual shake-of-her-head combined with a slight-roll-of-her-eyes – a look intended to give rise to the notion that she completely understands who is acting as the parent and who is acting as a child in this particular instance, as she says, “YES Mom, I’m sure. It’s still out in that fridge in the garage.”

HOLY COW?! It’s WHERE???? With FOOD still in it? As my brain is grasping with the idea that hold on …. we had that party in December, duh, for Christmas…. and its now… April…. oh my gosh!!!!!

So, I venture out to the garage …. looking at the door of the refrigerator as if there might very well be a creature from the black lagoon contained within it – wagering with myself a bet on whether or not I could actually OPEN the door to look inside.

Side note: In my defense, let’s just recall that we just recently bought a new stove and refrigerator, right before Thanksgiving (because the oven quite working on our old stove and we wanted black appliances so decided to just get both while we were at it – and moved the perfectly GOOD white fridge to the garage and got rid of the stove) … so this whole notion of having an extra one to put overflow leftovers in during the holidays was NOT my idea but the brainstorm baby of my darling husband…. who thought it would be a grand idea to keep bottled waters and extra drinks for the office party in, as well as some of the food if needed. As I cleaned the kitchen the evening the party was over… I didn’t keep track of what he put out there! Nor did I even think of it again – apparently!

So here I am in mid-April, looking at the door. Beebo comes up behind me and proceeds to laugh. (She might as well just hollered, ”go on and open it, ya big chicken!” Laughter worked just as she suspected, enough to bolster my courage to look inside - despite my reluctance. (Just so as to prove to the child that I could!) And, of course, there it was… glass dish with a green growing monster inside it… yuck! And also, what’s that beside it? The long lost glass 13×9 dish, which last had cornbread dressing in it (something along those lines might have still been in there…under the green fuzz ) …. and a few other assorted dishes that I hadn’t even missed yet!!! All looking like part of bizarre science experiment … ewww … an image I could have lived without – but hey, I look in mouths all day – how bad could it be?

Let’s just say …. it can be bad!!! BAD!!! I opened the door, peered in for a milli-second while holding my breathe, of course, and had the fleeting thought of “My eyeballs are burning, my eyeballs are burning!” Which… duh, they were NOT actually burning but have you ever worried about laying your eyes on a vision that would haunt you FOREVER?????? Yeah… I’m a goof, what can I say?
So anyway…. there it is. The trifle dish. Submerged in a plethora of molds darn near ready to burst the door open, one would assume. I told hubby about it that night… he said… “Well, you’d better clean it out.”
I was thinking…. hoping he’d offer to do it. Yeah, right… fat chance. I decided then and there, I’m not doing it, he’ll give in and do it in a day or two right? One would hope….Needless to say, I decided to make an apple pie for Easter!

And

just

left

the

dishes

and

the

mold

in

there.

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have been so bad – for a few more days, right? I mean, after three or four months of growth… how much can a couple more days BE? But here we are, back to the fact that I have NO SHORT-TERM MEMORY…. it all comes full circle, eh?

Did I mention, meanwhile, that we had a couple of electrical outlets in the garage go out last month? One day, plugs and appliances which were plugged into them worked and then they didn’t. A smart person would have maybe… checked to make sure that the extension cord draped across the floor of the garage continued to be part of a WORKING plug but… alas, I am not a smart person. Apparently. Because I honestly didn’t even think of it!

Well …………….. until… about 3 days later when I walked in the house on one particularly hot May day and smelled what quite possibly have been the worst rotting flesh smell you can imagine. IN. MY. HOUSE!!!  Criminy – what is THAT?? and all of a sudden, it hit me - ohmygosh itsthefridge! ohmygosh itsthefridge! I went out to the garage and like a BIG DUMMY – the first thing I did was open the freezer door – why???? Just to see if it was cold or not, I suppose…. Thinking it was EMPTY! You remember the burning eyeballs thing from earlier??? So I fling open the door – again, ASSUMING its empty – and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a package of hamburger meat- that was once frozen and definitely NOT frozen now - the meat inside was so black it looked almost purplish in color and the plastic that sealed the top of the WalMart plastic container was all puffed up like a Jiffy-pop popcorn!!! YIKES! YIKES! YIKES!
I slammed the door shut and ran from the garage like the devil himself was at my heels! When hubby got home from work and I told him about it, he said, “Yep, you really need to clean that thing out!”
ME??? No way Jose……….nope, nope, nope. I told Shannon about it that night and her hubby suggested I get it plugged back in – that would eliminate the odor. I ran a lovely orange extension cord out to it and plugged it in. And T was right, the smell went away! (Not instantly, mind you, it took a few days) Hubby relented later that night when I told him (begged might be a better word) that I just couldn’t do it….and said that he would do it on the weekend. I was thanking my lucky stars that I had gotten out of it and thought it was a done deal and I was OFF the HOOK.

But now…. here it is almost the end of June. 6 MONTHS after Christmas!! Extension cord continues to run out there, mold presumably continues to grow and heaven only knows what happened to that black rotting hamburger meat when it re-froze. I certainly wouldn’t know – the closest in proximity I’ve come to that fridge is when I taped hubby’s scavenger hunt clue to the OUTside of it this past Sunday!!! It’s become a battle of the “wills” between us. I don’t want to do it just because its gross and he SAID that he would!!! He’s not doing it because ….. well…. er…. no real reason other than he just hasn’t found the time to do it. Between working full-time, going to school to complete his doctorate degree and trying to be available as a dad and husband… there’s not time for nasty crappy jobs such as that one!! (Which are all LAME excuses, in my opinion! Ha!)

I have the time………..( but I’m NOT doing it!) So - just think – had I devoted the time to cleaning that nasty thing that I spent writing this dumb arse blog…. I’d have the stupid monstrosity DONE by now!!!! Please… just shoot me now.

*****

So. There you have it. The truth and nothing but the truth. Because I am stubborn – I let that nasty refrigerator sit out there and fester ALL THIS TIME.

I should be ashamed huh?

I did take pics though, being the loving supportive wife that I am… of my man and his mighty challenge:

There it is. The source of our battle of the wills.

He’s all dressed up and ready to go. (And just so you know…. the MINUTE he put that mask on, he said, “Luke – I am your father.”) (Good guess Jen!)

Yuck. But, hey, not as bad as I thought. Except….wait… is that something growing OUT of the dish?

Ewww. Yes…. it IS growing out of the dish! Blecht!

The black-purplish nasty hamburger meat re-froze. Ick.

Nasty.

Everything got trashed and my hubby used an ENTIRE bottle of Clorox Clean-Up!

I am so mortified that I shared that story. My hubby will probably not be too happy either when he realizes that I WON! hehe

I owe ya one honey. Really. You’re the best!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS