Counting My Blessings

They say that you become your parents as you get older... while I doubt I'll ever be as much a Pollyanna as my mom, it surely wouldn't hurt me to try a little harder to find silver linings in the problems that somehow keep piling up. Especially since, if I take the time to look beyond my own little home bubble, I know that my "problems" are not really worth complaining about at all.

Sure, the car looks a wreck, but the other guy's insurance is getting it fixed. The "check engine" light came back on with the exact same problem code that we just paid the dealership to fix, but it went away all by itself. My thermometer reads -19, which is practically t-shirt weather after yesterday. And I needed a push to clean the fridge and freezer, anyway...

Last night we discovered half an inch of ice on the floor of both fridge and freezer, with water dripping from an unknown source and freezing on items and shelves in the fridge. After several hours of mopping up water and chipping away ice (punctuated by baby-tending), I figured out that the mess in the fridge was caused by water dripping from the iced-over freezer vent. I unplugged the refrigerator and allowed the whole thing to defrost and dry out all afternoon/evening.

Honestly, it was pretty frustrating; my chiropractor is going to scold for moving the refrigerator by myself, I saturated nearly all of our kitchen towels by the time I finished, and the baby screaming at the top of his lungs whenever I wasn't holding him added a hefty dose of stress and mommy-guilt. We got the vent fixed, though, and have a shiny clean fridge and freezer to boot. I'm so thankful, too, that this happened during the winter: I just threw all of our frozen food in a cardboard box and put it out on the front step until the freezer was cold again! There is something to be said for having a giant freezer (that doesn't affect the electric bill!) five or six months out of the year.