As some of you know cause it's been in all the papers our ice machine broke over the summer. It didn't break all the WAY just was barely giving any ice so when you went to the freezer and looked in hopefully you were like the little match girl dressed in rags, face dirty, looking up hoping for salvation and there were like two broken cubes.
It happened at a point in the summer where I gave up trying to fix stuff. You know, the austrians had just been here and I had worked really hard to make sure they loved america and left knowing they'd never have it so good ever again. I saved our country's reputation, singlehandedly, so when the ice machine gave me the finger and laid back on the couch continuing to give me the finger while flipping channels, I just divorced it. I divorced that whole side of the freezer.
Cut to four months later. I'm sick of having no ice. I call the fix it place we bought the fridge from, a used appliance store where you when you walk in there's like a cloud of comforting 70s cigarette smoke. I love that place. Anyway at first there was never any answer and I assumed oh man it finally shut down. Cancer had finally come for Judy the lady who never gave up on used refrigerators. But then I called a few weeks later thinking maybe, little match girl, maybe you can have ice again. And she answered! She wasn't dead at all!
So this was yesterday. She sent Luis to come out and fix the ice machine. I could have done some trouble shooting. Tried to figure it out. But like I said, I was full up on trying to figure anything else out. I'm still shocked that I can't fix dementia. So fuck it. Luis can do it.
A tiny man with a dirty navy tshirt and some bags of tools arrives on the porch seven hours after his appointment time. I lock the dogs in Emma's room to destroy that while he checks into his assignment in the kitchen. I go outside to clean up horse poop. My mom is watching Gunsmoke in the living room or really she is looking at her lap while Gunsmoke is on.
Cut to Luis is packing up his tools. He is smiling. He needs a shower. By the way. So here, look, he says. He disconnects the little tray top of his tools and puts it under the water nozzle like a trough to get a cup of water on the freezer door. He presses it. Water comes out fine into his little tray. Then he puts the filter in at the bottom of the freezer and does the same thing, pressing the lever for a glass of water. The water barely comes out. It's your filter, he says, pulling the filter out again and showing the nice stream of water again.
I knew it coulda been the filter. The filters are kind of expensive, like 60 bucks and I just got a new one in April, I didn't want to pay again. I so much didn't want to pay that I decided to pay Luis to come out and tell me we needed a filter so that I could now pay for the filter AND pay Luis. I think I just wanted someone else to do something while I looked surprised and then nodded my head understandingly.
Luis was reattaching the lid of his tools that he'd used as a water tray. He was wiping up the water that had been on it with the cleanest white towel I had ever seen on a fix it guy in my life. He opened the freezer door and said so it should work better with the filter. He gestured around at the let's call it disaster of haphazardly packed in food in the freezer. It's not that it's overpacked in the freezer, it's that it's packed stupidly and badly. Like if you took a rubic's cube apart and then jammed them in whatever place you could fit inside your shoes. I live in a youth hostel, I'm about to say to Luis. So much of my life is out of my control, including how things are stuffed in here. But he says first you just can arrange things differently so the temperature can be more regular in here. I'm like Luis, the temperature is not making the ice not work. The ice is still frozen. But I appreciate you freezer shaming the fuck out of me. Do you know who I live with? Do you know that a counter would never be wiped if I wasn't taking up space in the kitchen every day. Also Luis, let's talk about the shave you need. And let me go to your house right now and look in your closets.
Cut to today I ordered a new filter. It should get here before I ordered it because it's amazon and it's like they're outside just throwing shit at your house the second you order it.
I didn't even need Luis to fix it and I didn't need Luis to tell me my freezer is like the wilds of England before Christianity. The freezer looks amazing compared to the inside of my brain. Have you looked in there man
By tomorrow the ice will be flowing and it will be newly filtered Alaska in there. By Christmas I will have organized my freezer which will stay that way for ten minutes.
Also I appreciate you Luis, because you showed up, with a tool belt. I know I sound like an asshole, but really anyone who comes to help, like our welcome mat says
YAY you're here
please stay forever
