It must be time for the Permanent Fund if something big broke

I would be bragging now if I wasn't so pissed off.

Meme from the Hillbilly Hangout facebook page

Why bragging? Because tonight I drove 20 miles, shopped for and bought (on sale, no less), squeezed most of it into the Jeep and hauled it 20 miles home, by myself wrestled it out of the Jeep and into the house, unpacked and installed a new refrigerator in less than four hours. 

Why pissed off? Because tonight I drove 20 miles, shopped for and bought (on sale, no less), squeezed most of it into the Jeep and hauled it 20 miles home, by myself wrestled it out of the Jeep and into the house, unpacked and installed a new refrigerator in less than four hours.

It had to happen. Last year my grandson was born within days of the distribution of the Alaska Permanent Fund dividends. That's the check everyone gets once a year from royalties collected on the sale of Alaska oil. I accused my daughter of the timing being more than a coincidence. I mean what kid wouldn't want to be born on a day when grandpa was running around with an extra thousand dollars in his pocket? [ An afterthought four years later: I didn't think about it at the time, but this is an annual event now, his birthday a week after the permanent fund check arrives!!!]

Jump ahead to this year. Tomorrow the state is supposed to tell us how much this year's dividend will be, with distribution usually in the first week of October.

So, today, my refrigerator blew its brains out. All that was left was a condenser motor that wasn't doing any spinning or condensing but was making the irritating hum of a frozen motor, and almost too hot to touch. Of course two days ago I had packed a couple of hundred dollars worth of groceries in it against the next two weeks. I only discovered it when I went for a little of my no-fat, no-cholesterol frozen yogurt and poured it out into the bowl. Double crap.

I headed out for the store for some dry ice thinking I could pack the perishables into coolers and hold off for a couple of days. On the way, calming down and thinking a bit I thought why not get a refrigerator coming my way and still pack stuff in ice. Then when the store couldn’t deliver for a week I thought maybe I would buy one of those 7-cubic-foot freezers and still order the fridge. I tried a couple of more stores and then driving back to the first I thought maybe I could pack a whole refrigerator into the Jeep.

Well as it turns out, most of it could fit and I bought a couple of straps to secure it and headed home with half of it hanging out the back end of the car.

My back door is a straight shot to where the refrigerator goes, but there are several large trees out there that might have blocked the way. With some delicate maneuvering, and probably frightening the neighbors when my headlights shined right into their back bedroom windows, I managed to make it around the trees like a rodeo cowboy winding around barrels only slower all the way to the porch. The deck of the Jeep was almost level with the deck of the porch so I could just drag the fridge straight in through the door, stand it up and start the install. Done and done and done.

It is now happily leveled and ensconced and humming away saving my groceries. Mostly I just want that yogurt to harden up. And I can only lament what could have been if just once I got to spend the Permanent Fund dividend on something fun. Have to admit, though, it is kind of fun moving into a new refrigerator.

An Addition: If you think it's a joke about the Permanent Fund and personal disasters, my daughter posted this on Twitter today: @tjonesak Just had a difficult day. Had to replace the furnace so lots of disruption.