Bachelor Living and the General Electric Pinata - A Brigid Post

To start this post. My husband is on the road. Or at least he was until you are likely reading this post. He's a mechanical engineer. Actually, he's an engineer/inventor that had his name on a patent or two for stuff you see in your home, all before he was 30. But if you ask him what he does, he just tells people he works in a factory.

But when the machinery/tooling he has designed goes funky because someone tried to"improve" it he's usually on a plane to one of many countries his company has plants in, to back-engineer it to correct it. I am probably not one of many wives that hears "honey, I won't be home for dinner, I'm on my way to China. don't drink the last beer, but I know I'm not the only one. But it's more work here around the homestead when he is gone, especially with a dog. With the bad knee I have a dog walker, so Abby and I usually do pretty well "bacheloring" it - hanging out around the house or playing fetch in the fenced yard. But Thursday was NOT one of those days.

For you see, Abby the rescue Lab can't eat grains. I found that out on the road trip from the crash pad where I adopted her to our family home in Chicagoland. I gave her a mix of what her foster Mom was feeding her with some food I grabbed at the grocery store.  It wasn't super cheap food (seriously, who names a dog food "Old Yeller" after a dog they shot for having rabies) but it did have corn and soy in it. Barkley could have eaten a tank and just gently burped but Abby has a more sensitive stomach. Think Poonami or Poonado.  I found that out on the drive.

But now  I've got her on a great grain-free kibble and I found this great store "Pet People" (it's a chain, check to see if there is one in your area) that has a self-serve grain-free bulk treat section. There are SO many flavors and shapes. Abby loves the bacon cheese bits, the liver bones, the peanut butter puffs, the little rosemary bones. You load them up into a brown paper bag and pay by the pound.

I didn't realize there was a cup of treats in the kitchen freezer, in a crunched up brown bag, we'd tucked in there and then forgotten, the majority of our frozen stuff gone into the chest freezer in the walkout basement.

Until I partially defrosted the ice tray.

Our refrigerator/freezer is older than me.  That's saying a lot. Though it does fit in nicely with the kitty-cat clock. Needless to say, it is NOT frost free.  After muttering numerous HBO words trying to get a single cube for my shot of single malt the other night, I took an extension cord, a hair dryer and got the shelf for the ice cube tray somewhat ice free - not great but I could get the ice cube tray out. (Honestly, it went well, picture scotch deprived redhead who hasn't seen her husband in a week with an extension cord and hair dryer in Wonder Woman pajamas, cursing in a combination of Scot Gaelic and Norwegian).

The rest of the freezer looked like Antarctica but there enough bits and pieces of Tupperware leftover food in there I didn't want to mess with it quite yet.

Until the burrito incident.

For you see, when I melted some of the ice on the shelf for the ice cube tray, some of that melted water dripped down and refroze to other food items below. Not an issue if it's plastic, but an issue if it's a brown paper bag of dog treats.

So when I pulled out my DIY chicken bean burrito in foil, which had frozen solid to the brown paper bag of the dog treat package - the treat package ruptured and dog treats SPEWED  at high speed out of the freezer onto the floor.

General Electric PINATA!

Abby was ecstatic as the refrigerator launched a cup of dog treats on the floor.

I had a big mess to clean up.

Once I got the remaining treats Abby hadn't snarfed rounded up, I shut off the power to the outlets in the kitchen so the fridge didn't try and cool itself in the process and got out the hair dryer and a stack of towels and defrosted the whole thing. When it was ice free, I added a lot of cold stuff back in from the basement freezer to normalize the temperature and then turned the power back on so the 60+ year old moter didn't die of over-exertion.

Abby of course, wouldn't leave the area for the rest of the day and evening and kept snooting the fridge then snooting me, wanting a reenactment of the Pinata incident. I was about ready to call the vet to see if she could be put on Ritalin.

Finally, she settled down after I gave her ONE more treat.

I will be really happy when my husband is home.