I HAVE A REFRIGERATOR

One week and one day after my refrigerator went out, I finally have it repaired and cooling once again.  We dropped it off this morning at the service department at Cullum and Maxey and returned to our campsite to wait.  That worked out pretty well last week and it did again today.  However, today we had a much longer wait and we were all very tired of waiting by the time our Montana was ready to pick up.

We managed to occupy ourselves for the day—Gene on the phone much of the time with work and I read.  Peanut was happy to stay in his carrier, but he did get some outdoor time.  He was far too excited (or maybe he was nervous) to take a nap.  Tonight, after his dinner, he went on his own up to the bed where he could finally have some peace and quiet.  Bless his heart, he has put up with a lot the past couple weeks with the trailer in the shop on 3 different days plus the carpet cleaning day.  We are all pretty wore out by it and are hoping things will now settle down and we can get on with what we came here to do.  We do have a list of good stuff from all these repairs—the slides work, the refrigerator works, the carpets are pretty, and Gene has had so much practice backing into this site that today he did it the first time.  He allowed as how he would just back the trailer to Cullum and Maxey if we have another repair.

I stayed up late last night watching election coverage and have an early day tomorrow—so guess what, folks, I’m going to bed early.  My mama would call it going to bed with the chickens.

Extra Storage in the Refrigerator

Today was refrigerator repair day.  We were to bring our trailer to Cullum and Maxey when they opened the gate at 7:45.  We were ready.  Gene drug himself out of bed practically in the middle of the night, disconnected all our life support lines and was ready to hitch up before the end of his first cup of coffee.  We pulled out of our site lamenting that we would have to back into it again and parked up at the head of the campground driveway with an eye on the gate at Cullum and Maxey.  Gene went in to announce our arrival, expecting to be told to pull into a service bay.  Instead, he was asked to unhitch right where we were.  That was fine, but it did cause us to wonder, if they didn’t need access to the stuff in the service area, why they couldn’t have come next door to us.  After all, we were just on the other side of the fence.  Oh well, I’m thinking good thoughts tonight so I’m not going to dwell on that little tidbit.

We had debated what to do after dropping off the trailer.  They had told us it would take all day.  That’s a problem with Peanut.  We finally decided we would just spend the day at our campsite.  We had water and electricity and the bathroom was close.  The weather was suppose to be great.  So we gathered enough books, computers, knitting, and sudoku to keep us busy all day.  I dug around in the closet and found Peanut’s harness and leach.  After dropping the trailer off, we came back to wait out the day at our site.  At first it was too cold to sit outside, but we were perfectly content in the truck.  Gene had a little work to do and I was starting a new book.  After about an hour we decided to go downtown to pick up our mail and get a couple more boxes from the storage room.

Enroute, we got the news about the refrigerator.  It wasn’t a simple fix.  The cooling system had gone out—about the worst thing it could be.  They were trying to get in touch with someone at Dometic (the manufacturer) regarding our warranty.  In any case, they couldn’t do anything else today, so we could pick up our home.  By the time we got back to the dealership, they had gotten word that our warranty would cover the nearly $1000 part, but we would have to pay the $500 labor charge.  We are so happy!  If Dometic had not given us the part, we would have bought a new refrigerator for $1400 rather than pay to have this one fixed for $1500.  Once again, God was watching over us.  The refrigerator was on a 3 year warranty which expires in about 2 weeks.

I spent the afternoon getting things back in order again and I brought back inside all that stuff I had gathered up to keep us occupied during the day.  Then I went through the cooler to try to get a little better organized with that.  Dometic was supposed to ship the part today to arrive tomorrow, but I really don’t have much hope for that happening.  I fully expect it to be Tuesday or Wednesday before we can get the repair done.  That’s a long time without a refrigerator. An organized cooler will help keep me from going crazy with this.  I also made cupcakes this afternoon.  That unused space in the refrigerator turned out to be a perfect spot to store those sweet treats. By the time our part comes in, no telling what I’ll be using that space for.

It looks like tomorrow I am going to be cooking pork chops and chicken.

Good News and Bad News

Peanut got up closer to 6 than to 5, which is good news since we are switching to Standard Time this weekend.  Finally, we will be back to our normal schedule in which Peanut and I get up at 5 for our quiet time together.  It is my reading and meditation and coffee sipping time while he sleeps on my lap.    I stumbled into the kitchen, stopping on the way to turn on a light, turn up the heat and grab the cat food out the coat closet.  I pushed the button on the coffee maker and opened the refrigerator to get some water.  The bad news is that the water was not cold.  I was not totally surprised.  On Sunday evening when I started to empty the ice tray I was totally surprised to find that it was not completely frozen.  At that time I assumed it was my old mind at work again and I had emptied the ice tray later in the day than I had remembered.  Since I was Ms Gad About yesterday, the refrigerator stayed closed most of the day and things were fine.  Last night when I got a drink of water it was cold.

Gene got out the owner’s manual and checked all the things the manual recommended in its troubleshooting list.  The good news is we are parked next door to Camping World on one side that sells refrigerators and Cullum and Maxey RV Center on the other side that repairs refrigerators.  Gene took the fuse out of the refrigerator and walked it over to Cullum and Maxey.  They checked it on their little fuse checking machine and determined that it was fine.  The bad news is the refrigerator is not fine even with the fine fuse.  There was nothing else to check in the troubleshooting list so I guess service is required.  The good news is Cullum and Maxey is right next door.  The bad news is they can’t do it until Thursday.

I mentioned several days ago that we had gathered up some stuff from our storage room to get rid of.  One of those things was a cooler which has been hanging around and never used in 3 years.  What luck.  Buying ice is bringing back memories of camping days.

We had invited Jack and Ansley over for dinner so I put the refrigerator to the back of my mind and went about preparing food.  I was actually glad we had somebody to help eat some of this stuff.  We had a good visit and even chuckled a little bit (a very little bit) about the refrigerator.

We have heard 2 bits of wisdom from fellow travelers this week.  One gentleman from Maine related the story his brother had told him when he was considering purchasing a class A motor home.  “You have to be prepared to write a check for $1000 at any time.”  Today when we were out peering into the back of the refrigerator our neighbor from Montana inquired about what we were finding so interesting.  He allowed as how the best tool in his toolbox was his checkbook.  Isn’t it ironic that just last night we were lamenting that in September we had already spent the maintenance budget for the year and hadn’t even gotten the truck tires yet.