One of the things my husband likes to do is to cook all the sausages in the packet, wrap the uneaten remainders in foil and then leave them in the fridge. After about a month, I casually ask him what he plans to do with the sausages. His inevitable reply is “Oh yes. They should be ready now”, after which he puts them in the bin.
Recently, however, I’ve had to concede that at least the sausages fit in a bin – unlike the deep freezer, that is.
The sad and sorry story of the deep freezer’s demise goes something like this: our washing machine died in the arse on the first day of the school holidays, as washing machines are prone to do because they are Satan’s white goods of choice. When the guy came to look at the washing machine, the deep freezer got accidentally unplugged and, because I was out of the house for the weekend (and therefore wasn’t having to retrieve items from the freezer’s depths Every. Five. Minutes), my husband didn’t realise the error for a number of days. By which time, most of the once-frozen contents of the freezer were on their way to being well and truly “ready”.
My husband was philosophical about it. We’d been thinking of decommissioning the deep freezer anyway, so now was as good a time as any, he reasoned.
I was less philosophical and more shouty about it, mostly since the task of cleaning out the stupid thing fell upon me. It must be said, though, that I worked swiftly, without complaint (much). But because I’m what’s technically known as a ‘short arse’, I could only clean it out to a point. Alas, those rogue fish fingers and pools of melted ice cream scunge lining the bottom surface were just out of my reach. The only way I could possibly finish the job was either to lower my body in head first, using an elaborate system of levers and pulleys, OR to pull the whole thing onto its side and crawl in like some kind of dog. Neither was an attractive prospect.
My husband, seeing my problem, gallantly announced “Don’t worry about that! I’ll deal with it this afternoon.”
Of course, over two weeks have now passed and the freezer remains untouched. I think my husband is waiting until the micro ecosystem inside is “ready” and the microbes have evolved enough to have discovered penicillin and be able to kill themselves.
For my part, I am growing increasingly nervous. It’s like a time capsule gone terribly wrong and I’m worried that when it finally is opened, it will be just like that scene from Raiders Of The Lost Ark when the Nazis open the ark and all get melty faces. Who knows what horrors it will unleash? I mean, for one thing, my husband could end up like Indiana Jones with a mid-life critical earring and a wife 25 years his junior. Oh, the horror.
I so need a deep freeze. We only have the fridge one and it is always choccas. Plus, a beer exploded in there over a year ago and I still find golden nectar on my meat packages from time to time.
Let’s hope, this week is the week x
Pssst…. You wanna deep freezer? We’re selling one very very cheap in a “as is” condition…
I don’t even want to think about the state of that freezer. Be thankful you’re a short arse. Even if it goes on for months, it can’t possibly come down to you. But the mid-life earring – now that is a real worry.
I wonder if there is an midlife crisis immunisation program?
Incidentally, I saw ‘Shrek Forever After’ the other day. If Shrek wasn’t a candidate for a midlife critical earring and a pair of leather trousers in that film, I don’t know who is.
haha your posts cheer me up no end!!! and I’m starting to wonder why the Brits assume Americans have no sense of humour (unless of course you are from NYC)….clearly very wrong!!
Thankyou!!
Thank you very much, Sandra. I’m afraid to break it to you that I’m not American. Or British. In fact, I am Australian. Not sure what reputation we have in the world for humour, since Paul Hogan (aka Crocodile Dundee) and Rolf Harris are our biggest export…
Haha this explains it!!!! I really couldn’t get over the humour, I was trying to undo all of my pre concieved notions!!
Aussies, definitley have great humour…I was bought up in N.Z……and dare I say it….. Kiwis are on the same level as the Americans humour wise, apart from Flight of the Concords of course!!
Now I can continue enjoying your post without the constant battle of sorting my head out…if that makes sense!!
Isn’t Fred Dagg Australian??? how could you forget him?????
Thankyou for the great posts….having two kids of 6 and 4 yrs….I’m finding your blogs a welcome relief!!
I am very scared on your behalf. Be strong, gentle woman; this too will pass…)
Either it will pass, or the freezer itself will pass when the microbes grow strong enough to carry the thing out of the house…
RUN! RUN for your LIFE!!
Our old side by side Westinghouse fridge/freezer combo died after supporting us gallantly through 4 house moves (one of which was interstate), but just a few days prior to our last move. The purchase of the new fridge, to be delivered to our new house, included free removal of the old fridge, also from the new house. Unfortunately on moving day the carefully planned transfer of items didn’t quite go to plan, meaning that we ended up with our old fridge in the garage, doors closed, waiting for the next council hard waste collection. I had thought the old fridge/freezer was quite clean (it had been in use despite dying a slow death for some months.) However, when the longed-for hard waste day came about, my husband was (predictably) interstate, so the task of removing the fridge to the kerbside and removing the doors to protect the safety of innocent passersby fell to my brother and my father. I was absolutely mortified when they described the odour and appearance of the inside of the fridge – apparently it was single-handedly responsible for the swine flu plague that hit Melbourne soon after. I was very relieved to watch the thing be munched up by the council recycling van the next morning.
I’d be approaching that there deep freeze with a gas mask and hose outside.
Eurgghhhh. It reminds me of the fridge in the cockroach-infested Bondi flat my husband and I rented a decade ago. The flat had been inhabited by backpackers who had filled it up with chinese takeaway but hadn’t bothered to clean out the fridge before leaving. Neither had the real estate agents nor the owners. And the flat had remained unleased for many months…
I still remember the smell.
Hilarious. Those deep freezers are scary places. Serial killers and psychopaths hide their cut-up body parts in places like that.
I remember once helping clean out the freezer of a friends mum for a garage sale. It was a known fact that you always had to check the use by date of absolutely everything at their place. Even out-of-date food was transported from house to house when they moved. Legend has it a pack of biscuits from 1964 was still in the pantry.
Back to the freezer. It was a cold, scary space in there. Unidentified food items were fossilized in the ice, along with frozen samosas, peas and paddle-pop wrappers. Then my friend screamed, a blood-curdling scream. She had ice-picked her way to the cryogenically frozen head of a very angry fish, mouth agape, very much detached from its body. We considered consulting an archeologist to determine how long it had been there.
Needless to say, I won’t be getting a deep freeze any time soon. Not only do I not have enough frozen food to fill it, but with two small kids I shudder to imagine what I could possibly find frozen in time down there 🙂
Very funny. But seriously, a whole fish head? Man that’s creepy. It’s the kind of thing my serial killing cat would’ve stashed in our deep freezer had he ever worked out how to open it.
At least you can claim greenie points for reducing your carbon footprint now that you aren’t guzzling brown-coal electricity to run the deep freezer any more.
Good point. However, the amount of deodoriser I’ll have to spray when we finally open it might make my carbon footprint yeti-sized.
My husband does the same thing with sausages! Only I am not sure where they disappear to after he has deemd them to be “ready”. It is a mystery too deep and terrifying to probe, much like your freezer.
And on that, I too am a short-arse and so managed to convince my husband that it was perfectly reasonable for us to spend double the money to get an upright one with nice little slidy-outey drawers in which to store all the breastmilk I’ve been pumping. The cost? I had to agree to maintenance being my domain. Alas, it is not a frost-free number, so the slidy-outy drawers don’t slidy outey any more and the baby won’t take a bottle, so all that milk is for the sink.
Freezer be damned!
Freezer be damned indeed!
Whoever thought of putting slidy outey drawers on a non-frost-free fridge? It’s like they were setting you up for failure. Sheesh!
ok – now let me work this out. How can I have ONLY just discovered your blog today! I love it and you are now on my blogroll. And you other bitches?? Why didn’t you tell me about NDM??
Obviously my PR people aren’t getting me mentioned in the right magazines… As for my readers, I think they must be like Gollum and want to keep me all to ‘themselvsessssss’.
I’m confused. I thought my husband was only married to me. And I thought he was the only person in the world who leaves things to “ready”. So either we’re married to the same whole-packet-of-sausages cooking guy who insists he’ll do it (but fails to add “when I’m good and ready”) or *gasp* you are living an existence very close to mine. Condolences, either way!
Condolences, indeed. I’m not sure we could really be married to the same man (Dudley Moore ‘Micki and Maude’ style) because my husband isn’t that good at time management. However, I’m sure he’d find the idea of having two fridges to leave his ‘sausage offerings’ in appealing.
And no, I’m not saying you and I are the ‘fridges’ here.
“…the idea of having two fridges to leave his ‘sausage offerings’ in….”
Best. Euphemism. Ever.
I also noticed that “Make Your Sausage Special” was coming up as one of the ‘Possibly Related Links’ for this post.
I wouldn’t be getting within a 1km radius of that thing when it’s finally opened. Uh-uh. No siree. I’d be VERY busy that day.
I love how my husband criticizes when I don’t get around to carrying out certain jobs, but there is glass in our french doors in the formal rooms that were purchased at the end of 2001, which he was responsible for installing (which he only did about 5 years after they were purchased – this is after I had told the glass factory that they “must arrive before Christmas”) and they STILL have the original factory writing on them that he has not cleaned off ‘yet’.
God love ’em, cos someone has to.
Five years later? I’d be rubbing his nose in it. That’d be one way of getting that factory writing off…
“As washing machines are prone to do because they are Satan’s white goods of choice” – great line!
I aim to please!
A fridge audit is required weekly and ruthlessly. Approach the freezer by chucking out everything at the back or the bottom. See the contents as the adult version of plastic eedy bits on the carpet. Do not look closely or allow any form of reverie about the need or otherwise for such things. Just lift n chuck.
Your military approach to white goods management is impressive.
However, there would still be those rogue fish fingers at the bottom of the freezer for all eternity – you know, because of my ‘short arse’ stature and all.
Eeeeyyyyeewwww!!
You sound just like me, a shouty short arse! 😉
Your husband’s approach to the deep freeze sounds like my husband’s approach to doing the dishes – surely if he fills the sink and puts dishes in, they’ll do themselves, right?
Sadly, I’m the one who has to fish all of the dishes back out of the cold, scuzzy water, when he’s made his escape to work.
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