Ode to My Fridge; Oh Glorious Box of Coldness

I feel the need to praise my fridge. To cover it with beautiful magnets, to fill it with delicious foods that demand to be kept cold: opened Ecuadorian diary products (because they can be kept on the shelf until opened, don’t ask me why cuz I don’t get it either), ice, ice cream, leftovers…ahhh, frozen precooked foods…

Let me back up, before I get to my newfound love affair with my fridge, let me tell the back story.

I have been living with cold showers since I moved into my home in December. Until then, I was one of those pampered Trainees with a personal electric shower, and a personal electric shower in my “host family” home once I moved to site as a newly sworn in Volunteer. In December when I moved into my own home, I decided I would find some solace in my suffering and refused to install an electric shower. I am a Peace Corps Volunteer, I thought, I can do this. I am supposed to be living in the jungle, and here I am in this big ass city…the least I can do is take a cold shower. Yes, I convinced myself as I dashed into the shower each day, I am suffering. Look at me in my cold shower, a true PCV.

I did that for several months, denying myself many regular comforts that were readily available to me because I live in an Ecuadorian city bigger than my two American hometowns put together. A mop, a table, a couch, a spatula…Look at me living without these things, living against the elements; suffering, surviving. Yeah, well, that got old really fast. Old habits die hard, and I began to come to terms with the fact that Peace Corps probably placed me in this particular site (against my wishes, for I had pleaded to live in a small town near the northern border, though the volunteer there complained of “killer flies.”) for a reason. I made a table (not a dinner table, cuz lets be honest, I don’t know how to do that and I eat dinner on the couch). I bought a spatula for easier cooking (and a lighter thingy to quickly ignite my stove rather than “suffering” through constantly breaking matches). I have chairs, though I use them as shelves, and I bought a futon from a Volunteer leaving Guayaquil. And lets get real, I don’t mop…so the need for that isn’t all that great. The last major obstacle was the electric shower. I would mull around in the hardware department of Ecuadorian superstores, touching the familiar plastic showerheads, remembering the good old days when I used to enjoy showering. I thought about the common assumption that doing something too much made a person tire of the activity, and decided that showering every-other day in ice cold water was, therefore, entirely excessive. After one year, I told myself, It will be my one year gift.

So, after one year in an entirely anticlimactic event, I bought an electric shower. A whopping $9.00. I kicked myself for not doing it earlier. Silly silly early Volunteer, convinced she will find insight in freezing her nipples off in a cold shower. My landlord installed it for me the next day. Of course it didn’t work…I mean, this is Ecuador and that would have just been too easy. Not only did it blow a fuse every time I turned it on, it also sprayed the water about 2 inches away from the shower wall. Now I was really suffering, trying to shave my legs for a formal event to welcome the new US Ambassador to Ecuador, huddling inches away from the shower wall, showering in cold water from the turned-off electric showerhead. A few days later, my fridge stopped working.

Now, the fridge had been on the fritz for a while now. And by “fritz” and “a while now,” I mean that it had been luke cold since about 2 months after I bought it in December. One morning, I woke up and thought to myself, “The fridge died last night.” My epiphany proved true, as I opened the warm box in my kitchen that disgracefully called itself a “refrigerator;” my psychic abilities most surely gained from the last year of cold showers and months of flipping grilled cheese sandwiches with a fork.

It took the dead fridge to finally kick my landlord into gear. I had told him the shower wasn’t working, he had all but ignored my previous complaints that the bathroom light was on the fritz, and seemed amazingly unphased by the fact that pushing on the main electric breakerss for the house caused the lights to flicker. I guess my need to keep food in his fridge moved him to a more helping mood. The electrician came over, fixed the shower (hot water! Hot damn!), the bathroom light and the breaker box. The next day the fridge guys came over and took the fridge. I convinced myself that they were legit because the side of their truck had the LG Electronics logo on it…although copyright laws seem to mean nothing in this country, so they could have just bought that sticker at the mall. Two days later (yesterday), they dropped the fridge off. I plugged it in and it started making that (not-so) familiar hum. Hours later I opened the door and was further amazed at the feeling of cold air rushing out at my face. I decided to go out on a limb and fill the ice cube tray with water and see what happens. This morning I woke up to find 10 beautiful little frozen ice cubes in my freezer. Ice! Who woulda thunk it?!?

So, this brings me back to my first paragraph, back to my thoughts of wanting to love all over my newly revived fridge. Since I have officially admitted that Theresa is going no where (in self-identity terms…what I mean is that me as I am fundamentally cannot be changed by changing the scenery. Put me in the middle of the dessert and I will still labor over what to wear each day, wonder what my fro would look like if I straightened it, wish I could watch What Not to Wear, and chose sitting at home with a good book and a good cd to going out and being social-normal in the middle of the week), and that there is nothing to be learned in denying myself things that I want, have access to and can afford (in my current life, “can afford” is usually the determining factor in not getting something). In that vein, Theresa wants frozen foods…frozen precooked French fries, chicken patties and yucca nuggets. Theresa wants ice cream. Theresa gets what Theresa wants (but only after the first of the month when I get paid, cuz right now Theresa has about $10 to her name).