A New Freezer

It’s amazing what you can learn from a new appliance. Now that both my wife and I working full time, she came up with the idea of pre-cooking dinners. Her plan was simple, she’d make the week’s dinners ahead of time, then freeze them. The problem is that a day’s worth of dinner let alone a week’s worth would not fit in our freeze. (I didn’t mention the other problem, if it takes thirty-minutes to make the meal, then 5 minutes to freeze it, we’re not saving a whole lot of time when it takes an hour to melt the frozen block of ice. But, in mom-time, it seems to work out.)

So, we bought a freezer that fit perfectly in the guest room, right next to the wardrobe. My wife, ever impractical, began filling it with non-essentials like meat, frozen vegetables and that ilk. I, being the only responsible adult in our household, immediately put the ice cream maker bowl in the freezer. This was one of those new-fangled ones, you just pour the mix in and turn the motor on. The bowl is filled with frozen stuff (twenty years ago, I might have opened it up to see if it was just water or something else. Now I’m happy to accept it as a miracle of modern technology) and there’s no need for the crushed ice, salt or turn crank and broken wrists.

But the new technology isn’t what I learned about. I learned that everyone in my immediately family is, I believe the technical term is, whacko. I discovered this the other night while I was making the ice cream. Of course, I’d long ago lost the recipe book that came with the ice cream maker. There was a simple recipe that only took a few minutes. Instead, I decided to use the one I found online. It included real vanilla beans and cooking. After the second try (for the record, I did read all the steps in the recipe, I just didn’t think the order was that important) I noticed my son run through the kitchen.

Now, he and his sister often run through the kitchen. Usually I’m chasing them and they are screeching. But that’s not what as unique. What was unique this time was his clothing and lack of clothing. He was still wearing his shirt and underwear, but was missing his pants. I bring this up now because, at that moment, I didn’t notice his lack of pants. The reason I missed that was he was wearing a snow-boot and a sandal.

At dinner, I was too stunned at that moment to say anything, I asked him about his choice of footwear. He told me he wanted to match his sister.

“She was wearing your other boot and sandal?” At least that made sense. The fact that they had come up with this idea together sent a shiver of fear through me.

“Noooo, daddy,” my daughter chided me. “I wore my sandal.”

“And your brother’s boot?”

She nodded and gave me her he’s-so-cute-when-he-asks-dumb-questions look.

Now, I’ve known about the healing properties of magnets and felt their effect first hand. Several years ago, my wife’s mother got me a knee brace with magnets and suggested I try it. (After four knee operations, I figured it was worth a try. Every time I go to the doctor I end up getting cut open, so I’ve sworn off doctors. I can honestly say that the magnets had an affect. It took two weeks before I could walk without a limp.)

The other night, I was getting the kids’ lunches ready. (In order to make the mornings a little more tolerable, I get their clothes out and the lunches ready the night before. That gives me ten more minutes to drink coffee before dropping them off at school.) I went to our new freezer to get their juice boxes and was rather surprised to find we had bought a dual-use freezer. What is a dual-use freezer? I’m not sure, but I do know that you should only put food-type products in the freezer. (Ok, I did put a hard drive in the freezer, but that was only after the computer it was in fell off a shelf and knocked something loose. I was hoping that when it froze, everything would expand/contract enough to get one more use out of it and copy the data off.) At first, I was sure there was a good reason my wife had put her suit jacket in the freezer. After all, it was right next to the wardrobe, maybe she go confused.

Then I remembered the kids in their sandals and my son’s boots and the magnets in the knee brace. I’m calling to have them pickup the freezer tomorrow, hopefully sanity will return too.