the big picture

When we moved here in July, the kitchen had an absolutely horrible blue linoleum carpet, along with yellow wallpaper, vanilla colored cupboards and lots and lots of pine wood.

While Alexander and I were baking in the Italian sun, my husband tore out the pine panels, painted the walls in a light grey shade and installed a fresh click floor on top of the old one. The new floor is a handy laminate that looks like slate but isn’t as cold. We live in a very cold country, so however much I love tiles it’s just not practical unless you have underfloor heating, which we don’t.

Anyway.

This Friday night our refrigerator died, flooding the floor as a goodbye gesture.

Shit, we said. Now what do we do?

Living in a cold country, as we do, we could save the food by putting it on the porch. So far so good. Then onward to the next question: Now what do we do? We had no refrigerator, the kitchen had turned into a swimming pool. I could literally hear the money we don’t have tick away with every second. We had planned to get a new refrigerator eventually, but not now, not like this, not on a Friday night. WHY God, WHY Universe, WHY??? Couldn’t we just be allowed a little peace and quiet, to be happy for a while, is that really too much to ask for? “Everything has a meaning”, what a load of crap, I seriously can’t see the meaning in all of this!!!  I cursed at the heavens in every language I know, diving head first deep into the pool of self pity for a minute or two. Then I shook it off and started to think about a way to solve the problem.

Let’s save what can be saved, we said, and began to tear up the floor.  Luckily the boards hadn’t been damaged by the water, so they can be reinstalled once dried.

Saturday morning the hunt for a new refrigerator began, not to mention the hunt for someone who could help us bring it home. We found the help, bought a power-saving no-frost fridge-freezer and went home to wait for the floor to dry. Things had worked out pretty well so far, but I still wondered what the meaning of all this was.

Well, today I tired of waiting for the floor to dry. It was almost dry except for where the old refrigerator had been, where the old carpet was still wet and bubbly, so I decided to tear it out.

This was when I finally got my answer: The bottom side of the old carpet under the refrigerator had turned black and reeked of mold. If the flood hadn’t happened, we would probably never have found the mold, but we would eventually have become sick.

All is well that ends well. The new refrigerator is up and running, the moldy peace of carpet is removed and the floor can be reinstalled in a day or two, and thanks to having one appliance instead of two (a combined fridge-freezer instead of separate units) we get more space in the slightly crowded kitchen. Best of all, I’m looking forward to a significally lowered electricity bill. Thank you, Universe.