Yesterday? Nothing much. Just fixed a major appliance—thank you for asking.

Last night I pulled a Tupperware container out of the fridge and allowed myself to wonder “Why is there a half inch of water collected in the lid of this thing?” Fortunately I know what to do in these situations: recite my self-protective serenity mantra, “Oh well! I’ll think about it later!”

Which unfortunately was at two a.m. When I knew exactly why there was a half inch of water on my Tupperware—a problem in a drainage hole which might or might not be in the freezer—and added extra middle-of-the-night bonus bits including rat intrusions, floor mold, and small ponds of active contagion. First thing in the morning, I would have to dive head-first into youtube videos, and stock up on Cipro.

I’m congratulating myself already. The last time this happened, I found myself able to observe a developing bog under the vegetable crispers and persuade myself that’s just something that refrigerators do sometimes. My serenity mantra bought me several days of peace until I saw water puddling under the fridge and souring my hardwood floor, which is blackened to this day.

That time I found a video about unbolting the back wall of the freezer and going at it with a hair dryer. The whole video took four minutes in real time. However it took me a half hour just to locate the correct socket wrench. My socket set is a jumble of sockets that haven’t lived in their proper assigned dimples for decades, and the little incised numbers on them haven’t been visible to me since I turned forty, when my eyeballs hardened up. But it all went well.

I got the back off, and I blow-dried the thing, and because I’d emptied the fridge I got everything cleaned up like new, and I put it all back together, and it stopped the drainage problem! No one could have been surpriseder than me. So this time I figured I’d find that video again in case there was a detail I forgot.

Not to be found. Found several that attacked the problem from the non-freezer side, and in a few different ways. One involved a drainhole in the bottom back of the refrigerator but mine had no holes at all. Did I need to get a gun and shoot me a drainhole? I kept looking.

Then I found one that required removing the plastic thingy at the top of the appliance, just under the freezer, and I decided that one was a winner because the plastic thingy in mine looked exactly like the one in the video, and our fridge is older than youtube. All I needed, furthermore, was a quarter-inch straight socket wrench. I don’t have one. I have the kind where you could come at the thing sideways, but no straight up and down ones. Messaged two neighbors; no one had it. Time for a trip to the good old hardware store (or, as I have come to think of it, my first trip to the hardware store).

Now I have my own nut driver, which sounds like it could be handy on a number of levels. I’m keeping it right on top of the fridge. When I replace this appliance, the only feature I’m going to look at is nut size. As one does. Screw the ice maker—I’m $7.99 into this.

I got started. I will be gosh darned if all four screws didn’t come right out, the little plug thingy wiggled out eventually, and—never a given—I even remembered to unplug the fridge first. And best of all, once I had it out, there was the reservoir that was supposed to drain, full of icky freezer water plus an ice cap, several blueberries, and a moldy blueberry jammed right into the nipple to the drain—plus a bolus of ick in the drain hole that I nabbed out with tweezers. My goodness. It was like looking for why the toilet wouldn’t flush and finding a raincoat in there. It was like finding a banana in your tailpipe. It was like getting a ladder out because your gutters are overflowing and there’s a dead beaver in the downspout. And only one trip to the hardware store.

I might have marched around the kitchen for a few minutes jabbing the air with a blueberry in my tweezers on the upbeat of Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, but there’s no video, so don’t even bother looking.