The Car and the Freezer

So the other day, I had a DAY. You know one of those days where you plan on having a nice easy day because you have to get up at like 3am in the morning and then everything snowballs into a big mess?

Yeah I had that.

What we had planned was that we were going to clean out the big chest freezer my dad owned that was still sitting in the shed. Unfortunately the outlet it had been plugged into had died over the course of the summer, and I did not realize it until I walked into the shed to get a tool one day and it smelled a whole lot more like meat in there then I remembered.

At that point I did what anybody would do, I found a working outlet and plugged the freezer into that.

Don't judge me, you would have done it too.

This would have been a great plan except for the fact that all the other outlets in the shed are controlled by the light switch by the door. You know the light switch that accidentally got flipped off sometime last week thus cutting power to the freezer AGAIN. So this time I flipped the freezer back on out of habit and made plans to clean it out because we would like to have it to store our food in.

Now to clarify we knew we would have to clean it out since the first time it lost power and that we would pretty much be making the dump run the same day we cleaned it out. However, what neither of us realized was that we probably should have cut power to it the night before we cleaned it out.

Ha ha ha! Hindsight you stupid bitch you.

Ahem.

So the next morning we leisurely got up, after spending the night cuddling with our sweet doggy boy who had just recently come home, gathered the necessary materials such as trash bags and rubber gloves, moved the truck up by the shed, flipped the power off and prepared to clean it out.

For the most part everything was going well. The top layers were a little stuck together but that was to be expected. It wasn't until we had emptied out the top trays that we saw the horror. Everything, and I mean everything, on the bottom was completely stuck together. Three layers deep of solid icy food.

It was about that time that we got the call saying the car was done and that the rental was due back this afternoon or they would charge us.

Fuck.

Now keep in mind we have a truck full of rapidly dethawing meat and food that we absolutely have to take to the dump because A: it will smell bad real soon here, B: we are going to be gone for two days and it will smell really really bad, and C: bears.

So pretty much Scott would have to leave for the dump right now in order to have enough time to get the rental back. We both stared down at the solid looking wasteland that was bottom of the freezer.

What happened next was the two of us freaking out and dumping boiling water into the freezer which didn't really help and then breaking bags of food loose with a crow bar and a mallet. Which was really not effective at all.

There came a moment when we were both exhausted and we stared at the bottom of the freezer and then Scott checked his phone and realized that he had to leave RIGHT NOW if this was going to happen at all. So I volunteered to stay home, dump the excess food down the bank by the shed* and finish cleaning out the freezer.

Possibly because I hate myself.

What followed was Holly using every science trick she ever knew. First I remember that air heats and cools faster then water so using a bucket and an old sour cream container I scooped out as much of the now freezing water as I could. Then I tried the blow dryer which did nothing, before finally wising up and putting a god damn heat lamp on it for an hour.

By the end of the hour I removed the heat lamp and peered down into what appeared to be some sort of meat and blackberry slushy. Unfortunately it appeared only the top layer had really thawed. What followed next was me using the crow bar and the mallet to wedge a few bags loose. Luckily, they were still frozen enough that I could use them as leverage, because scarring up the sides of the freezer would have been bad.

It was incredibly slow going. I had to bend all the way over while the edge of the freezer cut into my innards. The side which by this point was covered in who knows what, and the only thing I could leverage myself against while crowbarring was the sides of the freezer so I ended up bruising both knees. Also everything was starting to thaw so I was left scooping out a slushy of blackberries, venison and cheese.

I had also decided to cut all the plastic packaging off the food before dumping it into the woods which I should point out at his juncture was a fucking ADVENTURE.

Also, I became incredibly nauseous because the combination of being bent over all the way and the smell of meat berries was taking it's grim toll. I looked down at freezer. Even with all my efforts I had only cleared one little corner. Defeated I went and stood at door of the shed. How the fuck was I going to get this done in time? There was only one solution.

Anger.

I was going to hate that freezer like no one had every hated anything before. I was going to call it a bastardwhorecuntmotherfucker. I was going to think of every single thing that had ever pissed me off and direct it at all at those bags of rotting meat.**

And I did. I cursed and swore and beat, and I mean BEAT that crowbar down into the ice. At some point my fingers went numb and I didn't even notice. It became a routine, smash bag loose, cut bag open, dump and scoop contents into bucket, repeat. At some point Scott came back, looked at me and announced that he would get a lift to repair garage from the rent a car place and left again.

But I hardly noticed, I had entered the perfect point of mediation when all things are balanced and pure.

Did I mention that I was also wearing a white tank top?

I was wearing a white tank top, at least it was white when I started out. At one point I burst out of the shed, holding my bucket of meat, looking like I had just hacked apart someone or something, wearing bright yellow kitchen gloves that were covered, covered with gore,to discover that they were mowing along the road today and one of the flagger trucks had pulled into our drive temporally to let some cars pass.

Lets, just say it was not the proudest moment of my life.

So after an hour of fighting and swearing and not being able to feel my fingers and of course it started raining so not I looked even more like a serial killer, it was done.

Wearily I grabbed a roll of paper towels and gave the freezer a good wipe down and cleaned it out and then staggered back to the house where I took the greatest shower of my entire life and then spent the rest of the day wondering when the cops were going to show up and demand to know what the fuck I had been doing except this is the country so nobody gives a shit.

I'm not sure if this story has a moral, other then, don't let power get cut to your chest freezer. Or maybe, try not to act like an axe murderer around your neighbors.

Really, the moral is that you probably just shouldn't be me.

*Down the bank is still on my land, I was not, nor would I ever, dump even biodegradable waste on someone else's land because that is why we can't have nice things.

** I somehow never thought I would ever type this sentence in context.