Funny Guy Friday... I just want a small refrigerator...

     Funny Guy Friday is written each week by my husband Mark. So, I married a funny guy...
     Every ten or fifteen years you have to do it.  You don't like to do it. You don't want to do it. But you have to do it. You have to purge the old and replace it with the new. When all is said and done, you are happy to have the nice new shiny stuff.
     Of course, I am talking about new appliances.
     We did not intend to buy all new appliances. In fact, we were only going to buy a small refrigerator  to put in our garage for the overflow of stuff that ultimately lasts long beyond the sell by date. Kind of a holding cell until the moldy stuff gets thrown away.  Then we met Kim, the salesman at hhgregg. He was nice enough, appeared to be a laid back kind of guy... but then he asked a sneaky question that he probably learned at Commission School.
     Do you need any other appliances? 
     Do you think that you could have withstood that type of pressure? Of course not.
     Cheryl was first to crack... Well, as a matter of fact, our oven takes forever to heat up... and one of the burners on the stove doesn't work at all... and one of the other burners only works every once in awhile.  
     I chimed in... And the door falls off once a month. Our dishwasher leaks... and the inside is kind of falling apart... so maybe we should consider a new dishwasher. 
     The salesman asked about our microwave and we both proudly blurted out... The microwave is good; that works fine. It is not installed properly... and doesn't vent correctly... but it heats stuff up like crazy! We are good on the micro!  
     Kim pointed out that the microwave is, by far, the "cheapest" appliance to replace and that they all kind of last the same amount of time so ours is probably getting ready to break anyway, sooooo that should not get in the way of... A PACKAGE DEAL.
     We couldn't help ourselves. Basically, Kim asked us if we wanted to abandon our plan to buy a small refrigerator for a few hundred dollars and instead spend thousands for a complete kitchen redo and we responded with a resounding: YES, YES, YES... WE WILL SPEND THOUSANDS... YES, YES, YES... WHERE DO WE SIGN?
     We liked the idea of a package deal, but the package deal comes with the basic models. We did not like the idea of the basic models. We wanted bells... we wanted whistles... we wanted a warming drawer. In fact, our new oven is a double oven that allows us to cook two things at different temperatures at the same time... with a convection option.
     I did not know what a convection oven was, but I knew that we had to have it.
     All of this was important because one time, about nine years ago, Cheryl had to bake an apple pie at the same time that she was cooking a ham at... gasp... a different temperature in a... gasp... conventional oven.
     I was surprised to hear that Cheryl had to endure such pitiful, archaic conditions.
     Kim and I held her hands as she told her tale of woe!
     I tried to make it up to her by agreeing to upgrades on every appliance except the microwave. Kind of ironic since that was the "cheapest" appliance to replace.
     Kim told us that we were purchasing the quietest dishwasher on the market. I guess I never noticed the racket of our old dishwasher over my cursing the water leaking all over the kitchen floor.
     Oh and get this, we get a $150 rebate off of our BGE bill this month because we purchased an energy efficient refrigerator. Please don't tell BGE that we are putting the old energy guzzler in our garage, so we are going to be using even more energy than before.
     I really enjoyed Kim, who hit all the right notes... right up until it was time to close the deal.
     When I sat down with him and gave him my last name, he asked if I were from Bowie, and did I have a brother that played baseball. I told him that I did and assumed he knew my oldest brother, Joe, since Kim graduated high school the year after Joe.
     No, not Joe... do you have another brother that played?
     I do... Jeff and I both played.
     Yeah, Jeff. He was really good. Right?
     Then he called his manager over and introduced me as a guy that had an older brother that was a great baseball player back in high school.
     Yeah, he was good. I was All Met! 
     I had seamlessly slipped in the All Met thing.
     Really... what is Jeff doing these days? 
     Well, I can tell you one thing he's not doing. He's not dropping thousands of dollars here at hhgregg. 
     Kim redeemed himself by knocking a few bucks off of the total.
     Our next step, before bringing the new appliances lovingly into our home, was to clean out every corner of the kitchen. I suppose a dirty old kitchen with dirty old appliances is fine, but these shiny new appliances deserve a nice clean kitchen.
     You wouldn't bring new appliances into a dirty old kitchen would you?
     Of course you wouldn't.
     My first assignment was the pantry. No appliance is ever going to see the inside of that tiny cubicle, mind you, but we must make a good first impression. I love cleaning the pantry because every time I clean it out, I feel like I have scaled Mount Everest. A pantry has to be pretty messy to make you get that kind of feeling.
     After conquering the pantry, I set my sights on the old refrigerator/freezer. We had to banish the expired yogurt, cottage cheese, lunch meat, and salad dressings. Only the finest food and drink shall remain. Let me just say this... there is a problem when you cannot identify half of the stuff that comes out of your freezer. None of the mystery meat was going to have the opportunity to soil our new freezer. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why we had three bags of a substance that can best be described as a combination of cut red onions and freezer-burned spaghetti noodles. Not to mention the hockey puck like, unpeeled, way past ripe, brown bananas.
     Isn't it always the case: when you clean up the old stuff, it doesn't seem so bad.
     Maybe we didn't need all this new stuff. Maybe, if we just took care of the old stuff. Maybe, just maybe, we made a mistake.
     What are you kidding me? That is crazy talk. Remember... New and Shiny!
     After Cheryl reorganized every drawer and cabinet, we were ready for delivery. Today was the big day, and they... look... great. We could not be happier.
     Guess what we did to celebrate our new kitchen?
     Go ahead... guess.
     We went out to eat.
     Seriously, would you eat in a kitchen that recently housed a substance that can best be described as a combination of cut red onions and freezer-burned spaghetti noodles stored in the freezer? Not to mention the hockey puck like, unpeeled, way-past ripe, brown bananas.
     Of course you wouldn't!