I am afraid of our fridge! Confessing this is a relief - the secret is out, but my manliness is irrevocably tarnished. In all honesty, my manliness and self-respect has been severely damaged already by our fridge. I invariably have to ask Mary Beth where things are in the fridge and even then usually can't find them or get them out. Our fridge opens from the top. It has two doors - one over the refrigerator side and one over the freezer side. Each door is about 14 inches square, is 4 inches thick and weighs about 20 lbs. When open, the lid is held there with a long spring that snaps into position when the door is fully open. It's grip is tenuous though. A light unintentional nudge by a clumsy elbow or a lowered head (trying to see into the refrigerator abyss) is enough to break its hold and send the door plummeting to its closed position. This would be ok expect for the fact that the fridge is about 4 feet deep. MB can literally climb in and lie down curled up when it is empty. So you are beginning to see where this is going. Small opening, heavy door, a spring of all things holding the door open (what knuckle head thought that was a good idea?) and a deep dark cavity stuffed to the gills. Here's how the scenario goes. Let's say I want to make a simple sandwich. As long as her answer is that what I'm looking for is in the top layer, I breathe a sigh of relief, hike up my shorts, open the lid and hope that I can see it from there. If it is not on the top layer (about 2/3 of the contents are not so the odds are not good here), a little wave of panic rolls through my loins. I take a deep breath and prepare to remove the produce tray which is a small flimsy basket about 6 inches deep holding about 20 lbs of fresh fruit, lettuce, and other perishables. This basket is slightly bigger than the opening on the top, so you must get both arms in there, grab both sides of the basket, get it at precisely the right angle and slowly lift. As it is eased through the opening ever so carefully, it must pass the spring. One thing I have learned is to keep my head between the door and the basket to catch the door when it plummets. This happens about every other time I go into the fridge and I've learned that getting whacked in the head hurts a lot less than having the lid slam on my fingers. So I cringe and wait for the blow. Once the produce basket it out and I have regained consciousness, the next layer awaits exploration. While I'm less likely to get hurt now, it grows ever more awkward and difficult to find things. There is a glass shelf with a small opening that the basket sits on, and things are stacked in layers underneath and away from this opening on all sides. It's dark in there since my body is blocking what little light might find its way in. If what I want is not visible at this point, I give up. There's just too much trauma from past efforts. If I must push on, I lean over and start carefully lifting things out. A Rubric's cube has nothing on Mary Beth's fridge. Things are packed and interlocked in seemingly impossible ways. Let's say I see a small speck of a color that I know is what I'm looking for. It's one layer down and back under the glass shelf. Let's say, for example, it's a jar of pickles. I know there is a right way to get it out while minimizing the collateral damage to the order around it. I know this because she got it in there somehow. I study my options, weighing the risks and benefits carefully and determined to figure out how it got there and get it out the same way. Usually I now hear from elsewhere on the boat: "Is the fridge still open? You're going to let all the cold out." This typically leads to my fatal mistake which is hurrying. I force my hand through the maze, grab my pickles and start to pull. The jar is moving toward me and then jams. I feel Mary Beth's eyes on me and I know she's getting impatient. I have to get out of this fridge! I pull. Big mistake. I feel something behind the pickles shift, then something under the jar topple. I'm working blind now, and dripping sweat in spite of having much of myself in the fridge. At least I almost have the pickles out. I decide to remove them and then go back and try and hide (oops, I mean fix) the chaos I have left behind. I know from experience that I will never get it back the way it was, but if I can somehow stuff everything back in, I may be able to escape with my self-image partially intact. Things are going well until my elbow scrapes the awful spring holding the lid open. It slams on my head, scrapes over my scalp and then knocks the pickles out of my hand. As I collapse on the floor I hear the sound of a jar of pickles shattering deep in the fridge. I've lost the battle again.
P.S. I'll post some fridge pictures once we have some decent connectivity.