CPR, Refrigerating Units, Gardens, Autumn

Our 20-year-old refrigerator, a three-door model I really like a lot, appears ready to pack it in. Can't blame it, I suppose. In these days of built-in-obsolescence, a major appliance that manages to eke out its life beyond the usual 15-year allotment, has become a rarity. The only thing I really hated about it is the interior appointments, the ones made of plastic. The metal shelving is fine, and the little bit of glass on the interior, but the plastic; I hate it. The refrigerator was a bare 6 years old when the plastic shelving began to look its age and my man-for-all-seasons had to patch it up.

Of late it's been groaning wretchedly on occasion, giving me pause for thought. I wasn't ready to replace it, not psychologically. Of course no refrigerator should freeze tender lettuce leaves when they're away down in the crisper. And no refrigerator is really expected to sweat it out during the hot summer months, dripping all over the place. All right, its performance was more than a little sclerotic. But it was when it began screeching and wailing like a Banshee that we got really alarmed. I mean, that's an alarming sound. My husband dutifully screwed the covering off the offending fan, and oiled it lightly.

No more screeching, (after having, last bout, awakened him out of a sound 5:00 a.m. sleep) but the rest remains; that this appliance has gone past its best-before date. Besides which, it is hardly energy-efficient. So off we went to look for a replacement. After we first contacted a nearby large appliance repair shop whose receptionist kindly ascertained that replacement parts were still available, and service costs pegged in at $59 an hour. So, totting up everything, we would be investing $200 - $300 to service the refrigerator that might just poop out completely in the next year. Why not go for a new energy-efficient model?

We did. It'll be delivered on Friday. How's that for speedy? And the delivery cost includes hauling off the old appliance and disposing of it environmentally. So that was fine, but I still felt a little discombobulated, because I'd wanted to get out into the garden this day to do a little more clean-up. While the garden, drenched, still looks presentable, we've got a week of overnight freezes to finally kill off all the hardier annuals that survived the week-end. And I thought how nice it would be to be able to get out there and work for a couple of hours, cleaning up our personal landscape before everything turned to mush.

It had rained pretty well all day, but for a short period when we got out in a light drizzle, to amble along in the ravine, marvelling at the continuing transformation in there, and the confetti-inspired landscape. We even watched as the sun struggled to compete with the scudding clouds and finally managed to light up the landscape in discrete portions through the length of our amble in there. The sun, it appeared, had little strength of the warming kind. It was cold, very cold, and we had to dress good and warm for the occasion.

When we returned home from our appliance exchange arrangements, there was a message from our granddaughter. Today, she told me, was the day set aside for CPR instruction for the grade 8 students in her mixed 7-8 class. It had been a good experience, she said, but she found it fairly intense, and alternately boring on occasion. It didn't help, she said, that her teacher had decided to bring the entire class into the school gymnasium where the instruction was being conducted, and the grade 7s - retards all, she said - were noisily rambunctious and as such, extremely distracting.

Never mind, I told her, be grateful that she had the opportunity. That experience alone made it worthwhile, and she'd be surprised how much of what she learned would stick with her. She mused whether the information would be put to use by those being instructed, whether, when faced with a real emergency, people would be capable of responding adequately, recalling everything they'd learned. And I responded that some people would be cool and collected, others would be like how I imagine myself responding, panicked and distraught on seeing someone's urgent physical distress.

She, I assured our grandchild, would be like her grandfather, a take-charge person, one who would recall precisely how to proceed, and do it well.