My dear husband believes (and I believe him) that our refrigerator is about to go kaput.  This is not bad news to me.  I’ve been wanting a new refrigerator for some time.

I was put in charge of Project Refrigerator, with the request that we have a new one in place before we leave on an upcoming trip.

No problem, I said.

Hah.

First stop – our teensy-weensy kitchen, to measure how much space we have – not much.

Second stop – Consumer Reports.

I narrow down what I want to get – we don’t need a bunch of bells and whistles.  We don’t need or want an ice maker, we don’t need or want a place in the door to get cold water.  We just want a refrigerator that will keep our fresh food fresh and our frozen food frozen.

Okay.  Check out the Home Depot website.

Find some refrigerators that will fit and that are reliable brands and models; but they don’t have pictures of the interiors of most of the ones I am interested in.  I’m not buying a refrigerator without seeing the interior layout first – I might be dumb, but I’m not that dumb.  I’ve been in enough apartments and timeshare units to know that there can be a lot of variance in refrigerator interiors.

Off I go to Home Depot, to see what I can see.

None of the refrigerators I am interested in are on the floor.

Also, not on the floor – any sales person to help me.

I hung around, hoping someone would see a customer (me) who was interested in purchasing a major appliance (still me).  I even used the computer they had sitting on a desk (in hopes that I was breaking some kind of Home Depot don’t-touch-our-computer rule, and someone would come up an stop me).  Nope.

Fuck.

So I go back home.  Not happy.

I go to Frigidaire’s website (hoping to get a glimpse of the elusive interior of the model I am interested in).  Apparently, the interior of this particular refrigerator is a big fucking secret; and my compliments, because it is a very well kept fucking secret.

I go to Lowe’s website.  They don’t have a thing.

I go to BestBuy’s website.  Some possibilities.

I finally find an interior shot of the refrigerator (Sears) and it turns out, not what I wanted.

Well, fuck.

So I start looking at other possibilities (which happily do have interior pictures; or at least specifications that include the necessary information).

I find one I like at BestBuy.  I put it in my “cart”.  I go to pay for it.

Guess what?  The closest BestBuy won’t deliver to our neighborhood – at all.

No, I am not driving my Toyota Corolla and asking them to strap a refrigerator to my roof so I can get it home.

Back to Home Depot website.

I find some that fill my criteria.  Then start whittling down the list – won’t fit, not enough cubic feet, wrong shelves, no deli drawer, too expensive.

Finally!  I find one that is going to work.

I order it.  They deliver – for free!  We should have the new refrigerator this coming Thursday.

Oh, and did you know, that most mid-range, top freezer, refrigerators no longer have egg trays?

WTF is up with that?