Mystery of the Sounds of Falling Ice

Two days ago, while watching TV downstairs, I heard a strange sound.  It sounded like falling ice cubes.  You know the sound.....it's the sound your automatic icemaker makes when a new batch of ice falls into the holder.  It sounded like it was coming from the unfinished part of our basement but we don't have a refrigerator down there.  Hmmm!

I had the Commander investigate.  He poked his head into the unfinished side and didn't see anything amiss.  He went upstairs and looked around.  Nothing!  So down he came and we continued to watch our show.  I still heard that sound a few times and then nothing.

Last evening, as we were preparing to head upstairs to bed, the Commander went to get some English muffins out of the freezer to take upstairs.

"Dee, were you drying something on top of the freezer?" he called.

I walked over.  "No. Why?" I asked.

"When I opened the freezer, a lot of water ran down onto the floor," he replied.

I opened the freezer top and water started to pour down the back of the freezer.  "Holy cow," I cried.  "I think the freezer has gone belly up."

We grabbed old work towels that I keep on hand and started putting them around the freezer to sop up the mess.  Wouldn't you know?  Just two weekends ago, I had been remarking to my daughter and son-in-law about this very freezer that we'd gotten at an auction back around 1992.  It had been old then but for $50 it was ours and it had served us well and was still doing fine in 2010.  I guess I jinxed it.

Apparently, the sounds of falling ice I thought I had heard was ice buildup falling down inside the freezer as the temperature slowly warmed up inside it.  Now I had big chunks of ice to carry to our basement bathroom.

Luckily, we didn't have a lot of food stored in the freezer downstairs so I only had to take 4 big plastic bags full of food to the trash cans.  My muscles got a work-out today.

After everything was out, I grabbed some more towels and tried to soak up the remaining water that was standing in the bottom of the freezer.   Ugh!  Now I just have to let it dry out, wash a bunch of towels, wash some food containers, and let the concrete floor dry out.

And through all this, there is one thought that keeps nagging at me.  The afternoon before we heard the "mystery sounds," the Commander had brought up a frozen pizza for me to bake.  When I opened the box, the pizza hadn't felt very frozen.  I had wondered at the time why that was but since it was a new brand of pizza, I thought perhaps this was the way it was supposed to be.  Silly me!  I had fleetingly thought of going downstairs to check the freezer but didn't follow through on that thought.  I certainly should have.  We would have caught it a day sooner if I had.  However, I have to say that this freezer certainly gave us many years of faithful service.  Rest in peace, my old friend.