Cheese and the Fridge

I left an adventure off the books in my last post and Cheese was all over it. I will recount the tale of Cheese and the Fridge now. A harrowing tale of a young man's battle to overcome his fears and triumph. Let me set the scene, no, let me give context. So as I mentioned, Brown and She purchased a house. An older home to be sure, it lacked any kind of appliance for food preparation when they moved in. I count a refrigerator in that class of appliance because it holds and prepares the food before the heat comes in, defrost and all that jazz. So no fridge, no stove, no microwave. Being the benevolent entity with an extra fridge I graciously agreed to rent them my extra for a fee over an indeterminate period of time. Delivery was not to be included but circumstances presented that opportunity. As chance would have it, Cheese sought me out on the day in question, we hadn't seen each other in many moons and decided to spend some time together. Due to the Tugboat's lack of social calendar in recent weeks, may errands such as this fridge adventure had piled up. So in order to see me, Cheese had to endure these tasks. So that is the context of why Cheese was there to move the fridge and why the fridge was on the move, fridge! Brown, to his credit, offered to come and assist in the endeavour but I wanted to see what Cheese and I could do first, reserving Brown in a backup muscle capacity. I thought we'd rassle it up the stairs and twist it out the door into the waiting embrace of the 3500HD Sierra with duals that I had brought home. But this would not be the case. A lack of measuring before moving, which is a classic hallmark of a Tugboat move, and poor planning resulted in a 45 minute adventure in which a handle was broken and a door had to be removed. Spoiler alert! We got the fridge out eventually. Initially, I started at the bottom [(and now I'm here) (Chris D'Elia reference, not Drake)] and Cheese at the top. This was not working out for us. So mid move, Cheese literally slid down the banister beside the fridge and I awkwardly scaled the steps with limited room for feet. I had to use the boards nailed to support the stairs above me like a jungle gym to traverse the space without pushing the fridge down the stairs into Cheese. So Cheese was holding the fridge and I was pulling it up. We pushed and pulled it up one step at a time, stopping to catch our breath each time. Once we got it to the top, where we needed to pass through the door and up an additional couple of steps we realized the folly of my not measuring. The fridge was one half inch wider in the orientation I had chosen. That half inch made the difference. It wedged in the door frame and would no go further. We didn't have the room to twist it at the top of the stairs either. So off came the door and the handles. Cheese still below it, scared it was going to tip and crush him to death against my furnace at the bottom of the stairs. We rassled it out into the hallway and into the truck. Once at Brown's, he and I lifted it outright and carried it into the house with relative ease, actually disturbingly easily. I don't think Cheese gave himself enough credit and was more scared of it killing him than confident that he could lift it. I hope he learned from the experience that he can indeed lift a fridge up a tight staircase. The most frustrating part is that I watched a lone mover carry it down there with ease. Took two of us 45 minutes with much difficulty, swearing and sweat to reverse his efforts. I guess gravity must have been on his side, that must have been it.