MaryJanice Davidson: My fridge tried to kill me; how was your weekend?

Thanks to my readers, we have a second house, and this weekend I went there to put out ant traps and think. One of my heroes is trapped in Venice, so I had to think about that, and we spied two ants when we were there last time, so I had to think about that, too. I also thought about how it's my fate to be cursed with freeloaders: ants, mice, dogs, teenagers.

When I got there I noticed lots of branches strewn about the yard, a harbinger of late spring. Just as autumn brings falling leaves, so late spring brings falling branches, no, wait, that's not right. Stop thinking about ants and the book, and think about why there are branches everywhere.

Thunderstorms, of course. OK, no biggie. I'd get in the house, lay out traps, think about my hero stuck in Venice, then go pick up branches. I went inside, reminding myself that it was a privilege to own one house, never mind two, and any inconveniences that came with that territory is well worth the—oh dear God what is that smell?

Unsuspecting moron that I was, I'd opened the fridge to grab a cold drink, which is when I realized the storms knocked the power out long enough for all the food to come to room temperature, then eventually freeze again.

OK. OK. No big deal. Certainly nothing to cry over. Wait, those weren't tears of sadness; the smell was that bad. OK, it was something to cry over. But the fridge/freezer had been due for a cleaning since ... let's see, we bought the house six years ago, and cleaned it zero times since, so ... yes, due for a cleaning.

No problem. I'd clean it. Then lay out ant traps. Then pick up branches. Then figure out how my hero was going to get home, since he woke up in Venice with no idea where he was, how he got there, no money and no passport. (In his defense, when he went outside to hail a cab and nearly fell into the canal, he figured out where he was.) And there would be ants in his hotel room, I figured. And maybe the little room fridge needed cleaning. Yeah! Give him some real problems.

I grabbed a roll of garbage bags and got to work. Given that we aren't in the house much of the time, we had way too much food anyway. Weird food, too. Why did we buy wine jelly? What was I thinking? Oh, right: Minnesota doesn't sell booze on Sundays. I must have been jonesing for booze I could spread on my toast some bygone Sunday afternoon.

Digression: I love living in Minnesota, but they need to pop into the 21st century. In addition to being unable to buy booze or a car on Sundays — and sometimes you need booze and a car! — it's also against the law to sleep naked, even in the privacy of your own home. I'm not kidding; look it up. My husband and I have broken that law, because we are rebels who never hesitate to stick it to The Man and also sometimes I get behind on laundry. Digression over.

The jelly had to go. You're dead to me, boozy jelly. In fact, all the condiments had to go. Well, maybe not all three mustards. Two of the mustards had to go, especially the one that was more petrified mustard than liquid. Not the Hershey's syrup, though! That was mostly chemicals, right? Probably safe to keep, I don't think it had any actual chocolate in it.

Farewell, havarti cheese with dill. Adios, summer sausage I can't recall buying, ergo it's pretty old and should get tossed. Buh-bye, half-and-half that was the primary source of the stench. See ya, chocolate milk that was the secondary source. Oh, and the gigantic bottle of Mountain Dew that friends brought and never drank, which we've been hanging on to because we feel guilty throwing away unopened beverages? Outta here. (Also: We are morons! We know better than to leave dairy products in the fridge for three weeks! Or at least I thought we did.)

Alas, I set the Dew down too firmly on the counter, because as I opened it to send it glugging down the drain of death it sprayed an angry yellow mist all over me. Now I had to lay ant traps, gag on smells, throw away food and pick up branches while dripping with Mountain Dew. And my hero was still stuck in Venice.

Never mind; back to it. I turned to go back to the fridge and nearly brained myself on the edge of the counter; who knew a puddle of Mountain Dew would make a tile floor slippery? "Good problems to have," I managed through gritted teeth, tossing olives, soy sauce, an open container of iced tea, an open container of chicken broth, a gallon bag of King Al's World Famous Sweet Chili (long story), a bag of potstickers. (I put the soy sauce back; that stuff is the cockroach of the fridge: It will endure.) "Good problems, good problems, you are lucky to be here so just suck it up and eee-yuck! Yuck-yuck!"

(Yuck.)

I hauled all the bags of rotting, semifrozen, rotten-then-refrozen, probably-didn't-need-to-be-stored-in-the-fridge-but-tossing-it-to-be-safe food out to the garbage, fought off the swarm of flies that found my Mountain Dew-soaked form nigh irresistible, waved away mosquitoes that found me irresistible no matter what I was soaked with, and staggered back into the house. Just like The Bride said once she'd gotten into the hospital parking lot, "Hard part's over." (She also said, "Now let's get these other piggies wiggling," but that's not relevant to this story.)

Slipped on that same puddle o'Dew, half-heartedly wiped up the mess. What'd I ever do to you, fridge/freezer? (I refused to blame the Dew, which had been minding its own business in the fridge when our appliances went on strike. The Dew is innocent! Can the Dew not have justice?)

I remembered too late I should have immediately unplugged the thing so it'd be easier to clean. The fridge was no problem; I cleaned the interior with bleach and water and curses. The freezer, though. The various horrifying liquids that had dripped down to the bottom had refrozen, and the result was something you'd find in a mad scientist's lair (Frankenpuddle!): a pool of thick brown ice.

Brown! Why'd it have to be brown? Black ice, no problem. Yes, dangerous on the roads as my father-in-law had warned me ("We could all skid and die!"), but I wasn't expected to scrub down highways, so that was all right. Clear ice, no problem, I liked putting it in things like tea and Coke and a Ziploc I could rest on my knee when it started to swell when I, say, slipped in a puddle o'Dew.

Brown, though? Urgh. Well, at least it was frozen. I could maybe pry it up and get it bagged before it melted and I had to smell it again. What to use, what to use? I didn't want to still be doing this in five hours, or even five minutes. Sloppy shortcuts: the code by which I lived. Maybe I could use the meat tenderizer to tenderize awful brown ice? No, I might hurt the freezer, which had proved it knew how to punish me. Maybe pry the ice up with something? Fingernails? Good God, no. Ice pick? We didn't have one. Hammer? Then we were back to the freezer wreaking payback. A butter knife? That might work.

It works! Yes! I can use a butter knife to pry up the brown ice, then remove the chunks with my hands and toss them!

Yuck, it was working, why did I think this was a good thing? Let's try that again: Oh, no! I can use this butter knife to pry up the brown ice, then remove the chunks with my hands and toss them!

And it only occurred to me after I'd bagged all the brown ice that I'd put frozen water into a bag instead of a sink, where it would melt, become brown water, and ruin my Saturday all over again.

"I don't know how you're going to get out of Venice!" I yelled to my hero, who'd been remarkably patient. "I can't even remember to throw ice into a sink instead of a garbage bag! You're gonne be there for a while, pal."

(We have understanding neighbors, who are now used to me screaming and sometimes throwing things at people who aren't there. My kids were used to that by the time they were a month old.)

Well, it was already bagged. Might as well haul it in all its brown smelly glory to the garbage bins. As to my other worries, they'd resolved themselves. Why the heck would my hero want to get out of Venice? It's freakin' Venice. He's staying put. And he's definitely cleaning the fridge when he gets back to his room.

MaryJanice Davidson is the international bestselling author of several books, including the Betsy the Vampire Queen series. She has published books, novellas, articles, short stories, recipes, movie reviews and rants. Readers can contact her at contactmjd@comcast.net, find her on Facebook, Twitter (@MaryJaniceD) and her blog. She lives in St. Paul, Minn., and has been sentenced to a husband, two teenagers and two dogs.