On Saturday, Sears was having a big sale. Their web site said they had free delivery and 0% financing on all purchases over 399$. My breakfast plans were cancelled and I'd just got paid for the first time since December. I jumped in the car and drove down there. It was time for a new refrigerator. It's been time for a new fridge since I moved in, nearly three years ago now. The house came with a Magic Chef refrigerator and it's both noisy and wasteful. Those days are gone. On Tuesday I become the proud owner of a brand new Kenmore.

The appliance department at my local Sears is home to a motley crew, to put it mildly. I was relieved of my money by a tall sixty-ish woman with bad teeth and shocking orange lipstick. I'm sorry, but the term trailer trash comes to mind. She was nice, helpful, and dressed in a muumuu. A nice Asian gent or a blonde transvestite could also have assisted me. Yup, you've got me right. Transvestite. As I stood there waiting for my instant credit check to clear, I checked her out. Tall, very tall, miniskirted, such long legs. I'd kill for such long legs. Oh, and look, such broad shoulders. And a rather husky voice. Oh, wait a minute...Sears is embracing diversity, that's for sure. It is, after all, where America shops. Maybe not everyone's America, but it looks okay to me.

During my short career as a manager, I went through some Human Resources training. Among other things, we learned interview techniques. And what's okay or not okay to ask in an interview. I'm pretty sure it's not okay to ask the candidate if she's a man dressed in women's clothing. "So, Amanda, how long have you been dressing as a woman? Are you in to dressing as a woman, but you're actually straight or are you a transsexual? Do you ever think to yourself, hey, I think I'll leave the house dressed up as the opposite sex today, like for this job interview?" So many questions, none of the askable. None of them appropriate. "So, Amanda, tell me, what's your interest in large home appliances?"

This morning I spent a good hour peeling those damn poetry magnets off the front door of the freezer. You know the ones: TURGID KNIGHT YOU BRING JOY TO THE TAWDRY. BITTER DOMICILE MUST I ALWAYS RETURN TO YOUR BLESSINGS. I have three sets mixed in together. Your standard poetry set, the Yiddish set, and the genius set, which includes words like expatiate and obsequious. I tossed all of them in a Tupperware container with the other less challenging fridge magnets. Pagliacci pizza, the Post Office, Toys in Babeland, some campground in Australia, a bug exterminator. They were in service holding yoga schedules, phone lists, and photographs of the family, near and far, to the front of the fridge. My favorite snapshot is of my husband, my nephew, and my sister in law, all wearing those silly nose/mustache glasses. It's especially funny to me because they're the foreigners in the family. I decided it was time to toss the artwork by Gabe, a young friend who stopped in with his mom nearly two years ago and who has since moved to DC. I kept, however, the picture postcard that came in the mail of a man I don't know and his small child, both dressed up as Winnie the Pooh and wishing me (or whoever the card was intended for) a Happy Halloween.

The interior of the fridge wasn't too bad, as I've only been home for a few weeks. I tossed the old Chinese food and an ancient jar of sauerkraut. The  nearly empty jam jars I put in the sink. That was it. Everything else sits in a cardboard box for easy transfer by my neighbor who's agreed to sign for and then escort the new fridge to my kitchen. I have be at work so I can pay for the damn thing.

I learned a few things about buying a fridge. It's worth it to pay a little more to get the super efficient appliance because you'll get it back from your lowered power bill over time. You want a well-insulated box and you can tell that by giving the sticky-outty bits a good squeeze. The Magic Chef that came with the house isn't insulated at all, which means that not only is it noisy when it runs, but it's noisy more often because it needs to run more often to stay cold. Split shelves are handy as are removable door shelves and bins. Whirlpool makes a quality appliance, as does Kenmore, though even the Sears/Kenmore sales clerks will tell you that a Whirlpool made Kenmore is what you want. Delivery and pickup of your old fridge are not included, but if you time it right, you'll get a rebate on the delivery when you mail the forms in later. If you spray the cleaner on all that spilled stuff in your old fridge and then wait for a minute or two, even that nasty fish sauce comes off though it's smelly as all get out. The side of the oven works pretty good as a holding place for the magnets and photos while you're waiting for the new fridge to arrive. If your fridge doesn't have a textured surface, you can write on it with dry erase markers.

Dry erase makers might be a better medium for poetry than magnets. IMPECUNIOUS PLOTZ, QUITE ABOVE LOYALTY. I wouldn't have made that up. I wouldn't have guessed that you can buy a refrigerator from a transvestite either, but you learn something new every day, unless you try really hard not to. I had to get out the dictionary and look up what impecunious means. It turns out to be the state I'm in after buying a new refrigerator. You hardly ever hear of a wealthy poet, though I think the people who invented those poetry magnets for refrigerators made a good deal of money on the idea. If I weren't feeling impecunious, I'd go out and buy a new set of magnets, one that contains the word transvestite. LANGUID TRANSVESTITE AMONGST APPLIANCES. COLD STORAGE IS YOUR GRACE.