Reasons 2B Cheerful - The Difference A Day Makes

Its pool season! We need to work on our style. 

Last Saturday night I was living in the oven with a broken fridge and no shower. Well not literally living in the oven but it felt like that. We had a sharav heatwave with temperatures reaching 100 degrees F. on both Sunday and Monday. There were wildfires around the country, hundreds of people were treated for heat related sickness, and schools cancelled all outdoor activities. My fridge broke down, possibly in solidarity with the sharav, and the shower hose burst while I was in the shower with shampoo in my hair. Why universe? What did I do?

However, within a day it was all sorted with the help of lovely neighbours, a great mechanic, and facebook. So here are my reasons to be cheerful:

1
Wonderful friends and neighbours. Within an hour of posting about my fridge on fb one neighbour replied offering space in her fridge and freezer for our wilting food. Another friend phoned to offer the use of a small fridge which they could bring round. And another friend happened to have posted on facebook a recommendation for a great fridge mechanic in Jerusalem.

The irony is that the fridge mechanic, who is indeed a great fridge mechanic, told me he would never go on fb because he has no need for the whole world and his brother to know every time he sneezes and what he had for breakfast. I've given up trying to explain.

2
I went down to my neighbour below and asked if they had room for my new tub of ice-cream (too much to finish in one evening even for my DD) and a multi-pack of Actimel. Everything else was frozen vegetables that had already defrosted and fruit and veg in the fridge that could take its chances. They asked me what flavour the ice-cream was and as vanilla didn't seem to be a problem I took it down.

3
While I was at the neighbours downstairs (see reason 2 above) I mentioned the shower. They just happened to have a spare shower chord which they gave me. So the shower was fixed by me in a jiffy.

Just to explain. When you don't have a car, the 10 minute walk down the mountain to buy a new shower hose is not an enormous problem. However, the 15 minute walk back up in 100 degrees heat is not pleasant. And you have to either find that half hour on a work day, or drag your 7yo on the hike after her long day at school, or spend about 10 quid on taxis to buy a hose that costs about 5 quid. This explanation is just in case you don't get how grateful I am to my downstairs neighbours.

4
The great fridge mechanic agreed to come the next day - Sunday. He fixed my 24 year old fridge with a thorough manual defrost, including removing all the internal freezer panels to expose a blocked and rather filthy freezer element. How half a frozen Mars Bar even got through the freezer floor is a mystery to me. I should have looked for a due date on the wrapper - there's no telling how many years it's been there.

Instead of paying about 2,500nis (about 500GBP) for a new fridge. I spent 320nis on getting it fixed and probably chucked out about 100nis of defrosted frozen vegetables. I also ordered an 80nis pizza for supper on Sunday night because making supper was one thing too much to deal with. So all in all 500nis plus 30nis for the shower hose (about 100GBP).

5
Pool season has begun! We went for testing for group swimming lessons on Sunday but the tester didn't turn up, even though I'd spoken to him on the phone earlier that day. We didn't mind - an hour in the pool was just the ticket during the sharav and you don't pay when you come for testing.

So we returned to the pool on Wednesday and were tested while we got another free hour in the pool. Swimming lessons will start next week. Hooray!

I'm linking up with R2BC with Mich on Mummy from the Heart.