Part of the reason I've been a little out of sorts the last couple of days is that I've finally come to realize that I'm losing my refrigerator. I'm not sure how long it's been going, or what happened to it. You'd think a person would notice that his sodas weren't cold, because that's after all one of the most important qualities in a soft drink.

Maybe I just don't pay enough attention to what I eat and drink. But this weekend things started to smell. I had a package of fresh strawberries that were growing hair on them. I threw out a whole tub of soupy, stinky yogurt. Sliced carrots that developed their own slimy gravy, yuck. It's not completely warm inside the compartment, just not quite cold. Or not quite cold enough, maybe.

The thing is, the freezer compartment still works perfectly. If anything it works too well, leaving the ice cream spoon-bendingly hard. I've been using the freezer to chill my Mountain Dew before I drink it. Thirty-five minutes seems the optimum time, long enough to get it cold but not so long it gets chunky with ice.

This has just turned my daily menu upside down and inside out. If I can't start my day with a bowl of Raisin Bran Crunch in cold milk, I can pretty much write off the whole day. If I can't end it with prunes and yogurt, that means tomorrow is going to suck. Is it any wonder I've been in a bad mood? You can't blame me. I'm living on frozen food and dried fruit. And water, lots of water, thanks to the cooler.

So now the new week is coming up, and I really should do something about this problem. It's a short week, though, with the Thursday holiday, and then I'll be gone for a long time. I won't need to keep anything fresh. What I'll probably do is try to get through these next four days and deal with the situation when I get back from vacation.

Even then, I'm not sure if the refrigerator will need repair or replacement. Both cost more than I'd like to think about. I've had it for several years and it's been moved twice, so I might have been lucky to keep it this long. The worst would be to pay for a repairman and then have to invest in a new fridge anyway. I'm glad I don't have to think about it for two weeks.

It's kind of funny, but it seems to me that the problem might have started when we had the power outage last week. I don't recall any problems before that. I don't know if it's even possible that that was the reason, but if so I'll gladly put the blame on PG&E. Not that that would do me any good.