I couldn’t stand it
any longer. Our refrigerator, shared with our long-time arch-rivals Casa 6, was
ridiculously disgusting and had been ever since I’d arrived. Given that my
arrival brought to its conclusion a reign of several months during which Casa 6
should’ve had complete control over the contents of the refrigerator, it was
entirely clear to me that they needed to get their act together and get what
had been solely their refrigerator under control. After a brief debate as to
whom was largely responsible for the current state of affairs, the situation
was resolved. With great fanfare, they entered our house and pulled everything
out of the fridge and freezer and filed past me on the way to the trash can.
Having now worked with
Casa 6 to clean out the refrigerator, I stand as a testament to what was
discovered inside. I’ve attempted to document the information as well as
possible, but may very well have missed some items. For comic relief from the
pain and torture of this topic, I’ve tried to give titles to most of the items.
Without further adoing (or adon’ting for that matter), the refrigerator
contained the following:
1.
Mystery
Liquid Number 1: An ordinary-sized glass of a vaguely orange viscous liquid.
2.
Mystery
Liquid Number 2: A fruit-punch-sized container containing something that looked
like it might’ve been trying to pass as milk, except for the fact that it was
way too watered-down. It also contained many of those chunks, particularly near
the bottom, that are characteristic of less than ideal dairy products. Experimentation
suggests that those chunks had a consistency roughly of nothing. They chose to
disintegrate rather than push back on my finger.
3.
The Green
Bag of Death: A plastic bag with a bunch of green juice in it. The Casa 6 girls
seem convinced that the juice was at one point a cucumber. Brief observation
seemed to confirm the hypothesis.
4.
The Four
Sarita Containers (Sarita is a type of ice cream, but we use the containers
afterwards like Tupperware) Containing the Following:
a.
Pieces of
a cake that I tried making for Santa Teresita’s feast day (October 1st)
when all of the Finca came to our house. The first attempt wasn’t cake-like
material, but still tasted decent so I saved it. It reminds me quite a bit of
Nilla Wafers.
b.
Watermelon
chunks cut last night by Beto.
c.
Pineapple
chunks that seem to be past their prime. Not composite, of course (ha! Math
joke!), but rather about 80% alcohol, 20% pineapple-like material.
d.
Something
that could be taken for rice pudding or white vomit. As an aside, my opinion of
rice pudding clearly isn’t that great.
5.
The In-Flight
Meal: A bag that said Delta on it and contained within a Kit Kat, Mayonnaise,
and a half-sandwich. I know you are thinking that that has Casa 6 written all
over it, but lo and behold, Harrison (or Nils?) actually asked me if I wanted
the sandwich because otherwise he was going to throw it out… a month and a half
ago. I said yes, I wanted the sandwich.
6.
Random
Hobby Junk: Two different packaged/bottled methods of making cheese out of
milk.
7.
The Fuzzy
Multicolored Papaya: A piece of papaya on a plate, uncovered. Slightly white or
blue, depending on where you looked.
8.
The Fourth
of An Avocado: I didn’t realize how black the inside of avocados usually are.
9.
Doing
Mustard Economy-Style: A giant mustard container filled with, well, mustard.
Who would ever want that?
10.
Chicken a
la Manteca Flakes: A completely frozen box of something akin to soup with very
clear Manteca-like substances coagulated on top. It apparently smelled vaguely
of pollo (I wouldn’t know cause I can’t smell) and the educated guess offered
by several members of Casa 6 was that it was the chicken broth from one of the
recent Quinces. In my mind chicken broth normally isn’t dark green, but who am
I to speak on such topics?
11.
Mac and
Bleu Cheese: A very small container holding leftover macaroni and cheese from
when Beto and I ate dinner about three weeks ago today. I don’t recall it being
quite as blue or green before.
12.
The Coffee
From A Saber Cuando: The missionaries (dating back to my time as a missionary
in the late 2013-2014 period (shortly after the Jurassic)) used to make
themselves iced coffee by making coffee and storing it in the fridge. Yeah, that´s
right. It was still there.
13.
The
Cookies I Was Supposed to Give to A Mr. Joseph H. Pastor: Don’t tell his
sister. She specifically didn’t eat those on her birthday in order to leave
them for him. What kind of silly and/or irresponsible missionary wouldn’t have
remembered about those?
14.
…
So I actually got distracted for about a month and a half between
numbers 13 and 14. I have no clue how the rest of this list was supposed to
finish. You get the point. I’ll give house 6 credit for Mustard and Manteca
Flakes. I could even blame them for not having dealt with the random things
that had been in there for the entire time they were the sole owners of the
fridge. In fact, let’s give them all of the swing-votes of those arbitrarily
so-beaten-down-that-we-didn’t-really-know-what-they-were items. Sadly, it still
seems quite apparent that the missionaries were more at fault than house 6. Just
don’t tell them, or we’ll never live it down! Maybe they didn’t realize it at
the time!
Also, just to bring up old missionary debates, in my defense, I voted
against the refrigerator =)