Dreary early spring in Wisconsin.  Yes, a few brilliant days come our way but lots of cold, damp days.  Is this our British weather?  Julia wants to wear spring clothes, especially light jackets, but relents after opening the morning door and standing on the front porch.  I am no better, putting away hats and gloves and then retrieving them when I find myself shaking outside.  Still, my neighbor’s daffodils, the ones that are in her protected side yard and bloom weeks before mine out front, bloom.  They bud and stall.  They are beaten down by wind and hail.  I pick a few and put them on my kitchen window.  These three will have the benefit of light and warmth.  These three bloom for days.  Almost without end.

Last week, my new appliances were delivered.  They are not perfect—the fridge door is dented and the only fix is a new door to be ordered.  The top of the stove is cracked and there is a question whether there is some part to be changed or a new stove to order.  There is more to this in a paragraph or two but I have given myself over to the glory of fully working machines.

The refrigerator does not leak!  How lovely to come down in the morning and not need to fetch dry towels or remove soaked and dripping paper towels.  I cannot say I was waiting to buy this new one for some reason.  A few years ago, I might have said that I was imagining moving soon and an investment in appliances seemed foolish, but that was when there was no daily leakage.  I just waited a bit too long.

The stove.  The stove is an extravagance!  Two ovens and a center grill on the stove top.  I baked a simple chocolate cake for pot luck yesterday.  Baked it for the time the recipe called for.  The bake was even, not too brown or with a soggy bottom.  My old oven has been wonky for much longer than I imagined, as I have been juggling between those two outcomes for a long time.  I made pancakes on the grill on the weekend.  I hardly noticed the center grill when I looked at the oven because I was mostly interested in the double oven.  It is the unnecessary attachment that is a treat.

The fly in this ointment of pleasure and delight is that I am not finished with the purchase part of the new machines.  There are dents on the refrigerator door.  It is cosmetic.  Everything  inside works.  I debate with myself what these dents are worth.  After all, I may someday put dents in the refrigerator door.  However, what is also true—and I feel like I am channeling some old relative—it is new and I paid for new.

The stove.  The housing of the stove’s oven controls is cracked.  Right now, this is no real problem but let me wash that part of the stove for a few years and water will seep into the cracks putting the oven controls at risk.  What little computer thing likes water?

When I talked to customer care with the delivery guy still at the house, the woman offered to take something off on the bill.  I thought for a moment and today I wonder if I should not have asked ‘how much?’  I shopped when there was a sale and these are, well, at least the stove is, what I’ve wanted for a long time.  I waited three times as long as they said would it would take for them to be delivered.  I had to call and call and visit the store again to find out that the appliances were back ordered, and then that one piece was in and the other delayed, and then to schedule delivery.  I questioned the service when I was in store, and Ashley Home Furniture (a.k.a., Furniture and Appliance Mart) customer care explained that my sales person had left the company so the backorder notices were not picked up.  She implied that this was a rare lapse in service.  The customer care person who I spoke with during delivery assured me that she would investigate both problems and get back to me in a day or two and have answers for me.

That was last Tuesday.  Today, I called customer care to check on the answers since there has been no call back to me last week.  The customer care person found my order on her computer but could not find what she did with the damage report or presumably the “answers” she was going to have for me.  She asked to call me back to figure out what happened and when she did, she told me that, because I lived in Madison (where I also lived last week at delivery), service for my appliances would be done by a third party, a Diamond Services.  She has meant to send them an email about my damaged appliances and had forgotten.  She did not say that she meant to call me back to tell me that she wasn’t going to have those “answers” that she promised for me.

So, now I wait for Diamond Service to get in touch.  The customer care woman at Ashley Home Furniture said they would be in touch by tomorrow.  I plan to call her back next week if I hear nothing from no one.  I did not wait a year or two or three too long to replace my appliance because I didn’t want to deal with retail establishments but when this circumstance is resolved, I am resolved to take very good care of these new machines so that I don’t have to order new ones for a very long time.

To be continued!