Frank's Freezer Fail

So Coletta tells me ten days or so ago that, "There's a beeping in the attic. I couldn't find it so you'll have to go up there and figure it out. I didn't have to go "up there" to figure it out, as soon as I walked into the garage where the steps to "up there" are, I immediately figured out the "beeping" was NOT coming from the attic but the upright freezer in the garage. This warning signal was accompanied by a little red light that read (after I went back into the house to get my glasses since it was not my ears I needed to solve this mystery but my 20/2000 eyes). It read "Over heated."

I of course opened the freezer to see if it had something stuck in it holding the door open, there was not, and all the plastic water bottles I use to take up space were solid as ice, and everything else looked fine, so I shut the door and went about my business. After a week with the light still being on, and me checking to see if anything was oozing out of those meat packets or chicken nugget bags -there wasn't - I went about my business.

On Thursday Coletta started talking about strawberry smoothies a lot, did I like them, did I want one, did Sade want one, etc. Seems that the bags and bags of strawberries we picked, and cleaned and placed in plastic were thawing out. So Coletta took them out of the freezer in the garage, and put them in a huge bowl in the fridge inside. I made a bangin' smoothie yesterday.

We went out for the day, when we came back it looked as though the dead body we had secreted in the upright freezer was oozing a bit, for a long bright red streak of sticky stuff was running across the garage floor. It wasn't a body! We didn't kill anybody. It was the other bags of strawberries in full thaw mode dripping out of the bottom of the freezer.

We spent the next hour cleaning up the sticky mess and testing the contents of the freezer to see if a) it was still frozen solid, b) was cold but soft to the touch, or c) was oozing. a) we moved to the freezer compartment inside, b) we put in the fridge and started calling friends, "Do you like strawberry daiquiris? How about chicken nuggets? And meatballs...and pizza...." You get the idea.

Next step: Call an appliance repairman to solve the mystery of the Hot Box Freezer. I wonder if it forgot about the seasons too and went to summer when it was supposed to be WINTER inside?