a place for ground beef.

Josh is squatting on the wet floor of a kitchenette in a Washington, D.C. studio apartment, holding open the flap that covers the freezer in the dorm-sized fridge. The fridge is empty of food, but has a large roasting pan on the bottom shelf, half-full of water. Kate is behind him with a mop, patiently soaking up the water off the floor and then draining the mop into a bucket and doing it all again. I am standing next to him with a two liter plastic pitcher three-quarters full of hot water. I am flinging the hot water into the freezer compartment.

This is one way to quickly defrost a freezer. I don't know if it's the best way, but it sure is a lot of fun. Also, the kitchen floor gets sparkly clean.

It was only coincidence that the Jim Henson exhibit happened right before Kate moved out of the country. We were glad to see her before she left this side of the Atlantic. Since she is making such a drastic move, she was trying to get rid of all of her stuff. Books, food, plates, whatever we wanted, she urged us to take it. It was like spending the night at an estate sale.

On our first night, I was sitting on the couch and I spied the freezer, a half-sized Frigidaire chest deep freezer. It seemed an unlikely occupant of the apartment. "Kate, you have a freezer!"

"Yes, do you want it?"

"Yes, please."

I deeply, deeply wanted all nine cubic feet of its frostiness. I had wanted a freezer for months. My learning to cook had coincided with reading The Tightwad Gazette, and it had occurred to me that I could not be a true tightwad without more than the paltry freezer in my fridge that I had now. I needed my own separate appliance for preserving food. How was I supposed to buy ten pounds of ground beef on sale if I had nowhere to store it?

"How much do you want for it?" This part was tricky. I mean, it was tricky for me. For most people, it would be totally easy, because normal people would just agree to pay whatever she was asking, having already committed to buying it. But we're not talking about those people, we're talking about me, and I had just said I would buy a major appliance off of someone without knowing the price. I had been hasty. What if she wanted too much? I had passed up a similar freezer at a yard sale a couple months ago because the people wanted $100. No way I'd go above $50, and really, that was definitely the high end. Would I have to negotiate? I'm not good at social stuff, but I'm pretty sure jewing down your good friends is bad form.

"I was asking $30 on craigslist."

"Sold." Phew. That will pay for itself after thirty pounds of sale priced ground beef. Muppets and a deal on a freezer? Best vacation ever.

The reason that Kate had an extra freezer is because she has a tiny dorm fridge that has a freezer space of about three cubic inches. Okay, it's more than that, but it is wimpy. You could fit about twenty pounds of ground beef in there, but then where would you put the bacon? Of course, Kate's a vegetarian, but she could still only fit about six bags of frozen vegetables in there. But if I was going to take away her freezer, we'd have to transfer the stuff in the big freezer to the little one. Luckily, most of the stuff in the freezer did not need to remain frozen as long as she ate it in the next week. What did need to be frozen could probably be forced in there. I helped out by eating a frozen fruit pop.

We lifted up the flap in the dorm fridge to start moving stuff in. It was then that we noticed that about three-fourths of the space in there was taken up by a mini-tundra. This is apparently what happens to tiny freezers when you neglect them. We would have to defrost the freezer in a short enough time that the stuff in the fridge wouldn't go bad. And that's how we ended up flinging hot water around and then mopping it up. Making a mess on purpose is fun.

The next morning, Josh and I carried my new freezer downstairs and up the block to my car. I drive a sedan, but I wasn't worried. We estimated that the freezer was about the same size as Josh's bass amplifier cabinet, only taller, and I'd hauled that thing more times than I could count. I'd been stuffing all manner of crap into that car for years and she'd never let me down. Many yard sale hosts had looked skeptically from my new purchases to that car, only to be surprised later when I managed it just fine, thank you very much.

I could describe the shoving and heaving and rearranging and sweating and muttering and pushing and slow sinking feelings of despair, but I'll just skip it. The freezer did not fit. The door frame was large enough, the back seat was large enough, but the door wouldn't open far enough. Before you ask, yes, we tried the front door and the trunk, too.

Are you crying and aching for me? I'm starting to tear up just remembering it. My poor tightwad heart was broken that day. I was despondent, and only minimally cheered by the fact that we were able to fit three bookshelves in there. I wrote Kate a check for the shelves, which she immediately tore up. It was a great symbolic gesture, except for the fact that little check pieces kept falling out of her pocket and spreading pieces of my identity on the streets of our nation's capital. She probably would have given me the freezer for free, too, but I try not to think about that.

Eventually, I will find a good deal on a used freezer, and I will be happy. I will buy lots of meat to put in it, because I am not a vegetarian. But I bet I will get it in a totally boring manner instead of in an evening of improbable defrosting hilarity with two of my favorite people ever.

Also, I'll have to find another way to get it home.