A few days ago, our trusty 10-year-old microwave decided it wasn’t going out quietly. Oh no, it had to make an ear-splitting, catastrophic CRACK. “Was that the microwave?” I asked innocently, as if the alternative might have been an alien invasion. But no, that was its death knell. It still made noise after that, but it wasn’t micro’ing, and it definitely wasn’t waving. Cue the cash register sound in my accountant brain—cha-ching!—and the heavenly choir chanting, “$500 down the drain!” I’m not saying I’m bitter, but I am starting to detect a pattern. Just a couple months ago, we had to replace a $2,000 refrigerator. Do you think my wife could be that cunning? Death by appliance sabotage? Honestly, it’s an ingenious strategy—I have to give her credit for creativity.
Fast forward to today. I’m diligently working at my computer while my wife keeps me updated hourly on the microwave’s delivery status, as though tracking Santa on Christmas Eve. For the uninitiated, installing a microwave above the stove is an exercise in patience, precision, and existential questioning. There’s a template (that never quite fits), stud finding (literal and metaphorical), a wall bracket, and cabinet holes for screws so long they could double as vampire stakes. This isn’t my first rodeo; I’ve done three of these now, but since they’re spaced a decade apart, I’m always back to square one—armed with a drill and a faint sense of déjà vu.
Fun fact: every template is slightly different, so our cabinet now resembles Swiss cheese. This time, I had a bad feeling right out of the gate. “Do you remember if we moved the stove last time?” I asked, a bit too hopefully. “No,” my wife replied, suspiciously confident. In hindsight, that’s more evidence for the sabotage theory. Spoiler alert: I had to move the stove. Once I did, things got… less terrible. Still, it took four hours to install and another two to clean up the disaster zone we created.
There was, as expected, stress-induced salty language. I cut my finger, stripped the first screw (classic move), and had to do a vice-grip extraction. If you don’t know what that is, congratulations—you’ve lived a purer life than me. To lighten the mood, I put on the holiday music channel, because nothing screams festive like cursing at a microwave while “Jingle Bell Rock” plays in the background.
But hey, it’s in now. Four hours, a gallon of sweat, and an all-time mess later, we have a brand-new microwave. Cheers to modern convenience… for the next decade, at least.
