Every house has its story. What's yours?

Many families can be identified by their favorite foods and dishes. Ours is no different, except that ours is a drink. We're a smoothie family. Each one of us loves our smoothies in the morning, afternoon or evening. Unfortunately, our family has been suffering for awhile since the youngest in the family broke the knob off our beloved blender a couple of months ago. That should be an easy fix we thought, but, try as I might, there was no easy fix.

Luckily it was snapped off in the strongest blend position so it still worked, but the control was guided by plugging it in and unplugging it. This method was neither safe nor fun so the blender lost its place of respect on the kitchen counter and was relegated to occupy a lonely spot in the dark chasm of cupboardland. 

Now that summer has arrived and the realization that our cherries, apples, plums, blueberries, strawberries, currants, gooseberries, etc. are on their way, we decided to rescue the near-forgotten blender from the abyss. Two days ago we got around to going to the store where we bought the blender, and that continues to carry the exact same model, to see if they had a replacement knob. A simple little knob really with a crescent-shaped "hub" that was snapped off. The reply was something along the line of, "Too bad your blender has exceeded its warrantee or we could give you a new one." A new one? We want this one!

Seriously, we're expected to throw away a perfectly good appliance because a little $.15 plastic knob has broken off? C'mon! Now I understand that salespeople sell, but we asked if they could just order a knob from the manufacturer as I'd been scouring hardware stores over the last few months for just such a knob to no avail. Nope. We also asked if he knew of a place around to fix it. *blank stare*

By now I'd become surprisingly pissed off and ushered the family out of this consumption-driven haven of throwaway consumerism. As we drove to another buy-use-toss destination I began to reflect back to my childhood when my dad made a living repairing TVs and stereos. Can you imagine taking a TV in for repairs today? You'd get laughed out of the store. What have we become? Well, by golly I'd had enough! I'll show my kids that things can be fixed not just to save money, but also to cut down on waste and, perhaps most importantly, principle. Yeah, that's what I'd do! It was then that I realized what I needed to do once we'd arrived at the mall.

Now don't get me wrong here. We like things. We buy things. We buy a lot of things, but lately we've cut down a lot on the purchase of things. Initially this was precipitated by a money crunch and now we've sort of continued it due to being more aware of what we need and will actually use rather than just on want alone. We also like to think we do our fair part for the overall environment (of course, we could do more, but are a bit lazy), but nothing over and above other than we recycle all paper, plastic, cardboard, glass and metals; steadily compost; switch energy efficient light bulbs in when old light bulbs burn out; walk to do errands as much as possible; and plan to switch to clean-burning fuel for the lawn mower and weedeater once this tank of gas is finished. I know it's a little, but each thing makes you feel like you're doing something good, however slight.

Anyway, once we arrived at the merchanting mecca I sent the wife off with the kids to sort out groceries while I zipped of to the electrical department, passing a row of shiny new blenders that seemed to be mocking me as I passed by. There I bought an electrical plug and the thing that electrical plugs plug into (a pluggee?). Heading back to the checkout, I walked proudly past those now-not-so-smug shiny new blenders and waited for the rest of my clan to arrive.

Once home I went out to my shed and got a wire with a switch on it that I'd had leftover from something else way back (that's another thing I do…I NEVER throw stuff away that may have some functional use later) and set about wiring myself a little extension cord with a switch attached to it.

Happy with the wiring I tested it on a lamp and Ba-Da-Bing! Now I searched around for something with which to test the not so shiny and not so new, but perfectly good blender. I found some watermelon, ice, spiced rum and lime and whipped myself up some odd, yet tasty drink I dub the "Watermelon Blender Fixer Upper" and gulped it down.

Ah, principle never tasted so good (more rum next time, though).