Anticipaaaation

"Anticipation...anticipaaaation...is makin' me late...is keepin' me waiaiaiai waiaitin'."

Show of hands. How many of you are old enough to remember those Heinz ketchup commercials?

The last thing I do before going out the door every morning is fill up my big plastic cup with ice from my freezer-door icemaker. The one that needed a coldecystectomy many weeks ago. Apparently, the poor dear has had a relapse. This morning I held my cup under the dispenser to the tune of a grinding grumble. My cup did not runneth over. My cup was emptier than Laugh-In-era Goldie Hawn's head at a nuclear energy symposium. Like the fourth little piggy, I had none.

Leaving without ice was not an option. I removed four Banquet $.88 dinners, then the ice-holding contraption. I hacked at it with a dull butter knife. A hack job to rival that of method-acting Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Some of the larger chunks went into my cup. I replaced the empty receptacle and the frozen feasts. I pushed the Extra Ice button until the green light came on. I would have a buttload of ice when I returned home this evening.

The Pony and I ran errands for two hours after school. We carried in our accumulated bounty. The Pony scampered outside to let Juno out of her pen to frolic. I dished up some canned puppy food. Once the important business was taken care of, I rinsed out my cup and bellied it up to the ice bar. Grinding. No ice.

Again, I removed the innards. The ice catcher was emptier that a Lowe's Home Improvement Store during the Super Bowl. Where was my extra ice? Where was any ice? Old Mother Hubbard's dog could not have been more disappointed than I. The injustice! Had I not lovingly tended the constipated patient just this morning?

Then I saw it. A cowlick of ice jutting up from the maker proper. A hydrologic stalagmite yearning to be cool like the crystals in Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Oh, little nubbin. Your dreams are big, but you are small. I cracked him dead center with the butt-end of the butter knife. He, like his dreams, shattered.

I set The Pony, after a good handwashing, with soap, to gathering errant ice cubes that had accumulated from other times the ice maker was under the weather. He searched along the back shelf. Under the battered fish. Behind the chicken strips. Amongst the frozen bagels. He harvested enough for me to keep my cool.

That was three hours ago. I anticipate a bumper crop for my next harvest.