I've been having a run of misfortune with my home appliances lately, but I'm sure that this, too, will soon pass. After all, most misfortune is a temporary turn of events, just like it's archrival fortune.

The majority of life is neither fortunate or unfortunate, it simply is there for each of us to make the most, or least, of. Since I just ended a sentence in a preposition and I am at a loss for a good way to fix it, I'll forego any prior plans on giving lectures on sentence construction.

But since I was writing about misfortune, I suppose I should focus on that. First my refrigerator quit working a little over a month ago. It is only about six years old, so I was really surprised by that development.

Even so, there was fortune to be found, since it was discovered prior to my food spoiling and since a friend had just given me a spare a week or two before. He replaced his old refrigerator, which was still working and I knew a family that could put it to good use. As it turned out, my family also needed to put it to good use for a little while and, besides, it's always a good idea to give items a test run.

I moved it from the new building to the back porch, where I left it, thinking I would get the other one fixed quickly. As days turned into weeks, I started to question the sanity of my decision. In all, it stayed there for three weeks and I finally decided to move it into the house. I got tired of going out on the porch in the mornings to get milk for my coffee. You really don't appreciate how convenient it is to have refrigeration indoors until you walk outside in your socks when the temperature is below freezing and the wind is whipping in an attempt to put away the juice, butter and leftovers.

I felt like I was living in a line out of a redneck joke, as in "You're probably a redneck if your only working refrigerator is on the porch."

So, after much senseless suffering, I opted to ask a friend to come over one evening to help me switch out the refrigerators.

Consequently, it was the same friend who gave me the refrigerator to start with.

Had he known that I was going to call him and ask him to help switch them out, he might not have given it to me. This sounds like an easy task, but in order to move a double-door refrigerator into my house, I must first remove the door shock and bracket on the front screen door, take down the sliding glass doors inside the house, move the dining room table and several other pieces of furniture, move the kitchen table and take the doors off both the old refrigerator and the new one. All those things then have to be done in reverse order to get the house back in operational condition again.

It takes more than the half hour I had hoped it might. But, that's what evenings and weekends are for, right?

After making a few calls, I was told that the compressor, which was no longer under warranty, like had malfunctioned. Just the part was going to be well over $300.

Just to be sure, I opted to take the fridge to a repair center in the back of my truck. I had considered throwing it away, so I was more than pleased when I found out that it only needed a $30 part. It was only about a week after I switched the refrigerators out when I picked up the newer one. While I was glad to have the newer one back, I didn't look forward to doing ‘the refrigerator shuffle' again. By the time I got the house back in order, the entire process had taken some two hours.

Of course, I also had to wait until I could round up another friend to help make the switch. Even with a hand truck, it's hard to guide a huge refrigerator through a house filled with furniture.

In moving the fridge, I had to disconnect the water line from the back. I inadvertently unhooked the wrong line underneath and then re- hooked it. I didn't realize that there was a quick-disconnect on the front of the refrigerator that would have done the same thing as removing the line. Through this monumental goof-up, I somehow got a leak started.

I fear that I have cross-threaded the tap on the line, thus leaving me with nothing much to work with in making the repair. Both parts are some sort of a composite plastic material.

So I had to shut off the water until I can figure out how to repair that problem. Now my ice-maker doesn't work. I'm sure I'll get to that soon.

Just two days after the refrigerator was put back in its place, the dryer quit working. The laundry has been making its way to the local coin-operated dryer for a few days now, awaiting me getting that fixed with my appliance ‘expertise.'

I can tell you that these aren't factors in making me more popular in the family mansion.

Why, living with no electric clothes dryer and no ice maker is nearly like going back to the Stone Age. The next thing you know, we'll be wearing animal pelts and dragging our knuckles. Of course, some folks might think we do that already.

All sarcasm aside, appliance repair isn't exactly my specialty, but I can usually get by switching parts. The only requirement is that the diagnosis of the problem is fairly evident. With service calls costing an average of $100 or more, I have little choice. Most of my appliances aren't worth $100.

I think the dryer, which is a 70s model in a lovely shade of harvest gold, has a bad heating element. I plan to order one this week and hopefully switch it out over the weekend.

Since it is located in the tiny laundry room, it makes it kind of hard to move around in there. I just hope I have room to turn it over and I don't have to take out all of those appliances, which would require that I remove a door and a cabinet, the washer, a freezer, the kitchen table and the refrigerator again. I'm not sure I'm up to all that at this point. In fact, I know I'm not.

In the meantime, does anyone have a spare roll of quarters?