on blue skies and refrigerators

sometime during the night last night my refrigerator began what I believe to be its death spiral.
I woke up to a small puddle on the floor by the freezer side, and opened the door to significant meltage. orange popsicles in paper wrappers leave a particularly loathsome mess.
sigh.
I've googled and read the manual and tried everything I can think of to make the darn thing come back to life, and nothing is working. at this point the freezer is empty and I have packages of dry ice in the fridge part trying to keep all of my food from joining the fridge in the dance of death.
after having spent the morning working on this issue along with working on work, I decided that a ride was in order.
yes, escape.
clouds had been playing games with our valley all morning, parting and gathering and thinning and thickening. I saw a break toward the east, and decided to head toward the blue sky. leave my fridge and my leaking kitchen drain and my Christmas tree lights that halfway work (better than not at all, right?) and all of my other household frustrations behind. sweat for a while, raise my heartrate, breathe cold air, and try to keep from screaming.
perhaps I should have screamed.
when I reached the summit the clouds split open and revealed a huge splash of blue sky, the sun peaking around the edge of the bulky clouds. and then I remembered that the sky is always blue. always. and that it's only clouds that keep us from seeing this. it is always blue and sun-filled up there, if we can only see past the gray and gloom and obtrusiveness of the clouds. no matter what bundles of cloud hover over our space, there is a huge, beautiful, sun-filled sky up there beyond. and it's only our clouds that hide this from us.
okay. I think I have some cloud-dispersing to do. clouds of doubt and distrust and impatience. clouds of despair and frustration and weakness. I'm going to get out my little whisk broom and sweep them away, remove them from the landscape of my world. and I am going to focus on that blue sky up there, that is always there.
always.