Monday, November 24, 2008

All that stands between me and frostbite



Sometime Saturday night while we were sleeping, our furnace bit the dust. We woke up Sunday morning to find that it was 60 degrees in the house, and please know that I am fully aware of the millions of people who don't even have walls or blankets or heated mattress pads that kept them blissfully unaware of the malfunction until the alarm went off. I totally acknowledge that this is a first-world whinefest.

Ron leapt out of bed like he always does. It's one of his superpowers, that ability to just get up without moaning and cursing the injustice of morning. My own superpower is, well, not that. He exclaimed, "It's COLD in here," so I stuck an arm out and discovered that it was indeed frosty, at least in contrast to our normal balmy 72 degrees.

I was cozy still under my quilt and flannel sheets, and lying on the aforementioned heated mattress pad which was set on 9. I briefly considered skipping church because I couldn't bear the thought of leaving my toasty cocoon, but I realized that at some point during the day, probably several points, I'd have to get up and go to the bathroom, and the toilet seats would probably be warmer over at the church.

The heating and cooling guy arrived shortly after we got home from church, and was here (along with his 5-year-old son) for two and a half hours. Apparently the blah de blah on our 15-year-old furnace wasn't sending a signal to the bloogity bloog to turn the fan on, and of course they didn't have a replacement in stock. But if we would just keep the fan set to ON instead of AUTO it would be fine and we would be warm until the part came in Tuesday.

Except that when I went to bed Sunday night it wasn't working at all. And this morning it was cold again. So I was forced to keep warm by going to IHOP with a friend and eating stuffed french toast, oh! and to Lowe's to get a space heater so that Annamarie wouldn't freeze to death in the night. Ron brought that little one in the photo home from his office and it is keeping the icicles off of me and my computer.

[Side note: I love the English language and grammar, and although I remember the rule about never starting a sentence with a preposition, I cannot seem to write a blog post without doing so several times. Witness the last four sentences. The grammar po-po are surely coming to take me away.]

I hope the repair guys are back promptly in the morning, but I feel 99.8% sure that they are going to want to come by around 12:45 which is when I am going to have my thyroid ultrasounded.

Also, I am not a big quote person, but I heard an ancient Chinese proverb today that I really love: "My barn having burnt to the ground, I can now see the moon."

And one last thing (again with the prepositions): Am I entitled to a discount because the repairman's cute little boy broke the hurricane lamp on my coffee table, necessitating the vacuuming up of hundreds of fake berries?

3 comments:

Mrs. Jelly Belly said...

Hey! We had this exact same problem last week. Our bloggity blig wasn't making a connection to the blinkety blank. AND we were freezing. BUT we have a fireplace. AND we were thankful for that.

I've been breaking all the hard-learned grammar rules lately, too. And I so don't concern myself with them anymore. :)

Diane Duda said...

Being cold stinks!
I hope you are toasty again by the time you read this. :)

xo
di

Michelle said...

We had this issue in WI and it was freezing outside. Of course here it's a brisk 78... but that's another story. I think you deserve a huge discount for the broken hurricane! Tell him I said so. :)