the not-so-finer things.
i write this, hopefully after the fact, but at least in the midst of what i've dubbed homeowner hell. i know things could be worse. i know that others have had it worse. but this is my worst.this past friday night, after noting 'light for refrigerator' on my shopping list, i cozied up under the covers and thought about how i was looking forward to a weekend off. a weekend with no orders to process. a weekend with nowhere to drive. a weekend with no responsibilities other than picking up after myself. my house was moderately clean and what wasn't could wait until this week. i had enough food in the house to get me through the weekend and a new movie to entertain my brain. i needed this weekend. after four months working two full time jobs and trying to stay sane while keeping the lawn mowed, the dishes washed and the walk shoveled, i needed this break.
saturday morning, i lazily woke up. i stretched. i tucked my blankets up under my chin. an unusually cold morning, i was glad to be spending more time in my quilted cocoon. after a bit, i picked up a book from beside my bed and started to read. near bliss.
half an hour later, i rolled out of bed and strolled to the bathroom. grabbing a sweatshirt on the way, i started brushing my teeth.
the few minutes one spends brushing her teeth is a fantastic time for thinking. because none is required to complete the task at hand. so i thought. i thought, huh. it's awfully chilly in here. maybe i should turn the heat up a bit. so i did. then i realized that the vents had already been blowing. so, with a dreadful heart, i put my hand in front of a vent. cold. and another. also cold.
assuming my pilot light went out, i pulled up the door and traisped downstairs. my furnace, which I'm not familiar with, clearly states that i cannot manually light my pilot light. not having any idea what all the jargon meant on the outside panel in regards to troubleshooting, i called my dad. mostly because i didn't really want to deal with it. so he came, struggled with it, and eventually got it running again.
i continued my weekend. got a few things done. sat in a chair for a while. watched a movie.
sunday evening, i walked past the vent in the office and felt a large draft. you know, the kind that comes from a furnace strenuously trying to warm up a room when it has nothing but cold air to blow? that kind.
after i 'oh, crapped' a bit, i went downstairs. i took off the front panel. i read the indicator light and the corresponding issue. same as yesterday. i did all the things we'd done the day before to no avail. i called my dad. he walked me through some stuff. i called 8 heating & furnace repair companies, 7 with emergency numbers, none with actual live people. i asked my dad, 'does this qualify as an emergency?' since i'm not one to yell fire unless there really is one, and he responded, 'when it's below freezing and your furnace doesn't work, that's an emergency.' i left a message on the voicemail of the business with the most creative name and waited. i bundled up and kept working. tom called back, i gave him the history, he asked if i'd done this or this, i said yes, he said, try this. so i open up the panel he tells me to open, i reach my flashlight into the space to see what he said i might see and i see the carcus of the vilest creatures i know. in the span of a millisecond, the hand whips back out, the panel gets shut and i go back upstairs. i'm sorry i'm such a girl i tell tom. i can't do mice. i don't think he really knew what to say. i don't think he believed that i wasn't doing anything else until the thing disappeared. he just doesn't understand. i can't. i called my parents' house and surprised myself a bit with the welling up of some tears and waited for my dad. my father, my knight, comes and takes over. removes the alien and calls tom. after almost two hours, my dad tries something tom doesn't think will work and it does. problem solved.
it's late, i go to bed and pray it doesn't break again. it doesn't.
but last night, i got home from work, opened the fridge to get out a stick of butter and wondered, 'why is this butter so soft?'
i waved my hand around inside. warm. i opened the freezer. waved my hand around inside, even after seeing that things seemed to be unfrozen. not so cold like a freezer should be. i checked to see if it was plugged in. i hefted the basement door up and checked the breaker box. sure enough, one switch was off. weird. so i flipped it and heard the whir of the fridge. are you kidding me? i checked inside the fridge... huh. my light worked. wait. has my fridge been slowly warming up since friday when the light first went out?
with a huge sigh and a longing look toward the comfort of the livingroom, i pulled out a pan. and then another. and another. and all night long, i cooked meat. i threw alot out. i salvaged what i could. i disinfected everything that stuck around. like the refrigerator. and when i was all done and the cooked meat refrozen or packed away for lunches, i washed up and crawled into bed.
so now i sit, wondering why on earth a switch, only accessible by pulling up an area of my floor and hidden by the door of a breaker panel, just shuts off. when none other does. and i sit, tenuously hopeful that tonight, when i go home, i can actually sit in my chair and sew. and not have to worry that something else is broken.
and for a silver lining, tonight, when i open my refrigerator to pull out something for dinner, i'll be able to see what i'm grabbing. and it'll be coming from a really clean place. which is always a good thing.
posted by julie @ 12:54 PM
3 Comments:
Oh, bless your heart. I wish I had read this the day you wrote it, so I could have given you a hug on Friday morning. I'm so sorry! Hope things are all better. :)
oh my julie....
um.. at least it wasn't a possum? sometimes when I get sad that I sold my house I can just think about the things like this that I don't miss :)
Totally understand...we've had several moments like this with our house, too. Like when the basement flooded because we had 12ft of roots in the pipes which we had fixed, only to have the hose to the outside faucet break and the basement reflood a few days later. I think this is what they refer to as "the joys of homeownership."
It was nice to meet you on Saturday!
mandy
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