January 31, 2005
A Story Along the Lines of "The Princess and the Pea"
Oh, my sweet guppies, how I've missed you! I was home for THREE BORING DAYS last work-week, taking care of Billy while his parents were in beautiful, un-Chicago-like San Diego. He was sick enough to be sent home from school -- low-grade fever -- but not sick enough for me to call my friend and go, "Come get your kid outta here!"
Anyhoo, he was picked up Friday afternoon by his other babysitter, the fun one, the one who teaches 8th grade and can relate to kids and plays games with him all day long, who doesn't bring home work and sit in the dining room binding directories all day. So my plans to completely re-vamp the bathroom this weekend were not waylaid,... but more on that later.
So on Saturday, I was priming and painting and cleaning and working, and yet, I was not sweating. This is unusual because I work up a sweat making the long trek from the parking lot to my desk. So for me to be continually in motion for hours at a time and not have a sweat-moustache and smell like a yeti is unheard of.
I checked the thermostat, and altho' it was set to 69, the temperature of the house was 67. Okay, I thought, Husband had been in and out of the garage several times. That probably did it, and it'll be back to normal in a bit. In the meantime, I'll put on a sweatshirt.
But no, half an hour later, after even more work, my fingers and nose and ears were cold. Something was horribly awry. Sure enough, the thermostat said 66. Sixty-six degrees Fahrenheit! I could store meat in the living room at that temperature!
So I made Husband check out the furnace, and sure enough, it wasn't igniting or something. He was like, "Well, it looks like the pilot light is blah blah blah..." And I'm like, "Uh-huh. I'm gonna go turn on the oven."
The furnace repairman was called, and I was musing to my Husband, "If I wasn't here, I wonder how cold it would have to have gotten in here before you noticed anything."
"Prob'ly about 50."
Well, repairman was able to fix it, for a nominal fee of $bend-over-and-grab-your-ankles, and as it turns out, it was something with the pilot light and gas valve and blah blah BLAH quit talking to me like I understand or care!
On his way out, he said, "You know, this is the second one of these I've replaced today. But it had gotten down to 50 in the first house!"
"There wasn't a woman home, was there?" I asked.
"Nope, just a single guy."
Well, duh.