Jackie Wells-Fauth
It has been a tough winter in a lot of ways. But then, I never like winter. I whine about the cold, feel trapped indoors, whine about the cold, do everything but “mainline” my vitamins and oh, did I mention, I whine about the cold!
In the winter, all of my bad habits magnify: I eat too much, move too little and watch television, even in my sleep! An episode of Midsommer Murders came on the other day and as the opening credits were scrolling, I said, “This is the one about the witch murders. The killer is the priest.” I need an outdoor hobby.
With all of this fun and weather setting new cold records, I woke up one morning, in a particularly foul mood. The weather forecasters were gleefully predicting the lowest temperatures of the year that night and I was already cold. In fact, I was even cold while I was still in bed.
I got up, drank a lot of coffee and wrapped my feet in a heavy towel. The day kept getting colder. I built a small fire in the wood-burning stove downstairs, but I couldn’t sit by the stove because then I couldn’t watch the Midsommer Murders episode where the local nobility was having affairs with local women and then killing them off. So, I sat upstairs wrapped in blankets and growled about the weather.
Roy came home a little after five on that fine Friday and immediately said, “It’s cold in here!” My answer was muffled in all the blankets, so he went over to the temperature control on the wall, checked it, and announced, “The furnace isn’t running!”
Now, to fully understand the situation, you have to know that the furnace has been pretty much on life-support for the last three years. Every year, during the worst of the winter, we usually have to reset it or worse, call a repairman. And every year, the thought goes through our minds that we should replace it, but oh, it got through the winter, we’ll hang on a little longer.
Until this year, on the coldest night of the year, when the furnace finally called it quits. The repairman, bless his soul, came out on a Saturday morning in sub-zero weather to pronounce that although he got it running, it was now officially in hospice. A new furnace was needed. But then the repairman stood in my laundry/storage room and announced, “All the shelves and stuff are going to need to be moved.” That’s cold, man!
I tried to keep it cheerful. I cleaned everything on the shelves and helped Roy remove the planks that make up our storage shelves. “We work so well together, we should open our own construction business,” I chirped, as we were maneuvering the planks out the door and around the corner.
“No we shouldn’t,” he grumbled. “Watch it, don’t hit that wall!”
We cleaned out the room, the furnace people installed a new furnace and I was able to retire the electric blanket I’d been wearing as socks. I even did a good job putting the storage items back on the shelves.
“Where is everything?” Roy asked when he came down and looked at the half-empty shelves.
“Everything’s here that’s supposed to be,” I answered, “just don’t look in the garbage can.”
Our new furnace is working well and you can all thank us for the warm weather we’ve been having since we got it. It’s working so well, in fact, that we decided on some more improvements in the laundry room.
“Well, what did you find out?” Roy came home from work and asked about my meeting with the repairman.
“Oh, it’s going to work well and it won’t cost too much,” I answered. “All we have to do to prepare is…clear out all the shelving in the laundry room.”
Now I’m getting a cold shoulder from a different source!
dropsinthewell 