Brrrrrrr!

I know you’re all waiting (all three of you) with eager anticipation for the thrilling conclusion of Pottery, but I’m afraid that will have to wait. I’m sure the disappointment is great, with questions about the Leaning Tower of Pottery’s fate, but I assure you all will be answered, in time.

Friday morning, I stumble through the bedroom door to the living room – the room that’s supposed to be warm when I wake up – to find myself involuntarily shivering and a thermostat that reads only 58. Hmm, strange. Well, it is very cold out. (We’ve been having temperatures consistently in the single digits for over a week now.) I guess the house just hasn’t gotten up to temperature yet, after being turned down most of the night. But geez, it usually doesn’t take this long. I shrug and take my shower.

Later, Chris and I are both in the kitchen and my nose and fingertips are nearly numb. “Cold in here, huh?” I say. “Yeah, it is,” he replies. Or something to that affect. More shrugging. Mutual comments about the frigid weather, blah, blah, blah.

Side note: Ever since discovering that very cool guy, Miles Thirst, during a movie theater Sprite commercial, I’ve adopted the “blah, blah, blah” as my very own. I use it often. Beware.

We took hot showers, both of us. But something is nagging at me. It’s just not usually this cold in the house. Even in this kind of weather. Then Chris says something profound. “The blowers aren’t blowing.” (This would have repercussions later that night.)

Normally, when the thermostat is set to 65, and the house is only 58, the blowers in the living room and kitchen are blowing. You know, hot air. Blowing around. Heating things up. Making my nose less numb. Not so last Friday. More shrugging.

And more nagging thoughts. I’m thinking, “What would I do if I were here alone?” I think I’d go downstairs and stand around the mass of dusty copper pipes and valves, scratching my head and wishing someone were there who knew what was what. I’m thinking Chris might be that person. I test the waters. “You think, maybe, we should check things out downstairs?” I offer. “Do you want to check things out downstairs?” he replies. (You see, we’re trying out this new “make your own decisions” kind of thing.”) “Yeah, I do,” I answer.

So, we head downstairs, do a little of that standing around and scratching our heads stuff. I should mention here that neither of our fathers prepared us with the general household maintenance knowledge most of our peers seem to possess, and also seem to have gained at birth. But we are intelligent and we can follow a logical train of thought. After all, we’re computer people. We troubleshoot things. That’s what we do.

Okay, so Chris is feeling pipes. Some are cold. Some are warm. None are very hot. “Are those supposed to be hot?” I ask. “I don’t know,” he replies. Hmmm. We stand around some more. “Maybe there’s a valve shut or something,” I offer. “I didn’t shut a valve. Did you?” he answers. Well no, of course not. Hmmm.

“The furnace isn’t even running,” he says. “Oh, yeah,” I agree. Hmmmm. Now’s where those uncanny troubleshooting abilities really start to kick in. Pay attention, it gets really complicated here.

“So, if the blower’s not blowing, it’s because the water in the pipes isn’t hot enough, right?” I ask. Chris agrees. “But the furnace should go on to heat the water,” he explains. Hmm, makes sense. “But it’s not,” I add, unnecessarily. “Nope,” he says. Hmmm. “Unless,” he says, “there’s no oil.”

No oil? How can there be no oil? That’s just asinine. I mean, we pay for oil at the beginning of the season. For the whole winter. Up-front! They fill it automatically. We do this so we don’t find ourselves in subzero wind-chills, standing around in our basement scratching our heads and wondering why we’re freezing our asses off. Of course, there’s oil!

“There’s got to be oil,” I say. “We pay up-front! They fill it automatically.” And two heads turn in the direction of the oil tank. It’s got a little gauge on top. If the floaty thing is at the top, it’s full. The bottom? Empty. It’s only about ten feet away, but even from here, I can see he’s onto something.

I walk over, examine the floaty thing and make my pronouncement. “Uh-oh,” I state emphatically. And, just for good measure, Chris comes over and bangs on the side of the tank, producing a sound you never want to hear while in the vicinity of your oil tank in the third week of January in the Northeast.

“Bong!” A sound that resonates throughout the cinderblock basement and reverberates for several seconds. “That’s not good,” I say. “Nope,” Chris agrees.

So, I call in late for work. Chris calls the oil company to let them know they haven’t kept up their part of the bargain. Ours being the part where we give them money, and there’s being the part where they don’t freeze our asses off. They promise they’ll be out to fill it that afternoon. We go to work.

Chris calls the oil company around 2, and is told our tank is full. Whoo hoo! (Homer Simpson this time. Not Miles Thirst.) “And the furnace will start on its own?” he asks. “It should,” the woman says.

Okay, here’s something I’ve learned in my 38 and three-quarter years. When you ask someone if something will or will not happen, you are asking a very specific thing. There are two very discreet answers. Either it will, or it won’t. You should never, especially in the middle of January in the Northeast when you’re discussing the future combustible state of your furnace, be told, “It should.” Customer service reps, take notice.

Well, as you may have already guessed, it didn’t. I have a meeting that night, and spend most of my meeting fantasizing about the possibility that I might return to a home with a roaring fire, some flickering candles and, most importantly, HEAT. When I drive up the driveway and see Chris coming down the spiral stairs with his coat on, I think two things. One, he just got home. Or two, we have no heat. Well, you know, I didn’t really think much about the second one. ‘Cause she said, “It should.” So, I assumed it WOULD.

The first thing Chris says to me is, “Guess what we don’t have?” He’s a funny one, that Chris. “What?” I ask, hoping really, really hard that the answer is milk or toilet paper or horseradish. Anything but what it is. “Heat,” he says. My whole body deflates. I’m cold (see previous section regarding frigidly cold temperatures ALL FREAKING WEEK LONG!) and tired and it’s the end of the work week. I just want to be comfortable. I want to be warm.

He’s called the oil company and they should have someone there in a few hours. FEW HOURS?!?!? Well, we can go out back and get some wood. Ugh, just the thought of putting on five layers, trudging through the snow and lugging a bucket of wood back to the house gives me the heeby jeebies.

Soon, though, the oil guy shows up. Really nice guy. John, his name is. Looks a bit like Danny Devito. We point him toward the basement, which is way warmer than the kitchen. The kitchen is about 45, for the record. The basement, I believe is a pretty constant 50, year round.

John gets the thing running. Apparently, there’s some kind of button or knob or other obscure apparatus that needs activating to get this thing going. At least, now, we know. Then John points to a part (it’s all just parts to me) that is slanted at a funny angle. And I say, very excitedly, “Hey, I can see the fire inside!” (This is the first time the realization hits me that, while I’m sleeping and, more importantly, while I’m not here, there is a raging inferno taking place inside my home. I don’t like gas stoves because of the pilot light. This is, like, a zillion pilot lights. I feel queasy.) And John points out that that – seeing the fire inside – is a problem. “Oh,” I say. He explains that there’s this “part” that is old and needs replacing and soon. Very soon. “John, you should know you’re scaring me the way you keep saying ‘soon’ like that. Like, how soon?” I ask. “Like, this week,” he says. “Oh,” I say again.

He does some patching up of this “part” with some stuff that looks like cotton, but which he assures me is not flammable. Or flammable. Or inflammable. Whatever, it won’t burn until it gets to about 4000 degrees and, apparently, our furnace never gets that hot. Could have fooled me, I think, eyes firmly riveted to the raging inferno.

He’ll order the parts, and call us when he’s ready to come install them. “Sounds good,” we tell him. He tells us he’s not gonna charge us for the whole time. You see, there’s some confusion and awkwardness about the cost. We were prepared to fight any charge because, as Chris put it to John, “We were pretty pissed off that we ran out of oil.” But then John may have saved our lives, the lives of our dog and two cats, and the lives of the swarm of ladybugs that have taken up residence in our mudroom. John’s only charging us an hour of labor and we “consider it a blessing in disguise that you had to come out here, John.” We are happy to pay for an hour of labor.

The good news? Our heat came back on. The bad news? It took a good twenty-four hours to get up to 65. But the really good news? We still have a house. We didn’t freeze to death. We have suffered no major catastrophes, and we consider ourselves damned lucky!

Even the frozen pipes (another new experience) in the upstairs bathroom the next day, resulted in nothing more than a temporary inconvenience.

Thank you! (to whoever’s in charge)