Getting Warmer - Reprise

I was getting ready for bed on Thursday night when I realized that I was really cold. That wasn't so weird; I was really tired, too, and am often cold when I am tired. But . . . I checked the thermostat just to be safe.

It was about 7 degrees cooler than it should have been, there in the warm center of the house. I went to the thermometer by the back door and it was 5 degrees colder still. Uh-oh.

I walked into the bedroom, cringing a little at the necessity of waking Paul, who'd gone to bed about 30 minutes earlier. I was pleasantly surprised to see that his eyes were partially open and he was still wearing his glasses.

"I'm so sorry to be so ignorant. I swear that tomorrow you can show me everything you know about the furnace so that I don't have to get you out of bed for something like this again. But the house is cold and the furnace isn't even blowing."

"I don't know," he said.

"You still have your glasses on. Could you please come downstairs and take a look at it?"

"I don't know." Paul reached out and set his glasses on the bedside table.

"But a few weeks ago when the furnace kept going out, you kept going downstairs and flipping some switch that would temporarily start it again. I don't even know what switch you were flipping. Could you please-"

"I don't know." He rolled over onto his side - away from me - and snugged the covers up under his chin.

I went downstairs, muttering about both my husband and my own ignorance. I cleverly discerned the furnace from the water heater and took off the front of it. There was a little switch marked "on," which I flipped a couple of times. Nothing happened. I replaced the front of the furnace and noticed a switch on the side of the unit. I flipped that a couple of times. Then I went to the electrical box and flipped the appropriate switch. Nothing, nothing.

Still grumbling, I came back upstairs. I covered the couch-bound pug with a blanket, added a second warm fleece to Ada's crib, and tossed a Nana-knit afghan over Ellie's bed and ours. Then I dressed myself for bed in heavy slipper socks, pajama pants, a turtleneck, and a full-length flannel nightgown.

Last month, we had a very expensive repair to our "only ten years old, very good, should last a long time" furnace. This month, we had another, unrelated, part seize up and die. This part was even more expensive. But the overall repair was not, because the awesome repair dude from Harster didn't charge us for any labor. (In addition to that little gift, they made it out to the house an hour after we called both times this winter and replaced our air conditioner the same day we called them in August.) So, yay!

Sort of. I mean, it's another month of not being able to start replacing our unsittable living room furniture. But all in all, we had a nice time snuggling up in front of the fire on Friday morning. Plus, I decided that it was a good time to clean the oven (love that fabulous self-cleaning feature) so the kitchen stayed cozy.

As for Paul, well, on Friday morning he woke up surprised to find the house so cold. "I have no idea what I said to you last night," he said. "But I suspect that I was a bit of a jerk and I apologize for that."

And now we should be good for another 10 years, right?

So, how about you? Has your heater ever conked out when it's 50 degrees outside? Or your A/C when it's 70? Or are you like us, where the air only goes out in August and the heat in January/February?