I'm not going to lie, if I were down South enjoying the beauty and sweater weather of fall, I probably wouldn't want to read this blog often... it would make me feel cold and really, who likes feeling cold?
I never owned a own home before moving North. I wouldn't know the first thing about my furnace needing fuel refills, or how to replace a furnace filter and if you leave me a thermostat with no manual... it becomes obsolete, useless to me. So until now, I got by just screwing around with the buttons. It would get cold so I would push a few things and somehow the house would (usually) warm up. For the past week our furnace has been shutting off in the middle of the night and we have been waking up freezing. After many days of Katie flipping the breaker off and on again... which seemed to have been working, I realized no silly thermostat games were going to save us.
Dramatic? Maybe... but I doubt you know what it feels like to wake up to a blizzard pelting your house so hard that the glasses in the kitchen cupboards are shaking. The wind is so cold and so strong as it hits the windows that if you close your eyes, you could easily imagine that you are in the storm rather than sheltered in the house. Embarrassingly enough, I am not kidding when I say that the wind at night in Ulukhaktok freaking scares me.
Long story short, I was on hold with tech support so long that I actually managed to fix my thermostat woes before the man on the other line managed to figure out which model we have on the wall. Proud.
With the wind and the snow come days off for the municipal truck drivers... I think... but honestly I'm not sure what they do. All I know for sure is that when the wind is too high, the water truck cannot deliver water.
This means a few things:
a) my showers are getting shorter, and believe me when I say, if the furnace isn't working, you don't want to get out of the hot shower... ever
b) laundry is pilinggggg up
c) the dishes are also piling up
d) this one is perhaps the most horrific. The daycare and preschool are closed
e) due to point d, I cannot work as I am home with the tots
As you can see, my income is directly effected by mother nature, my sanity is also directly effected, as is the cleanly state of this house...
Just kidding, this house is never to be classified as 'cleanly' or any other similar descriptive adjective. If it has been, its a lie. We have toddlers. If you come over and it is remotely clean... we faked it.
The following picture is the lovely view from by bedroom window. The top half is a picture taken in September while sea lift was here. The bottom half is what it looks like now. Looks fun right? If you look the wind in the face, you cannot breathe and you get frost bite.
I am past the point of ready to book a tropical vacation. I'm pretty sure the fireplace is tired of having a front row view of my ass.
3 comments:
Your blog didn’t make me feel cold. It made me feel frozen! Hahahaha! Honestly, though, I won't be able to stand that cold temperature so I can’t imagine how you do. If anything, your experience serves as a reminder that no matter how simple a furnace may seem, it’s something that plays a great role.
Terry Williams
It’s never fun to have a broken furnace, especially in the middle of the winter. Just the thought itself got me chilly! Haha! Kidding aside, your post gave people a good reminder that the furnace has to be checked regularly. One cannot afford to endure a cold season without their furnace functioning fully.
Tommy Hopkins @ AccuTemp
Winter and a broken thermostat – not a good combination. What did you use to stay warm while fixing the thermostat? Anyway, I hope you did not have any problems with it or your furnace since then. It’s really hard to get by without one, especially when the snowstorms hit. Take care!
Henrietta Fuller @ Bri-Tech Heating and Cooling
Post a Comment