noisy furnace | The Sadder But Wiser Girl

The Morn Before Thanksgiving: The Messy House

Twas the morn before Thanksgiving and it’s I in my house

Still awake after the departure of my sweet loving spouse

The daughter and dog are both wiggling in my bed

Thus preventing my sleep tho’ I’d taken my meds

My daughter in her bed she had recently peed

She thinks no more sleep today she shall need

I gave up on slumber and came down the stairs

With daughter in tow, wild and crazy haired

I’d stayed up too late to work on my blog

Now awakened so early I am in such a fog

And then from the walls there arose such a clatter

I jumped off the couch to see what was the matter

Then what should my wondering ears should I hear

But the noisy fan in the furnace I fear

I spend 15 minutes down there in the dark

Then the noise disappears just as quick as it starts

As I climb up the basement stairs I see

All of the things that must be cleaned up by me

The house is a mess that has gotten so deep

How will I clean it on just three hours sleep?

The dishes are piled up deep in the sink

The kitchen itself is a disaster I think.

5,000 art projects spread on the floor

From the foot of the stairs all the way to the door

Legos and bristle blocks and marbles I see

Ready for bare feet, ones I bet belong to me

Toothpaste and soap decorate the bathroom drawers

I don’t even want to know what’s on the back of the doors

Laundry, a mountain that goes to the ceiling

This day will be long, I have a bad feeling

“Who will help with this mess?” I start to cry

I turn to my daughter, who looks up at the sky

Twenty four hours I have to get this all done

I’d better at least better go and put a bra on.

So remember this as I hit “publish” and say

I hope you all have a clean house on Thanksgiving Day!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Yup, I’ll never be as cool as Frank Jr. He gets go to Refrigerator College.

We can put that career choice right up there along with being a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model and financial advisor. Not gonna happen. I will never be an appliance repair person.

Every time I turned on the washer last week, I got an error message. It would only flash for a few seconds and then disappear. I was really driving myself nuts. Why would it do that? What is wrong with my nearly new washer? Did Best Buy do something to it to make us regret not buying the extended warranty? Is it in cahoots with the dormant dishwasher and the humming garbage disposal? I got out the manual, but of course nowhere did it list the error code I was seeing. Oh crap! Oh crap! Curse you appliance gods!

The error kind of looked like it had a “c” and an “l” in it. Maybe it’s the filter? So I tried cleaning the filter. I followed the instructions to the letter. I opened the little door, I undid the little hose thingie, I had a rubbermaid container ready to catch all of the water out of the little hose. No water came out of the hose. However, all kinds of water came out of the filter chamber when I loosened the end. It went everywhere. Two towels later I finally got the filter out-it was clean, although it was slightly stinky in there. I put everything back and turned on the washer. Same error code. Next I tried to clean out the gasket-there was quite a bit of hair stuck in there. I turned it on again-there was still an error code. Arrrrrrrrrgh!

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to try the next recommended step, which was to dial the LG service number on my phone, and let the “washer” talk to the phone. Does this make anyone else think of when they ask droids in the Star Wars movies to talk to ships? No that’s just me? I was looking around for R2-D2 and C-3PO-though I bet this wouldn’t be one of the six million forms of communication that 3PO was supposedly fluent in.

After deciding that I didn’t feel comfortable letting my washer talk in robot language right in front of me (who knows what it might say about us), I opened my laptop and found a website that explains all of the error codes. I felt pretty stupid-it turns out the washer was just telling me that the child lock was on. As soon as I saw it on there, the code made sense. Of course! Duh!

Hey wait a minute, if I COULD find an R2 Unit, would it talk to the garbage disposal and fix it?

But wait, there’s more…

The next morning was the first day of the weather deciding that, oh yeah, it’s FALL! I anticipated this happening. I made sure I turned the heat back on before I went to bed last night. It’s been warm and humid, which has made it feel even warmer. This morning was the WAKE-UP call! It was cold enough that the dog climbed in bed with me after my husband left for work. I have the heat set at 60 at night because my husband is the reverse Princess and the Pea with 8 or so blankets on the bed. At a little before 7 am, I have the thermostat set to go up to 66 degrees.

The reverse princess and the pea… It’s sort of like this, but with blankets.

When the alarm went off, I went into the bathroom to hear a HORRIBLE noise coming from somewhere. I thought it was the humidity control thing in there, but as I fiddled with that I realized that it was coming from the FURNACE. Nooooooooo! I went downstairs, turned off the heat, went to get my son out of bed, and then went down to the basement to fight with the furnace. I finally pulled the door off the front and it wouldn’t even stop running. It sounded like it had swallowed a train or something. There was a wheel thingie turning on there, and I had no idea what it was or why it wouldn’t stop. When it finally stopped running 10 minutes later, it started to get very cold in the house. I texted my husband that it wasn’t working right and making a horrible noise. Since he was there at work the day after his horrible accident, he had only gone in to wrap a few things up and could come home (apparently you really shouldn’t report to work after almost having your toe amputated by rogue metal). Meanwhile I was still coming up with ways we would have to heat our house alternatively since we couldn’t afford a repairman. What could we burn? Where could we burn it? Could we chop down our tree? Our neighbor has a chainsaw. I bet if we mowed our lawn she’d lend it to us.

He came home, and he got it to work. He just TURNED IT ON. That’s all. There was no noise, it was putting out hot air. It was like he had a magic touch. When I asked him how he did it, his first response was that a magician never reveals his secrets. Then he said that he unwrapped his foot and showed it to the furnace and scared it into working. Ha ha. Thanks furnace. This is the thanks I get for vacuuming you out, changing the furnace filters, and removing the dead mouse with two wooden dowels as giant makeshift salad tongs? Make a liar out of me? I see how you are!

See? Anxiety and Appliances that don’t behave are not a good mix. No furnace school for me. No refrigerator college. Not even coffee pot repair classes. The appliances don’t like me. It’s a conspiracy!