Author: Emily

If you are my Facebook friend, you may have noticed that I’ve spent a lot of time lately bitching my status updates about our broken furnace. And if you have, you may want to stop reading this now because I am about to rant about it again.

Our furnace is broken and it is making me mad.

A couple weeks ago when we had the occasion to turn it on, we found that while it started up right away and heated up the house quite nicely, it wouldn’t stay on, and it doesn’t kick back on automatically when it should. Which is really annoying. And cold.

So upon that discovery, I called Furnace Fixer Person #1, and he came over to check things out. He replaced a wire, charged us $85, and went merrily on his way. So I’m all, “Yay, it was just a bad wire, score!” Except that after he left, we still had the same freaking problem. So I called him to come back again, and when he was pretty much baffled by the situation and was all “when I light the pilot light it starts right up!” and I was all “Well yeah but it doesn’t stay on.” I could tell he didn’t have a clue what was going on so when he said “I don’t know, it seems to be working, call me if you have any more problems,” I was quite sure that I wasn’t going to be calling him again.

The problem persisted, of course, and so I called Furnace Fixer Person #2, and he came out right away. And then he left right away, because apparently we have something called a Pulse furnace and pretty much no one knows how to work on them. Grrrreat. Furnace Fixer Person #2 gave me the name of a company to call because they do work on our kind of janky furnace, so I called them up. However Furnace Fixer Person #3 could not make the trip all the way to my house. From downtown Dayton, which is, you know, like 10 miles away. Furnace Fixer Person #3 gave me the name of another company to call, but Furnace Fixer Person #4 also does not work on that kind of furnace. (Our furnace must have H1N1 or leprosy or some other kind of awful communicable disease.) So they said to call Furnace Fixer Person #5, who said “Oh yes, we have a guy who is really good at working on Pulse furnaces. And where is your house again? Yeah, I guess we could go all the way out there.”

So last week Furnace Fixer Person #5 came over to sort out the problem, and by this time I was googling terms like “How much does it cost to replace a furnace?” and such, figuring it was a lost cause. However Furnace Fixer Person #5 had good news – the thermostat was the trouble. He could replace it and we’d only be out $189, which, in comparison to the results of my google search was pocket change. Yay! Crisis averted.

And the angels sang.

Yeah, except too bad for us, because it still didn’t freaking work. It will come on if Andy goes down and turns it off and restarts the pilot light, but it won’t stay on. And I am getting so tired of not knowing what’s going on with it, not knowing what it’s going to take to fix it, and of being cold. Being cold is making me grumpy. And the worst part is that while Kate and Andy and I can burrow under the covers at night, Sammy can’t. We put him in like three sleepers, but the poor thing still doesn’t sleep well because he is cold. We put a space heater in his room temporarily, and it makes it somewhat better, but of course I am convinced it’s going to burst into flames at any given moment, so it’s not really the ideal situation.

So, now I’ve got to call Furnace Fixer Person #5 and have him come out again. I may have to hold him hostage until he figures out what the crap is wrong with it and what needs to be done to fix it. I just really, really hope that at the end of the day, I’m not googling “buying a cheap furnace.”

Sammy is getting SO big… but, for the moment anyway, it’s not making me sad, because he is so much fun.

He’s 18 months old, and this has got to be the most fun stage he’s gone through yet. He didn’t walk until he was about 16 months, but you’d never know it now – he is everywhere, and he is fast. He’s starting to run, and it’s about the cutest thing ever.

The best part about this stage, though, is the way his verbal skills are developing. He says something new every day, and it’s great to be able to communicate with him. His favorite expression for about four months now is “I want,” and he uses it all the time! A little bit ago, he looked at me and said “I want Mama and Dada and Papa.” “You do?” I said to him. He nodded at me and said “And num num” (which is his word for food). Just this week he’s started to say Kate and also Sissy, in reference to her (which to be honest makes me cringe every time, but for whatever reason Kate always refers to herself that way around him, and he has picked it up).

He is also obsessed with shoes, and which shoes belong to whom. He likes to get shoes out of our closet for me and Andy in the morning, and yesterday morning he was walking around sporting my favorite pair of Crocs. Kate has her own opinion on why he has this obsession, though… last night Andy said “Sammy you love shoes,” and Kate said “Yeah that’s because he knows how to say shoes.” Apparently she thinks his interests are based solely on his limited vocabulary. She could be onto something.

This is my favorite, favorite thing that he says right now, though… a while ago I taught him a little trick – when I say “Whose are you?” I taught him to reply “Mama’s baby!” But that lasted for only a couple days, and now when I ask him that question, he’ll say “Dada’s baby!” Or “Papa’s baby!” or “Ball’s baby!” and he just cracks himself up! It’s so cute though, because if Andy asks him the same thing, he’ll say he’s “Mama’s baby!”… he definitely knows what answer we’re trying to get out of him, and he is so ornery that he says anything but that! It amazes me that he has such a sense of humor.

Anyway, I am having so much fun with him right now, and really I had forgotten what a fun stage this was… it seems like forever since Kate was 18 months old. I still miss the tiny baby he was, but I love the little person he’s becoming.