Menopause Humor
Wherever you are, when the heater doesn’t work… brrr!
Chilly enough for you?
Enjoying the chilly weather? Chilly, heck! It’s freeeeezing!!! Of course the heater’s not working now. Well, some of the time… Had Steve of Steve Bailey’s come out to fix it; told him to wear his mud clothes ’cause part of the problem was maybe unconnected or clogged ducts under the house in the three foot high crawl space. With all this rain lately, I was thinking it might be kind’a wet in there. The other problem was the thermostat – ’least that’s what I thought. Every now and then I’d realize I was shivering so I’d go look at the thermostat and it was set to seventy degrees but the temperature was sixty-four and no matter how much I jiggled the on/off switch, the heater wouldn’t come on. Except some times. Which is why I didn’t call Steve as soon as I should have.
Steve checked the ducts inside the house first, then went to the crawl space and flashed his light from the end of it. Said I was right about the un-connected ducts. There were a bunch of them. He’d send a crew out Thursday to seal them all up and just to make me feel better, he took the temperature just outside the crawl space and then inside the crawl space. It was eight degrees warmer than the air outside it. Prob’ly warmer than the air in the house, too.
As for the thermostat, he said the thermostat’s never the problem. Well, hardly ever. We went out to the breezeway, where the heater abides in its little closet. Steve poked around – and then he got kind’a excited. “Hey! Do you see? This is a self-diagnosing heater! Look in this little hole right here.” I wasn’t as excited as he was. I just wanted my heater fixed. I twisted around and put my head at a slant and looked inside the hole.
“See the flashes?” he asked. Wait… oh, yes. There it is. Pretty big flash. “If the flashes were red, we’d know the heat was off, but they’re green so that means your heater’s on but the…” and here’s where I got lost. I never heard of whatever it was that he said wasn’t working if the flashes were green so I can’t remember it to tell you, but anyway, there’s a code: one if by land, two if by sea… Oh, no, that’s another one. It was “two flashes it’s…” um, something, and three flashes, it’s something else.
Both sounded expensive. Steve was done. The crawl hole crew was coming out Thursday and my assignment was to look in the hole the next time the heater wasn’t heating and count the flashes and report to him if there were two flashes at a time or three flashes at a time.
Naturally the next time that happened I was relaxing on the still warm – but rapidly cooling – couch after a hard day’s work. No way I wanted to get up and go out in the dark freezing breezeway and look in a hole and count flashes. But I did. Flash, flash, flash – pause? flash, flash, flash – pause? Or was it flash, flash – pause? flash, flash – pause? flash, flash – pause? Enough, already! Yeah, I was thinking that, too. Those darn pauses weren’t hardly pauses you could count on.
I went back inside. Darned if I knew if it was two flashes or three. He can check it out when he comes. Meanwhile, I’m still jiggling the thermostat to try to get the heater to come on and keeping a couple of sweaters close by and being glad I don’t live in Yreka, where my daughter’s watching the snow come down on a twenty degree day. From a cozy spot on the couch in her seventy degree living room. Hmmm…
Text me 619.997.5679 or send e-mail, sbuska@cox.net,
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