not my house

The summer before last, I was spending a long weekend at the beach with Rooster when David called and said the air-conditioner at home died. He was frazzled, frustrated with having to deal with the servicemen, trying to negotiate prices, etc. Oh, and he was hot, because it was August and it was typically sweltering and disgusting in DC. So he was understandably testy. It cost the boys several thousand dollars to install the monster needed to cool the house, but it had to be done.

This summer, when I was an official resident, R and I went camping with some friends, and had a great time fishing, eating, sitting by the fire. Our last night in woods however was interrupted by a tremendous thunderstorm, and in the morning, all of our belongings were soaked and splattered with mud. Driving home, wet and exhausted, we couldn't wait to unpack and take hot showers. But lo, the appliance gods had other plans for us. David called to let us know that the hot water heater had died and emptied its bowels onto the basement floor. "Bad things happen when you go away," he said to R. We got home and spent the next several hours trying to sop up the gallons of water soaking the carpet, and then ruefully took cold showers and went to bed. A day and a couple thousand dollars later, we had a new water heater.

I guess you can only go so long without needing a visit from your friendly HVAC/plumbing professional, and now that winter has a firm grip on the city, our boiler felt it would be a good time to call it quits. We've had intermittent heat for the last week or two, so I stayed home in the morning to meet the installers, and Dave took the afternoon shift. We were all really looking forward to having the brand new, reliable furnace that they were installing. Except that they weren't, because the new one was defective out of the box. And another one was 100 miles away. So they waited for hours for it, and when that one finally arrived and was installed, they still couldn't get the system to work right. The poor guys were at our house for 14 hours. We slept with many blankets last night. Our house is freezing. Hopefully today they will fix everything. And we will write another hefty check.

I say it all the time: technically, it's not MY house. The dishes? Not mine. The ugly dining room table? Not mine. The mortgage isn't mine either. But heat? Yeah, I'd like some of that.