~ Winter of 2008~
There are moments in one’s life that you feel you just can’t win the game that we call life. To keep score means to be able to acknowledge when you lose and when you think you are on the winning side. When you think you’re on the losing side for it always seems to be dark and painful, yet even when it feels this way you still could be on the winning side of life, you just don’t know it yet.
It was this past Sunday when it started to feel like I was on the losing side of life. When darkness fell upon me and I felt the pain of pure frustration. Lost in wondering when I catch my break, when is it my turn to feel a sense of freedom and peace of mind?
When do all the wrongs start turning right?
I spent all day Sunday laying down ice salt and shoveling up pieces of slush and throwing it into a pile of 3 feet high snow banks, it’s a back breaking job and my small delicate fingers are red and frozen. I don’t mind shoveling snow, it actually makes me feel good inside. I like the feeling of cold air rushing throw my veins and pumping what feels like fresh clean blood through me. It gives me a natural high of life to release what feels like dried up compressed oxygen that flows through me when I stay indoors because the weather outside is below zero and life is frozen still.
It took me about 6 hours to deice my walkway and remove what look like 4inches of thick hard ice. My fingers are sending those signals to my brain that it is time to defrost them once again and endure what will be about an hours worth of pain and suffering to finally be able to have a normal feeling again in them.
So I come into the house and I turn on thermostat to the heater and I make my way down to the cob-web infested area of my house that I so hate to venture into, the basement.
The basement is a scary place to venture into, for it hides many creatures of life that are not my friends. The basement has a small river that flows threw it day after day and it has its own high and low tides depending on the weather outdoors. When you venture into the basement you must bend over with your face facing the river that flows through it for there isn’t enough room to stand up straight. There is this major rock that the house was built around for during the time this house was built they didn’t have the tools to remove this rock that now has years of water damage traced upon its rough edges. The rock is easy about 7ft long and about 3ft high that is visual in my scary basement. So I can just imagine how far in depth this rock must go into the ground.
I had built platforms that are about a foot off the ground so you must walk on these platforms, it makes one feel like they are in the wizard of oz and you are skipping along the yellow brick road. Yet this road has a ceiling that holds those many creatures that you are now a foot closer to. Once a month I must go down into the basement with a broom and I must clear my yellow brick road of these webs that they have formed for me. Such pretty designs they create that I must destroy on them, heck it gives them something to do while I walk above them the remainder of the month.
Sometimes when I am brave and it is low tide in my scary basement I will walk off my yellow brick road and I will venture into the small river and I will go over to the sawdust nest that have been created by my rat friends that I detest and I will disturb their cozy homes that they have eaten through my walls to create. When I have taken their cozy homes and I have given them what must feel like a tornado coming through their quiet house and I will leave nothing in my path of destruction. I am Mother Nature to them, when they see me coming they should just run but they are not smart little creatures for they are still living amongst me after years of me torturing them.
So I’m venturing down the stairs into my scary basement for I must turn on the heater, my fingers are in so much pain and I swear my nose feels like it is going to fall off, I need heat.
When I first moved into this house 3 years ago the heater, which is 18 years old, decided to fall apart the very first winter we moved in. so in order to get the heater to work I must venture down into the scary basement and beat the shit out of it for it to click on and produce what I love so very much, heat.
So I beat my heater and click it turned on
I feel like an abuser after I beat it and then I feel like I must express my gratitude and I softly whisper to my heater that in fact I do love him.
So as I walked along my yellow brick road I decided to take a different course and go to where my fuel sits in that big tank on the opposite side of the basement. I clear my path way of its webs and I look to see how much fuel is in that big rusty tank that I swear makes noises on me when I turn my back to it.
Shit I can’t see the red line for it is covered in webs, I must get off my yellow brick road and go over to it and clear my visual of its webs that have taken form upon its ugly soul of a tank.
Ankle deep in water I make my way over to the tank
I clear the path way at the top of the thermostat and I see no line at the full line and I clear more of it, nothing at the ¾ full part and I clear more and more until I reach the bottom of the tank that is at empty and there I see the red line that signals that I have nothing left in my ugly tank.
Fuck
I make my way back upstairs and I sit on my couch and I throw layers and layers of blankets on my frozen little shivering body. For my frozen little fingers are still frozen and my now wet feet and ankles are very cold too.
Tom comes into the house and sits down at the computer and clicks to turn it on. Our ritual of never really saying anything much to each other, for after 11 years of being together in truth we are all talked out.
I pipe up to him and tell him that we need to call the heating people for we are on empty. I get the normal grunt out of him, His way of acknowledging that it did make it to his brain. I’m satisfied with this answer that I receive out of him and I continue back to my shivering and trying to get warmth back into my cold body.
Just as I reach the remote to click on the TV, I hear another click that is now shutting something off.
Fuck
We are now out of heat
Tom turns and looks at me and I look at him
We start laughing shit what else is there to do in this very moment.
So now a bitter night turns into a very bitter morning of a now unheated shitty home. I look to see what the temp says in the house and it is a 41 degrees brrr
I go over to my stove and I turn up the heat on the stove to 450 degrees and I open its door and I feel a rush of heat upon me and I open up my blankets and I peel back my 4 sweaters and I expose my belly and I suck up heat that is burning my skin and yet I don’t care for it feels good at this very moment.
I hear the dogs howling up at storm in their bedroom and I push back the layers of sweaters and I cover myself up in blankets once again and I step away from the beautiful heat and within 2 ft away from the stove I get blasted with very cold air and I suck it up and I run upstairs to release my dogs from their room and they run down the stairs to their outside pen.
I on the hand run back to my stove
Hours go by
I’m still hovering over my stove
I can’t move
I don’t want to move
Cold is still within arms distant of my spot that I have created for myself. I have my cigs, my coffee, and my blankets; I’m in heaven for the moment. I can suck this up until the heating people come and give me what I want, a warm house again.
I make small promises, in my mind, to the heating gods that I will venture more downstairs into the scary basement and check the ugly tank more often if they please hurry up and make me the first person they see this day.
Tom comes into the kitchen and as he speaks words to me I can see his warm breath in the cold air, he tells me the heating people will be here between 8am and 10am.
I can deal with that
That is doable; I can handle another 2 to 4 hours of this
So I stand
2 hours go by nothing
3 hours
4 hours
5 hours
6 hours and I hear a knock on my door
Finally
I swear I could have kissed the heating people for I couldn’t at this moment be any happier but I was a frozen Popsicle and my mouth barely moved to form words.
He confirms me that he is here and in fact do I want a full tank
Well ya!!
Hello!!!
We did tell them we ran out last night, I guess he didn’t get that message and he couldn’t tell by the ice that was forming on my nose that our house is dead cold.
I guess the four layers of sweaters and the three blankets I had around me was the new “in style” of today’s fashion and I just didn’t know it.
He leaves and I can hear the sweet sound of fuel being pumped into my ugly tank and I thank the heat gods for finally answering my prayers and I promise I will be nicer to the ugly tank more often.
He comes back and hands me the 500 dollar bill and I lead him to the scary basement where he now has to bleed the line to get the fuel in and the air out so my heater can click on.
I stay on top of the stairs and I wait, I don’t want to have to start out right away being nice to my ugly tank just yet.
I hear a click and nothing
Nothing again
And again nothing
This goes on for some time and I’m thinking what the fuck now?
Where is the fucking heat?
So I’m cursing the heating gods and I think to myself this feels like de-ja vu when I was cursing the power gods a few months back.
Their out to get me and they are winning and I’m losing
I see the heating guy come upstairs with this look on his face that I just wanted to slap off and force him back down there to get that heater started and just give me what I want, dammit.
He politely tells me that the line has been bled clean and there is fuel reaching the heater but the nozzle must be clogged with stuff from the bottom of the ugly tank when it ran out of fuel last night. We must hire someone to come and clean our heater and give us a new nozzle.
Fucking ugly tank
He leaves
I return to my stove and I stand
I place a call to tom and I tell him my sadden news that we now have a full tank of heat but can’t use it because our nozzle thingy is broken and we must hire another heating guy to fix it.
I get a grunt
And I pull the phone from my ear and I just want to yell into the phone at him and beg him to do more than just a grunt I want actual conversation this time.
Silence
Is he still on the line ugh?
Are you breathing? Are you dead? What the heck say something to me.
Does it take longer for my words to cross the lines to get into your brain for it to trigger words and put them into a sentence?
I love him but conversation isn’t our strong suit, so that is why we have been doing good for 11 years together, for we don’t exchange words unless forced to.
He tells me that he will call around for a heater guy and will tell me when he finds one, click.
1 hour goes by
Another
And another
Then another and I’m still in the same spot over my stove that feels like it no longer is producing heat
Fucking heating gods they hate me
I hear a knock on my door
It is another heating guy come to save me from my frozen hell
He comes in my house and says “wow the wind here is real bad” for you open up my front door the wind tries to take it with it.
He laughs a bit
I’m not laughing
He closes the door behind him and says “we don’t want to let the heat out”
I look at him and I want to say “what heat? If we drop another 5 degrees my house will technically be frozen” but I don’t, for it is just a moment that you wish you could say something but would later regret it when you’re in a better state of mind, so I let it go.
I take him to the scary basement and I go back to my stove and I pray once again to the heating gods to please allow this man to fix it and just give me warmth please.
And I wait
And I wait
Then I wait some more
I hear no sounds of a click that turns on my heat as I hear his footsteps coming up my stairs.
He leaves my house without a word to me as he passes me through the kitchen and out my front door and I follow him in wonder what the fuck now. I watch him go to his big ass truck and he gets in his front driver’s seat and he sits.
I go back to the stove and this time I text tom, I have better chances of conversation this way and I tell him what is going on and I think it is best if he comes home, for I have a feeling that something isn’t right and I think he should be here.
He said he will be home in fifteen minutes
So I wait for the both of them
And I wait
Heating guy comes back into the house with this long drawn out list of things that is wrong with the heater and he wants to show me
What happened to the nozzle thingy?
I text tom as I go downstairs into the scary basement behind heating guy
I follow my yellow brick road and I get off and then go into the river and I cross the river and I come to the heater and the heater guy
One by one he shows me stuff in a language I haven’t yet to understand.
Is he speaking English?
I’m calling tom
Where the fuck are you?
I’m hearing combusting compartment blew up and my house is a fire hazard and I’m trying to break down words of a language that is so beyond me that he could be speaking german and I wouldn’t know it.
I hear a grunt
Where are you?
He is two minutes away
Hmm I thought before you said you were 15 minutes away and that was a half an hour ago
Fucking Liar
Fucking heating gods
I hang up the phone
I force a fake smile as he heard my cursing at tom and the heater guy probably is thinking thank god I’m not with her.
I hear the upstairs door open and close
Thank you
He is finally here
He comes down the stairs and I pass him as I go back up the stairs to my stove
They stay down there
And I wait
And I wait some more
I hear muffling of sounds being exchanged between the two of them
And I wait
They merge from the downstairs and the heater guy leaves after being paid 300 dollars and we now are 800 dollars in the hole and we still have no heat.
The heater is dead
It is 18years old and we saw it give its final breath on Sunday night.
It pretty much blew up its inside and melted everything
There is no recovery
