Countdown to Heat: 8 Days

This is Harper and her dziatku. While I am loyal to the UD Flyers, I am afraid it might be difficult not to "Feel the Power of X" when it comes to Harper. I think the basketball influence of her father and dziatku might win out. I'll do my best. At least she's a Packer fan. (I know she looks like a boy in this picture, but I'm not into taping bows into her barely-there-hair.)

Furnace update: New furnace (heat!!) should arrive no later than Friday, November 4th.

I am so lucky to get along with my in-laws, despite their sketchy loyalties in the wide world of sports. It has been pretty chilly here, down near freezing over night. Since we're still not feeling great about the combination of space heaters and the baby, Harper and I are bunking at Nana and Dziatku's for a bit.

The first night was rough. Harper often wakes up, for no apparent reason, in the middle of the night. I don't know if it's gas or bad dreams or what, but she hasn't needed to eat in the middle of the night for months and months. Usually I just walk in (or stumble, as I'm mostly asleep myself), lay her back down, and go back to bed. Most nights she gets the idea that it isn't time to be awake, and falls back asleep. Unfortunately this doesn't work when I go back to bed in the room she's sleeping in. I would look over from the bed and see her little head popping up from the pack-n-play she was sleeping in. Then she would scream until I rescued her. She was up from 3 to 4 a.m.

Last night we brilliantly moved her into the clean bathroom attached to the room I'm sleeping in. My in-laws, who thought of this plan, are geniuses. She doesn't know she's sleeping in the bathroom, I can still hear her, and she doesn't realize how close I am and therefore gives up on being pulled out of the pack-n-play. Brilliant! She slept until a little after six this morning.

We are hoping that it will be warm enough to stay in our own home by Saturday night.

Matt has been a trooper, sleeping here to keep the dog company. He uses the space heater and sleeps on the living room couch with the gas logs turned on. Last night the temperature in that room reached a balmy 64.

That Will Be About $3,000, And Have a Nice Day

Here is a homeowner's tip. When the man from the heating company, who has come to do a routine inspection, comes up from the basement and says, "Ma'am, would you come down here a minute, I'd like to show you something," do not go in the basement!!! Nothing good will come from following this so-called "technician." You go down there, and the next thing you know you'll be hearing words like "efficiency," "BTU," and "unsafe condition." The kicker comes when the guy says he can't leave your furnace on under these conditions; followed by, this is a very busy time of year and we can't get to you until the first week in December. Then he looks right at me, as though I can possibly think this is somehow fine, and says, "You might want to get some space heaters."

Space heaters!!! Flash to all of us standing in the yard at 3 a.m., posing for the news crew in our pajamas, as we watch the fire department try to put out the fire that the space heaters started. Harper is too young to understand stop, drop and roll, or to even tell us, "Hey, my curtains are engulfed in flames in here!" So I find myself not thrilled at the prospect of heating our home this way for a month or more. Yes, I know, these things are much safer than they used to be, but still. Not having a working furnace seems like something that you should have to deal with for a couple of days, at most! Aren't there heating technicians somewhere that work seasonally, you know, back-ups they bring in for the busy season? Kind of like accountants who do extra work during tax season. . .

To make it even more fun, Harper is in the basement with me during all this, writhing in my arms. She would like to get down and crawl on the basement floor (yuck), but I'm so busy looking for the cracks in our heat exchange with a system involving a flashlight, long mirror, and laser pointer, that I can't really watch to make sure she doesn't eat any dead bugs.

Did I mention it's cold enough right now that snowflakes fell from the sky yesterday afternoon? (Fortunately this is just a cold snap and it should be a little less frigid in a day or two.)

Honestly, as I type this, I think I can feel the temperature dropping. So even though I am annoyed and a little bit panicked that we now need a new furnace and will have to huddle together for warmth in the evening (ohmygosh, and what about the pipes freezing?), I'm also really grateful for this house, even if it's falling apart, because I cannot imagine what it would be like to be homeless and trying to stay warm. So thank you God, for our walls, at least we won't have a wind-chill factor to deal with.