A Rocky Start

I recognize that 2008 is only 6 days old, but I'm not wild about it so far.

In the late afternoon on the 2nd, the radiator stopped working. The boiler in my apartment building died. Of course, we didn't know it was dead. With the radiator working, our apartment is generally about 90 degrees. When we awoke the morning of the 3rd, it was about 65 degrees inside and about 13 outside. And there was no hot water.

The Tummy was not happy. He grumbled about us living in the 'hood while he ate his oatmeal.

I called our landlord when I got to work and left a message saying, "I just wanted to make sure that you knew that we had no heat or hot water this morning. Please call me back." I was cranky with my students, because the temperature in my classroom goes from about 55 degrees to about 110 degrees and back to about 55 by the end of the day. When my landlord called me back, she was all apologies. She very sweetly explained that she had been working all day to fix the problem and found out that she needed to replace the boiler. It would take a few days.

The Tummy suggested we not renew our lease at the end of the month. He does not like not being able to rely on heat and hot water.

Our landlord stopped by later in the evening and gave us a small portable electric heater. It was a very nice gesture, and it did a very nice job heating the square foot of space on all sides of it. The rest of the apartment got steadily colder. I baked snickerdoodles so that I had an excuse to turn the oven on.

The Tummy and I slept in sweats and slippers with 2 quilts and a down comforter on top of us. We cuddled.

Friday morning, it was colder in the apartment. I heated water on the stove to bathe and wash my hair. I grumbled all the way to school. I learned that I become quite grumpy when I can't get warm. I argued with the dean about bathroom passes.

Saturday, the apartment was colder.

The Tummy got up around 9:00 and I stayed in bed under the pile of blankets. Around 10:00, he got back in, because he said it was too cold to stay up. I didn't want to stay in the cold all day, but I felt so gross from not being able to take a real shower for 3 days that I didn't want to go out in public. (And before anybody suggests a cold shower, I'd like to point out that our cold water was about 33 degrees.) So I spent the day in sweats and slippers and a jacket, under an afghan, too cold to do anything but read and watch tv.

Around 7pm, we heard a hiss. The radiator had come back on! WE SURVIVED!!! Tonight, I'm actually sitting comfortably in a t-shirt! Hooray for heat!