Homeownership is the Pits
Posted on March 4, 2003 by Ching under Life.
Being a homeowner is the fucking (and I fucking swore I would never cuss in writing — ever) pits! This should make you realize the gravity of the situation..
A few weeks ago I woke up and I was getting ready to hop in the shower. I turn it on and wait for the water to get warm — I’m not freakin’ stupid, of course I’m going to wait until I’m sure that it’s warm. After a minute I stuck my hand under the stream and it was still freezing cold. I thought, “It’s just taking a while; I can give it a few more minutes.” Ten minutes later it’s still freezing cold!
Naturally, I woke Brian’s ass up! At least I didn’t get my entire body wet with that freezing cold water — just my hand — but talk about a rude awakening! As it turns out we didn’t have any hot water because the pilot light on the water heater had gone out. After reading the instructions, we were able to successfully relight it. Of course, I had to spend the day all icky-sticky and stuff because I didn’t have time to shower — we had to go somewhere (I can’t even remember where now, but we had errands to run that day). I didn’t get a chance to take a shower until later that night.
That whole experience pissed me off but it was just a minor inconvenience. Shit like that happens from time to time. It was no big deal really.. Except that I hate not being able to shower in the morning [BRIEF DIGRESSION: Brian likes to shower at night. I like to shower in the morning. On our days off, however, I make him shower with me. It’s not like I twist his arm or anything. He actually loves it because I shampoo his hair and he gets a head-neck-shoulder rub out of it. It’s been a ritual of ours ever since we’ve been together, even before we actually started living together. Okay, so maybe this wasn’t such a short digression — sue me!]. At least, it didn’t cost us anything.
So that’s my water heater story.. Now our furnace is out. We hadn’t noticed it until recently (when we started to have lots of snow and extremely low temperatures). I mean, we try to keep the thermostat at 65 to 68 degrees anyway to try and keep our gas bill down but the other day we notice that the temperature inside the house was 56, the thermostat was set to 68 and the heater wasn’t going. So we check this and we check that — Brian even replaced the battery on our thermostat, thinking that could be the problem — to no avail. We know it’s not the thermostat because when we set it to AC, it works just fine. The problem, based on our uneducated guess, is somewhere inside the furnace. This time it’s going to cost us. Since we can’t figure out what’s wrong with it, we’re going to have to call a heating specialist and we have to pay them just to come to our house and check it out! Even just to look at it and find out what’s wrong is going to cost us! How crappy is that?
We’re going on three nights in these arctic conditions but we’re making do. We’re actually going to try to see if we can figure this out and fix it ourselves. Brian’s dad is going to come over tomorrow to check it out. Of course, Brian just wants to replace the stupid freakin’ heater.. He thinks we can get it replaced for less than a grand (maybe in the 70 when our house was first built). I heard it can cost almost $2000 — our tax refund (which we haven’t even filed yet, so we ain’t getting it back anytime soon) isn’t even that much!
You want to know something really jacked? We’ve been enduring somewhat cold temperatures inside the house (to most people 65 is pretty cold) because we’ve been trying to reduce our gas bill and that was fine but now that our furnace is out and we’re forced to endure it — not by choice but by necessity — the feeling has completely changed. I mean, before we could increase the temperature if we wanted to but we chose to keep the house cold. Now that we don’t have a choice it feels ten times colder! I know that a lot of it is psychological, though. We’re not freakin’ going to die or anything.. We have space heaters and blankets for crying out loud.
What really sucked, though, is that our bet is still going on and I had to work out in 50 degree temperature. That’s the crappiest part! Brian has such an unfair advantage! He felt so bad that I had to work out in these conditions that he told me I didn’t have to but then my competitive side kicked in and said, “Of course he’s going to tell you that! He wants to win!” So anyway, I figured I can’t make excuses to not work out. I’ve been doing that all this time. It time to start fresh.. To turn a new leaf.. I really hope that I can keep this momentum going..
Speaking of hope — the freaking furnace better be fixed soon! And let’s pray it doesn’t set us back a fortune!
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