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Tuesday, November 25, 2014

How do I surrender?

My furnace has stopped working again.  I think the problem is electrical.  It's acting like it has no power, absolutely nothing I do has any effect.  It's as useless as punching keys on an unplugged computer.  The only other time it acted this way it was electrical.

I found out something was wrong soon after returning from food shopping.  My mother, font of negativity that she is, was here.  Eventually I gave up on attempted pleasantries and told her I was going to take a shower.  I was, after all, dripping with sweat.

I had wanted to get in the shower immediately upon getting home, but she was there and seemed intent on pulling me into every little thing.  Much yay there.

She left soon after I went into the bathroom.  I never got to take my shower.  The water never warmed up.  I spent hours upon hours trying, with no results whatsoever, to get the furnace working.  When it seemed like it was an electrical thing I tried changing the fuse (my house has only one fuse, everything else is done by a circuit breaker) resetting the circuit breaker both via the main switch and every individual switch, following wires around to see if there was any obvious problem, and so forth.

I also made sure that the water in the furnace was at the optimal level for good measure.  The water wasn't far enough from optimal to actually have had any detrimental effects, but why not?

Nothing worked.

Then I finally called my mother to tell her that the furnace wasn't working, it seems to be an electrical problem, could we maybe call a damn electrician (the last time it was acting like this the furnace guy pointed out that for an electrical problem an electrician would be a better fit than a furnace guy) and such.

The thing that has to be remembered in any interaction between myself and my mother is this: She has little trouble making phone calls; for me making phone calls is usually more of a discomfort than root canal work.  I know.  I've had root canal work done.  Honestly, once the antibiotics kick in root canal problems are basically nothing when compared to most phone calls.  Before the antibiotics kick in, phone calls to strangers, and "furnace guy" and "electrician" definitely fall into the category of strangers, are still worse but at least they don't make you look like you've been punched in the face.

So of course the first thing my mother says is that I should call furnace guy and talk over the question of whether it's best to go with him or an electrician first, because just calling to set up an appointment would bad enough for me, so why not up the torture with the need to prolong the agony into a detailed discussion of the pros and cons of making appliance related decisions with limited information?

Then she suggested calling up my sister, who may or may not know an electrician, because wouldn't it be nice to go with the only thing worse than a stranger?

I got a stay of execution when, after a nice long excruciating talk (it's not just strangers and worse who are bad for me over the phone, I can count on one hand the people it isn't painful to have phone calls with and still have enough fingers left to play guitar*) she decided that she would call my sister.  I'm waiting to hear back now.

Which brings me to the topic of this post.  How the fuck do I surrender?  What do I have to do to say, "Ok, life, you win.  I lose.  Now can you stop kicking me while I'm down and enjoy your victory in a way that doesn't hurt me?"

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* It's just the talent and the skill that's lacking in the guitar playing department, there would definitely be enough fingers.  Modified styles, of course, but people with injuries and the like have successfully found ways to play guitar with less than a full complement of fingers before so the groundwork has already been done.

2 comments:

  1. I don't think life enjoys kicking people while they're down, is the problem - it just does it because it can't come up with anything better to do. :(

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  2. *offers hugs*

    I wish I could help.

    ReplyDelete