The Glamour of Home Ownership, Again

We have a new furnace!


Our furnace stopped working properly a few days before Christmas, so we have been unable to use it. Sears folks came out three times, sent us parts twice, and finally determined that it needed to be replaced.


Anyone in the area may have noticed that this not working of the furnace coincided with the coldest weather we've had since last year. This is what not having a furnace has meant to us:

Not just me, but Zirpu also, wearing sweats, hats, and socks to bed. Toward the end I started putting the heating pad in the bed.

Zirpu and I huddled in the office, the only room in our house that has doors, with the tiny space heater I bought for my office at CSUH blowing at full blast.

Seven and a half boxes of Duraflame logs.

Red wine too cold to drink.

Temps in the house consistently in the low 50s and more than once at 49*F.

Extreme crankiness on my part.


The furnace was installed on Thursday and we are luxuriating at 65*F. To get the furnace into the crawl space, the installers had to make the crawl space door bigger. That hole was repaired today.


I have a friend who lived without a furnace for eight years, and another one who didn't have one in her house until recently. I think that both these people had space heaters and didn't have to cram themselves into a 7'x10' room like Zirpu and I did. Now that I think of it, one of these friends is from Minnesota, where the men are strong, the women are beautiful, all the children are above average, and everyone is naturally hardy!


I guess we're not as strong as my friends because we're very happy about the new furnace.

A hoary night, when lonely men struggled to keep their fires lit and cabins warm.

The first three times I went to the Cabin was in the winter when I flew out to Colorado during the break between semesters. The Cabin was not designed for winter use; hand-built by Phil and Marko's parents, it's got lots of single-pane windows and is insulated with tinfoil. A fire in the river rock fireplace, which is large, is the main source of heat, and there was (until about a year ago) a wood stove for additional warmth.


Jujubi, Denver D, Phil, and a good friend of Phil's, Bard, would go up to the Cabin and walked in the snow, played cards, talked, read, and listened to music and ate big country meals (read: artery-clogging) that Bard would cook. We sipped a fair amount of Yukon Jack and peach schnapps, and smoked cigars. Jujubi, Denver D, and I would often get caught up in listening to Bard tell shaggy-dog stories about raising rabbits, slaughtering sheep, driving a forklift at Coors, or building houses with his father. The slow cadence of his speech was mesmerizing even if the stories were not.


One night we were there the temperature fell and fell. The four of them played pinochle while I wrote a really lame short story and watched the fire which Phil and Bard kept burning high. The wood stove was cooking away in the corner and we were still chilled, and finally Phil pulled out the kerosene heater and turned on the baseboards. Jujubi and I, from temperate climates, had never heard of it being "too cold to snow," but the guys, all native Coloradans, told us it was.


It would not have snowed that night anyway. There were no clouds, and the sky was a dark royal blue with a big white moon and bright, bright stars strewn across it. The Milky Way was visible. . . I'd never seen such a sky. The dark blue above was reflected on the snow, which shimmered a light blue back at the stars. Standing outside for minute, I was totally taken in by the color and the silence (the river being muffled under ice and five feet of snow). I wrote a haiku about the snow, the last line of which was "What color is blue!"


When we went to bed, the thermometer indicated that it was five below zero outside. It didn't seem much warmer in the Cabin and we all prepared to sleep in our long johns, sweaters, and wool socks. Bard had his sleeping bag rated to 15 below and Jujubi and Phil took the double bed with the electric blanket cranked high. Denver D and I, both small, piled all the extra blankets onto the daybed and wrapped ourselves around each other.


After the fire died down, and because the kerosene heater was turned off, it got even colder in the Cabin. Denver D started to shiver and could not stop. As much of our bodies were touching as could, and I began to worry that he was getting too cold, not to mention that his shivering was disturbing my comfort. After a few minutes of insisting that Denver D put on a hat, I got up and grabbed a wool beanie and pulled it over his ears. Denver D was really worried himself that he was losing too much heat and was afraid to get out of bed. Eventually he stopped shivering and we were able to sleep.


In the morning there was a skim of ice in the bucket in the kitchen and our toothbrushes were frozen to the counter.

Little House In The Suburbs

I've been thinking about Laura Ingalls Wilder this week.


Part of our heater blower broke Saturday night, so we have had no heat. At 5:50am on Sunday Zirpu was running around the house trying to figure out what was causing this plasticky smell. I got up with him but was so exhausted and out of it that after he told me that something was wrong with the heater, I asked if he needed me to help him with this or could I go back to bed? In my fuzzy state I sort of registered that going back to bed wasn't an option. When Zirpu went under the house and determined the heater was not on fire, he turned off the heat and I went back to bed.


So we have had no heat since Sunday morning and have been burning logs in the wood stove insert in the living room fireplace and sleeping in hats and under three quilts. Except in the middle of the day, when the sun is high enough to warm up the house, it's pretty much sucked. Except that we don't live in Oklahoma and the other places where it really is cold and people haven't had power for days. I'm good at perspective, but I'm shivering as I write this, which makes it longer for me to write.


I've been thinking about the part in one of the Little House books (I forget which one) where Laura's describing the winter when it was so cold that Ma insists that the girls stay in bed to stay warm and the snow is too deep for Pa to go to town and get Christmas presents. I think the girls are concerned about Santa being able to get out to them because of the snow. Then Pa's friend shows up, having waded through the deep snow! He brings with him gifts from Santa for Laura, Mary and Carrie, and a sweet potato for each person. That is Christmas enough for Laura.

This Cold Snap

There's been ice on the car several of these days, something I did not expect to see after leaving the Northwest. I've been wearing a hat and socks to bed. Zirpu has been wearing a long sleeved shirt under his Jacket of Many Pockets. The sun is out, but the air is cold, more Colorado than California.

A few days ago our neighbors asked us to take a bunch of lemons from their tree, and we picked all the oranges we could reach on ours. Having given some away already, we have two grocery sacks oranges and lemons under the counter. I guess we will be some of the few who have access to fresh vitamin C for the next few months... Yesterday it was announced that California citrus growers are going to lose about a billion dollars' worth of fruit (not to mention all the lost avocados, three weeks before the National Day of Guacamole) because of the freezing temperatures in the valleys.

I can't remember when it was, or where I was, but it must have been on one of my many I5 jogs between home and "home." There was an orange grove next to the highway in which the trees were covered in ice sticking out in all directions like bed-head hair. I realize now that the sheet ice must have been caused by the grower spraying the trees with water which subsequently froze, but at the time it was a strange sight and I could not come up with any kind of explanation. The image seems as if from a fairy tale, something you would see in Narnia.