I am SO ready for spring…

If it’s hard to be productive when the thermostat is turned way down, it’s really hard when the furnace isn’t working at all. 🙁

The author event on Friday night went quite well. The One Love Cafe is a wonderful and wholly unique spot, and I enthusiastically recommend it. Its only drawback is that it is quite tiny–but that made it easy to read to the entire restaurant. For the most part, the customers were attentive and seemed to enjoy our readings. It was also great to see fellow writers novelfriend, morvenwestfield and Elaine Isaak–and by the way, many thanks to novelfriend for organizing this event! It was an added treat to see norda, who stopped by to hang out and listen to some of the readings.

It had gotten rather cold (23°F) by the time I arrived home a little past 11:00 p.m. When I came inside, I thought that my house felt unusually chilly–more than the effect of having been somewhere warm for several hours would account for. I tried nudging up the thermostat. Nothing happened. I checked the furnace, which sits down in an open well, on the level of the crawl space, next to the laundry room. It was ice cold. I tried the switches, and, when I remembered it, the reset button inside the front cover. Nada. When I pushed the reset button, the motor came on for about 60 seconds and then shut down. The furnace had conked out.

And of course, it elects to do so on a Friday night. Gods forbid the furnace should go tummy-up during business hours. And of course, it’s the beginning of a below-normal-cold weekend. Gods forbid the furnace should pick a mild spring-like weekend, like a couple of the ones we just had, to roll over and die. And of course, I’m almost out of firewood.

I was damned if I was going to put in an emergency weekend service call and pay double or triple or whatever obscene surcharge it would be. It’s not like I have a newborn in the house or something. I didn’t have the furnace for three days during the ice storm and power outages, and unlike that event, I can use space heaters. In fact, I got a brand new, very efficient space heater for Christmas, for my bathroom.

But if my sermon for this morning’s church service had a somewhat gloomy subtext, it may be because I wrote most of it on Saturday while shivering, sulking, and wondering if I’m going to have to take out a loan to replace the whole furnace. (I hope not! But it’s pretty old.) I was already on shaky ground due to my dietary change and sleep deprivation. I’m getting more accustomed to the diet–it’s not knocking me flat like it did for the first two weeks or so. My energy levels are normalizing and I don’t feel nearly as foggy-headed. But I was up all Thursday night doing a Vernal Equinox vigil, with a ritual that ended at 7:32 a.m. I’d had about three hours of sleep after that, and I still haven’t caught up. I get up an hour and half early when I do a church service. Spending the weekend in an unheated house has not enhanced my mental acuity. This evening I found myself vegging out in front of the fireplace for so long, the fire nearly went out. On top of this, I’ve got the inevitable “decompression” effect after all my prep work for the author event and church service. I haven’t gotten much more accomplished tonight than catching up with the newspapers.

Tomorrow I’ll call Lorden Oil when I get up and see when they can get here. That will totally screw up my whole Monday routine–I can’t even do the laundry, because the clothesline is strung right over the furnace! (Which works very well when the furnace is actually running.) I can’t hang anything outside because tomorrow it’s supposed to be barely above freezing with wind chills in the teens! (Of course! Gods forbid the weather should cooperate on a day when it would help to be able to hang the clothes outside!) If Lorden Oil can’t come look at the furnace tomorrow…I’m in a bit of a bind for the laundry. There is a laundromat in town with dryers.

On the plus side: on my way home from church today, I stopped at the Townsend library to return a couple of books, and saw the first crocuses of the season, purple and white. There isn’t a sign of life in my yard yet, but there are crocuses in Townsend! Happy Ostara, everyone–and here’s hoping that, wherever you are, you’re warmer than I am!