My attitude of late has improved so much that even 20/20 has noticed - they've named Asheville, my fair city, as the happiest town in America. Goddamnit. There goes my newfound happiness - way to change my attitude for the worse, 20/20! That's just what we need to stay happy in Asheville: more creeps with way more money than those of us who actually live and work here will ever have moving to overpriced lofts downtown, or, god forbid, cute bungalows off Haywood Road, looking for happiness. Happiness that doesn't, apparently, involve drum circles or freaks. Yargh. The only person who can move here is M and we have to find him a real job first, which we are working on and you all will soon be working on as well.
In the meantime, though, let me share my current unhappiness. First off, in the continued annals of Felicity Doesn't Get To Have Heat in the Winter, the cheapass ancient thermostat in my house, which is, of course, connected to the cheapass ancient furnace, has gone all wonky and keeps spewing out heat even when you push the lever down to 50. This cannot be allowed, because heat costs money and I have no money (see above; I live and work in Asheville.) At this rate, I'll have to buy another hundred gallons of oil for another $350 in a week or two and I do not anticipate having $350 to spare at that time without significant lottery winnings. I mean, given a little more time we could all stop eating food for a couple of weeks in order to buy oil, but without time we don't even get the starvation option. And the starvation option is tough with a 16 year old bottomless pit living in the house. So I'm fucking with the thermostat and fucking with the thermostat and getting, basically, nowhere. It seems to have gone to full random activity mode and this is just not good at all. This is causing me acute mental anguish.
I woke up in a bad mood anyway since Django the Hell Dog has decided to wig right the hell out every night for the last two at, respectively, 2:30 and 4:00 a.m. Last night, anyway, we all went out to Mela for a delicious and sinfully expensive meal to celebrate A's birthday and I ate too much, so I was a bit extra groggy anyway, which doesn't help when you're cursing at a dog and, of course, stumbling over things in the dark wee hours trying to let the dog out and wait for him to come back and all that kind of big fun stuff. Then I couldn't get back to sleep and so on and so forth and that's why I was driving to Asheville High School this morning at 8:15 like the proverbial bat out of hell with two dogs in the back of the car.
But I was cured of my crankiness by flirting with a totally sweet guy at the Merrimon Avenue Valvoline Quickee Oil Change Palace or whatever it's called. He was adorable and we told each other jokes and he liked my bumper stickers. Contrarily, this little interaction made me the happier for having M, because, see, if I was still single, I would now be filled with angst since I would never have had the nerve to ask him for his phone number or give him mine or do anything but tell a joke, laugh at his, secretly admire his blue eyes (I am a total sucker for blue eyed boys, am I ever) and then I would have driven away feeling bereft. Because I have a boyfriend now, I got to just drive away happily, thinking he was a nice guy and being glad that I do have a boyfriend who also has blue eyes that I adore. This is good. And all would have continued to be good had I not gone home for lunch only to discover that. . .
A) it was probably in the mid 70s in my house (temperature wise, not decor wise. It's always the mid 70s in my house decorwise.) and B) the dogs ate my favorite pair of blue jeans. Ate holes all through the ass. If I cried, I'd cry now. It's fucking impossible to find jeans that fit and I had that pair for over two years and they were just getting totally comfortable. Not only that, but the dogs knocked over the closet door (don't ask. Leaving a teenager and a 20-something at home "alone" every other weekend has not been the best thing ever for my house. Not that things wouldn't have broken down while I was lying on the couch drinking PBR, because they do all the time, but since I'm not there I can blame the kids.) and it broke an ugly lamp of which I was fond and for which I think I paid like $5 at a Baltimore thrift shop in the late 80s. Damn, damn and fuckity fuck. Irreplaceable lamp, irreplaceable jeans and, goddamnit, irreplaceable heat. My happiness has been disturbed and I blame ABC TV.
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2 comments:
As someone who has lived in old houses with bad thermostats my whole adult life, my advice on the heat thing is: go to Lowe's or somewhere and get a digital thermostat. They are super easy to install and you will feel a difference. You can program it to be warmer when you're home and cooler when you're not (and at night), and by keeping it on a constant schedule like that (instead of adjusting it all the time), you'll save heating fuel.
They cost about 20-25 bucks around here, but it's money well spent, IMO.
Yeah, we actually went and got one last weekend and then M tried to install it but alas, it didn't work. He's going to bring it back in two weeks and try again. So in the meantime we went back to the old thermostat, which has never really worked and now works less. Sigh.
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