On being cold....

I'm known to not like heat. I had an ex who would construct fanciful stories to share with the small children in his extended family about how I kept penguins in our bedroom, and the hi jinx they'd get up to. There were ice slides and raw fish and the training techniques of our young pets.

The problem is, he wasn't far off. When I lived with my father, we had base-board heaters, and in the winter, mine was never on. The rest of the house would be suffocatingly hot, my room was wonderfully cool. It was easy then, there was no shared space. I could decide whatever temp I preferred.

We moved into this house about three months ago. We bought it, but it's a trailer, and we bought it "as is"...no inspections. I'm decently handy, as is Rob, so we did a cursory look over at  most of it, and it didn't seem so bad. It's also so cheap that honestly, if nothing worked, I wouldn't be all that surprised. So far, both hoses that go into the back of the washing machine appear to be "hot". The toilet in my master bathroom doesn't flush all that well, and the shower in the main bathroom appears to need some work. But the biggest problem so far? Furnace doesn't work. It turns on, pilot light is going, no heat comes out of the vents.

Now, if I'm decently handy, my father is the fix-it guy. Yea, he's disabled, but really, I'm used to being him being the brains and either myself or my brother being the brawn. All i need is him to come tell me how to fix it. He is also the first call whenever anything goes wrong. So when I described the problem, he was all "oh, that's the thermal coupler, that's an easy fix". That was two weeks ago.

The last few days, it's been COLD here. And dreary, thanks to hurricane Sandy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I recognize that we are really lucky that all that we got was the dreary. Rob likes it WARM. We have one space heater and he's planning on going this weekend to get two more, one for our bedroom and one for the kid's bedroom. We have a blanket on the couch, we have my down comforter on our bed. He's always saying he's cold. My response is usually to point out that he works in a foundry, and EVERYPLACE is cold compared to that.

But this morning, I was so cold after I got up that I went back into the bedroom, got my fuzzy pajama pants, my hand knitted wool socks, and a long sleeve t-shirt. Then I went BACK into the bedroom and got my electric heated throw blanket. Then I turned on the space heater in the living room. And I was STILL freezing. I didn't feel warm for at least an hour.

So my only conclusion is that I'm coming down with something. And yes, a few hours later, I notice that my throat hurts. I think I need to call my dad again and whine about being cold......