B-r-r-r-r-r-r

We have saying around our house--"You can't turn the heat on until October 1." This year, however, October was gloriously warm and dry. This didn't do much for a brilliant show of leaves, but it did help our heating bill. Or so we thought. Towards the end of the month, we'd turn the heat on as we got up in the morning but we leave so soon afterwards that it didn't seem strange that it hadn't come up much. I began to get suspcious when the floor heating units were never warm to the touch and finally we decided (well, Chuck decided--I had come to this conclusion about a week before he did) that something was wrong with the furnace. He tried a couple of things that didn't work and so on Friday (the only day I'm home), I called our friendly neighborhood (literally--until recently, it operated out of the house across the street) heating and cooling company. The same young man who fixed our air conditioner in August, when he nearly passed out from heat prostration in our attic, came late in the afternoon, pronounced that the same electrical problem that had taken down the airconditioning in the summer was responsible for the heater's problems. The part to fix it was, however, in another city and they couldn't get it until Monday. Hmmmm. For the most part, we survived by either staying physically busy outside, going to church and staying there (not hard at the beginning of the annual missions conference), wearing fleeces and wrapping ourselves in comfy throws, and building a fire in the basement family room fireplace. We are glad that it is Monday (the thermostats read 52 this morning) and that at noon the nice young man will return and fix the furnace.