The following is a story.  A tale of my last 5 days and unfortunately, nights.  I’ll start with the end and the moral.

Moral:  Support causes like Hearts for Heat!

Last night Carie and I heard it.  We heard the sound we’d been waiting for.  The clank in the cellar that let us know he arrived.  Could it be?  Actual tears of happiness jumped out of Carie’s eyes, for which I was happy to be there to be able to wipe them away, then laugh with her.  Some more clanking gave more proof that he had indeed arrived and that everything would be fine in only a few more moments.

You see, about 5 days before, the furnace guy, who we’ve used the last several years, came to do a routine maintenance on the church furnaces and also on ours.  But when he got to ours, he cited several problems, not the least of which was something lodged in the chimney that would require a specialist to come in and take care of it.  He said he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if he left the furnaces on, knowing that if he did, we may never wake up.

Ummmm, thanks for the heads up.

The unfortunate part is that this was the first night of a string of several freezing temperature evenings in Central Massachusetts.  So he would now sleep, but I would not, save for our entire wardrobe draped over my body, complete with all the blankets we could muster.  Oh yeah, and…

That also meant no hot water.  FOR FIVE DAYS!  No showers (at the house), No hot water for dishes, and hot water laundering was out of the question.  So we worked hard on finding this so-called specialist who could do the job.  The all evasive chimney sweep person.

I called on Sunday…no answer.  Then I called 7 people on Monday…1 answer.  They’d be arriving tomorrow (Tuesday morning, 7:30).  Carie and I were thrilled, because Carie was already feeling under the weather due to a cold she had caught.  A feeling of relief came on us, until the next morning…

The all-evasive chimney sweep person called me and said his truck had broke down, and that he would be arriving later in the afternoon, about 5:30 pm.   Uuugh!  No problem, but do you know my house feels like an ice cold prison?

For those of you who will speak of space heaters, please don’t.  This is another long story.

4:00 pm rolls around and I get a call from the All Evasive chimney sweep person from West Boylston and I was ecstatic because my assumption was that he was going to arrive at our house early.  He called to tell me he wasn’t going to be able to come today, maybe tomorrow at 8:00 am.  “Yeah” I thought, “And maybe you will go out of business because of your lack of dependability.”  At this point, I could have cried.

Quickly I made some phone calls and found another company about 30 minutes farther away than the All evasive chimney sweep person in West Boylston, and they said they would absolutely be there at 2:00 pm tomorrow (Wednesday).  I told them I loved them, and I’m sure they thought I was crazy.

The next morning rolled around, and guess who didn’t show up?  I wish I could remember the name of the company, but alas, I have blocked it out of my mind and computer.  A friend of mine who was actually following the action via phone calls and texts sent me a text that said:

Friends text:  They show up?
Marty’s text:  Nope.
Friends text:  Bastards!

I’m ashamed to admit that I echoed the sentiments, but I echoed the sentiments.

But not to worry, because this company came just as they said they would.  Country Corner Chimney sweeps hooked us up in a big way!  So then I immediately called our furnace guy, who announced he would be over in a few hours.  I trusted him.  He’d been there all along.  the only thing he didn’t do for us during the 5 days was turn on the furnace, which would have been nice for a while, but I would have much rather woke up the next morning.

After work, I walked to meet Carie at home and we talked for a while and had some mac and cheese, then sat on the couch and enjoyed a cold afternoon under blankets, totally expecting something to happen to the furnace guy as he was on his way to our house.  We prayed, and then we heard him – The furnace guy!

I took a long shower last night!

 
Welcome to MoMo’s! HERE are the guidelines. If this is your first time giving your “amazing story”, PLEASE take time to read them. It will save us both a lot of time.

To join me, write a post today (or a post you’ve written from last Monday to Sunday) sharing something tht has happened to you this last week - anything funny or interesting, crazy, fulfilled, too busy, hilarious, wistful, or any number of out of the ordinary happenings that made you happy or miserable last week.  Put a link in your post to this post permalink (not my general URL) and then put the permalink of your post (not your general URL) here at the end of this post. Thanks.  By the way, I do this because I love stories.  To tell them, to hear them, and to read them.

So tell me your “Inspired by the truth” story every Monday…

Here’s mine.

This last week has been really rough for me.  It started last Monday afternon when I arrived home from a trip to New York.  I noticed that my back was really hurting me.  Now this is not something revolutionarily new in my life.  Occasionally when I lift weights wrong or put too much strain on my back when I exercise, this happens to me for a while, but the strange thing about this was that I hadn’t really done anything for like 4 days that would put strain on my back.  It just started hurting.

And for 2.5 days of my week it hurt.  I had been a to a chiropractor last year, and he had given me some exercises to go through when it started hurting, so I did those, and felt only a bit better after a day or recurring back exercises.

Then on Wednesday I actually justified this to myself:  “So, If my back is hurting this bad, and that is without exercise, than I might as well exercise.”  So I went out and played basketball on Wednesday night, which not only hurt my back worse, but it also brought in flu like symptons on Thursday.

If Tuesday had been bad, Thursday was just miserable.  I was dizzy, unresponsive to conversation, my stomach hurt, my back hurt, and in the evening, I started sneezing, and my back hurt every time I did.  I even missed small group and wrote this post that evening.

I should stop now and say that through all this, my wife was on vacation and did an amazing job of taking care of me.  So thanks to Carie for her amazing patience!

On Friday – Sunday, I felt a bit better, which ushered in a new problem of a stuffy nose, which is how I finished my week of sickness.

I don’t share this with you to complain.  I share this with you so that you will help me come up with a list of things to do when one is sick.  For those of you who can sleep all the time, you’re all set – you can sleep all the time.  However, I pretty much sleep for about 6 hours a night, and about 30 minutes in the afternoon, and the rest of the day, I need to find things to do when I’m sick.  Finding things to do when I’m not sick is easy.  I’m not lazy.  But things to do when I’m sick…I need help!

Here are some things I did while I was sick and in bed this week:
Blogged
Read
Played snood, the ultimate  video game
watched season 1 of Prison Break with my wife

Come on, you can make this list better, can’t you?