Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Spring Break... oh the irony of those two little words.

Well it's certainly not Spring, and it's not feeling like so much of a break either. The boys had big plans all mapped out in their heads for how they would spend their week off from school (haha), but our Von's Bookstore trip (yes, the same little slightly scary bookstore on campus) to shop for rocks (yeah, you read that right) had to be postponed for another day while we continue to get our furnace sorted out.

Yes, that essential little appliance that keeps a house warm when it's 30 degrees in, ahem, April, has been dead as a doornail since Sunday morning. Ah, Sunday... back when the boys thought Spring Break was still an exciting event. After all, it's not every day that you get to make cool memories... like your furnace blowing up and smoke pouring into your house at record rates. You have to understand what a cool story that makes for the third grade boy lunch table. Trey even wrote in his Spring Break journal what a fun day that was. Can someone transport me back to being eight, please?

That reminds me of that game we used to play when we were in elementary school. Remember the one where you start by ranking your favorite "dream" future " in a list: the places you want to live, cars you want to drive, what your house will look like, how many kids you will have, etc.? If I would have known any better, I would've passed up the beach-front mansion in Florida (Hawaii being a close second, of course) and the Lamborghini for a working furnace and a trip to Von's. I must officially be a grown-up.

The great news is our house is a toasty seventy degrees with all of the space heaters hard at work. The not so great news is the exterminator will have to get back to us on whether mice have officially eaten through parts of our ductwork. Which, for the record, the boys think is kinda cool too.

No, Trey, we can't keep one for a pet. I know your friends are in Florida, but we're still sticking with raising children... and rocks. Sorry to ruin your Spring Break, bud.

With disappointment all around without their new rocks in hand, the boys got a little impatient with each other this morning. After a big ole Spring Break pep talk on the couch, I let them in on my little secret: Smart moms put grumpy children to work around the house so they're too busy to think about being grumpy anymore. My house hasn't been this clean in a long time.

Good thing, because we're doing a lot of entertaining this week. We don't want the furnace guys thinking that we live like slobs or something.

Next week we'll have a new furnace. Maybe it'll be Spring by then, and we won't even need it.

One can only hope.

1 comment:

slivengo said...

No fun to have the furnace go out! Hope spring break week ends a little better. :) We feel your pain though... our furnace went out the week that we moved in to our new house here. Lovely. It was about 9 degrees that day. :) At least you won't have to hopefully worry about it for another 15 years or so. :)