\tFor the third time this week…. yes, this week… I am sitting here waiting on a repairman to finish with the water heater.<\/p>\n
\tEverything was working fine until Monday. When the first repairman came. That visit was to replace a part deemed in-need-of-replacement during the summer maintenance visit. It isn\u0092t just that I don\u0092t speak French, I don\u0092t speak water-heater. So in any language, if I\u0092m told that some part needs replaced, I figure it\u0092s a good idea to replace it.<\/p>\n
\tBath time Monday night was when we realized something had gone very wrong with the guy\u0092s so-called fix. I filled the giant tub and as I was calling Kaitlyn to climb in, I put my hand in and realized the water was cold. Naturally, my first thought was to blame Bill. He did the dishes and often when he does the dishes he drains the hot water tank. The mere act of rinsing the dishes is done with scalding hot water. I thought I\u0092d nagged him enough about this, but Monday night I figured the nagging had worn off and needed to be ramped back up. So I accused him of using all the hot water. Eager to defend himself, he rushed downstairs to the water heater where he identified the real culprit. The thing wasn\u0092t running. So he relit the pilot light, Kaitlyn took a late (but warm) bath, and all was well.<\/p>\n
\tThat is… until Tuesday afternoon. When I got in the shower. I\u0092d been running around all morning and then after taking Kaitlyn back to school from lunch, I hopped on the treadmill for a long workout to relieve the morning\u0092s stress. It did the trick, until I stepped under the shower spray. To discover there was no hot water. (Admittedly, my first thought, again, was to blame Bill… thinking he\u0092d for some reason changed the temperature setting on the shower faucet but that wasn\u0092t the case. Why do I keep blaming Bill?) I waited for Bill to come home to re-start the pilot light again. And all was well.<\/p>\n
\tTill Wednesday morning. When Bill woke me up as he was leaving to say that I needed to call the water heater repair people. I think I now know why I kept blaming Bill. Because that is far easier to deal with than the woman who answers the phone at the water heater repair place. She is simply not nice. (Unless she calls you to ask you to change an appointment you\u0092ve had for weeks… then she\u0092s sweet as pie. Or, I suppose, tart.) Anyway, I called and said I needed to make an appointment because my heater isn\u0092t working and that it was working fine until her dude came to the house Monday. She said they wouldn\u0092t come the same day… it\u0092s 20 degrees outside, Madame, no need for heat. So I said I\u0092d very much like to bathe. Then she got huffy that it isn\u0092t my heater that\u0092s broken but my water heater. (It\u0092s the same thing in this house.) I\u0092m a far too regular client, she could have been looking at some computer form that said what kind of heater I have and what had recently been done to it. I know she was looking at something with my address after I gave her my name. Anyway, she rattled off some big long question I didn\u0092t understand. I just paused for a while then realized she couldn\u0092t see my puzzled look so I said \u0093je ne comprends pas.\u0094 (I don\u0092t understand) So she just laughed (yes – laughed!) and said something else just as fast. So I repeated \u0093je ne comprends pas.\u0094 I finally determined that she wanted me to push the red button on the heater. That is always her solution. But just like one figures out to turn the computer off and back on before calling IT, we have figured out to push the red button before calling this mean woman. I told her my husband had done that and yes, that made it work, but it didn\u0092t stay on. She insisted I do it anyway. So I did. She wanted to know what color the light turned. It was flashing, but I don\u0092t know how to say that. So I just said \u0093jaune, jaune, jaune, jaune, jaune…. ah…. rouge.\u0094 (yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow yellow… ah… red) She finally gave in and said someone would be out the same day. <\/p>\n
\tThat someone called me twice to ask for directions. I took this immediately as a bad sign. Then while he was here working, he wanted to know if he could go in and out of the house a different way. Why? So I wouldn\u0092t see him carrying shit out of my basement? Just walk the way I showed you; the floor is already dirty so don\u0092t pretend you\u0092re worried about footprints. <\/p>\n
\tRight after he left, I went to check the water heater. Because he seemed fishy. He was obviously a sub-contractor because his truck had a different company name on it. And he didn\u0092t want to look me in the eye to say goodbye. And there was no paperwork for me to sign. So I went to check the water heater which, guess what, wasn\u0092t running.<\/p>\n
\tI called Bill and said that after the lunch two hour is over, he\u0092d have to get a native French speaker to call these idiots and explain to them that this is so not ok. (I\u0092m altering the language to make this family-friendly.) First, Bill had ME go push the damn red button. I fiddled with it and the on\/off switch and somehow lit the pilot light. Then smoke started pouring out of the hole where the flame was; I panicked, screamed, frantically scrambled down the ladder and pushed the on\/off button so hard I\u0092m surprised I didn\u0092t knock the heater over. At that point, I was scared the entire thing would blow up or something. I was done trying to push the button ourselves. So, after lunch, Bill\u0092s co-worker Pierre called. They told him that a fuel something-er-other had been broken by the fuel delivery people. When Bill sent me that information by text, I nearly lost it. I checked my calendar… the fuel delivery happened 9 days before the initial \u0093maintenance\u0094 check… which happened three months ago. Everything worked fine until the visit Monday. The only finger pointing that should be going on here is in the mirror of the water heater company. Finally, they called Pierre back and said they\u0092d be out today. Fine.<\/p>\n
\tLast night, Bill made Kaitlyn take a fast, cold shower. This morning, he enjoyed the same brisk start to his day. I hadn\u0092t even gotten out of my pj\u0092s when the doorbell rang this morning. The repairman spent about an hour here. He came up and looked at the thermostat on the wall, but otherwise I didn\u0092t see him. He didn\u0092t ask for any funny routes through the house or need any tools (they often come then ask me for a ladder, flashlight, one guy asked me for oven cleaner once). When he said he was done I asked him \u0093ca marche?\u0094 (it\u0092s working?) He said \u0093oui, ca marche.\u0094 Then I stupidly asked him what the problem was. So he told me. I kept nodding my head but I don\u0092t know what he said. Something about something blocking the pilot light so it couldn\u0092t stay lit. Which was the obvious problem but he\u0092d already done better than the others by identifying the problem. And he had paperwork for me to sign. What he did is scribbled on the bottom… Google translates it as this: \u0093Removal of electrode\u0092s son behind the cell. (son should be wire, it\u0092s the same word) (a word I can\u0092t read the scribble) permanently red. (must be the light) Manufacturer must replace. (unreadable scribbles) Always put on another aquastat.\u0094 Well, that\u0092s clear as mud. Ok, so I still don\u0092t know what he did but he at least did something. After he left but before he\u0092d pulled out of the driveway, I ran to the basement to check the water heater. He\u0092d done something no repairman sent to the house has done in a year: he put the top back on the thing. So I couldn\u0092t see the infamous red light\/button or the pilot. So I put my ear to it and thought I heard the hissing of a flaming pilot light.<\/p>\n
\tIt\u0092s been nearly 30 minutes since he left… dare I go turn on the water to see what comes out? YES! WE HAVE HOT WATER!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the third time this week…. yes, this week… I am sitting here waiting on a repairman to finish with the water heater. Everything was working fine until Monday. When the first repairman came. That visit was to replace a part deemed in-need-of-replacement during the summer maintenance visit. It isn\u0092t just that I don\u0092t speak […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}