Adventures in Adulthood...
When we're kids there are all these things we yearn for. No bed-time, no one to tell you not to eat dessert first, all that cool stuff. Course, when you're twelve and day-dreaming no one mentions phone-bills, and ridonkulous cable bills, and all the not-so-fun stuff it means to be an adult. You learn though. And it's not always fun, but there are perks. You're an adult now.
And then there are the thing that still no one mentions. I like to think of those as the real passages into adult-hood. The first time you get a flat tire without your parents or some other 'adult' there to fix it. The first letter you get from the tax office saying you owe them x dollars and you have thirty days to pay.
The first time your heater craps out the first cold night of winter.
Adam and I hit that one today. When we got up this morning it was so cold in the house my child's lips were blue. The normal response to this problem is to call Maintenance and tell them to come fix it. Only it's Sunday on a holiday weekend, and I think we all know how likely that is to happen before about Wednesday. So I'm sitting on the couch and we're watching 'All in this Tea', a documentary on tea planting and productions (dear heaven not only am I adult, I'm boring) and it just hit me. "Adam, did you check to see if the pilot light was on?"
An hour and a half later...a crash course in pilot lights and (not so)modern furnace technology, a bit of female ingenuity because our only lighter is a butane torch and neither of us really wanted to stick that in to light the pilot, and the realization that we don't actually have a fire-extinguisher (or if we do I've no clue where it is)...we have heat again!
Yes, it is a birthday candle tied to a grill skewer.
And then there are the thing that still no one mentions. I like to think of those as the real passages into adult-hood. The first time you get a flat tire without your parents or some other 'adult' there to fix it. The first letter you get from the tax office saying you owe them x dollars and you have thirty days to pay.
The first time your heater craps out the first cold night of winter.
Adam and I hit that one today. When we got up this morning it was so cold in the house my child's lips were blue. The normal response to this problem is to call Maintenance and tell them to come fix it. Only it's Sunday on a holiday weekend, and I think we all know how likely that is to happen before about Wednesday. So I'm sitting on the couch and we're watching 'All in this Tea', a documentary on tea planting and productions (dear heaven not only am I adult, I'm boring) and it just hit me. "Adam, did you check to see if the pilot light was on?"
An hour and a half later...a crash course in pilot lights and (not so)modern furnace technology, a bit of female ingenuity because our only lighter is a butane torch and neither of us really wanted to stick that in to light the pilot, and the realization that we don't actually have a fire-extinguisher (or if we do I've no clue where it is)...we have heat again!
Yes, it is a birthday candle tied to a grill skewer.