"Hey kids- we're going to furnace world!"

This was the year.  Well, not this year as in 2010, but this year as in sometime in the next 12-18 months.

I was going to go to my husband and explain why we needed to sink a bunch of money into a once in a lifetime vacation to a fabulous disney resort with the meal plan and the airplane trip and the daily visits to the parks.  See- our kids are growing up really fast.  And I don't want to keep waiting until 'maybe next year'.  We were going to do it man.

And I have a list as long as my arm of various home improvement things- and I even was making arrangements to hire help to get them done.  Most are stupid- like repainting the chimney, getting the deck scrubbed and sealed, replace our poor old gas grill. Oh- and fix the hole in the drywall in the girls room and maybe even the big hole in the ceiling of the garage.  You know- nothing earth changing but just the 'things' that have been kind of piling up around here.

And part of that plan- I hired a company to come and do a maintenance cleaning thing on the air conditioner.  I'm such a responsible adult home owner, aren't I?

He came yesterday.  And ruined my world.

Our furnace has a cracked inportant thingy that has a tubey thing that blows heat or something or other (sorry to be so technical- try and keep up).  And the cost to repair it is really a lot.  And although our furnace blows hot air (aka- works fine) there is apparently a danger that we could pump carbon monoxide into our home.

Guh.

All I could think was that we paid him to do a check up on our A/C unit- why in the sams hell was he messing with our furnace?  Stay away from our furnace man.  Great.  Just great.  The damage was done, now we knew.

We stood in the garage and talked with this furnace man (which I so politely kept calling him), literally while leaning on our old worn out replaced within the previous 24 hour washer and dryer.  Which are stacked neatly next to our kapoot microwave.  I looked around at our $1000 of appliances as this man started shooting out numbers- really big numbers.  Then he suggested we just swap out the air conditioner too- as it was just as old and is missing part of it or something.  Needless to say I squished his dreams of a total system install- what do we look like we are dripping with cash?

Shelve that trip and those fancy home repairs.  Looks like we are going to be saving for 'not freezing to death or dying in our sleep this winter' instead.  Which is good- considering the obvious downsides to the alternatives.

I am so thankful that the Lord brought this to our attention.  Otherwise we would have never known.  He is protecting us in ways that we don't even realize.  And this time- he did it by dashing my dreams of a huge wonderful trip to see the mouse.

Probably just the same, as I'm sure had He not done it- Dan would have.

I'm going back to hang with Henry and Lola- they offer me great comfort.

By the way- we're having a garage sale.  Up for sale are a gently used washer that MAY drip rusty water out of the bottom and not have a spin cycle, a like new dryer that dries the clothes eventually, a beautiful stainless front over the range microwave that works fine as long as you don't actually want your food to get hot, AND a furnace that would be perfectly suited for a drafty old house or one that you prefer to leave the windows open in.  Shoot me an email if you want me to hold any of them for you.