My Day From Hell

[gaitedappy]

So today has so far been one hell of a day. First the furnace was just clicking and not kicking on, so mom turned the heater off. She goes out, checks the laundry comes back in, and smoke is pouring out of the thermostat inside. I call 9-1-1 we grab the pets and wait for the fire department to get here.

Firefighters get here, turn off all power and gas to the furnace, and remove the thermostat from the wall. Before you ask, we are fine and the firefighters said we are fine to be in the house. They told us to get in touch with the landlady and have her send out a professional to look at the furnace and an electrician to check the wiring in the wall.

Mom calls the landlady, and gets hung up on. Mom calls back, and suddenly our landlady only speaks Spanish and hangs up again. So mom calls the realtor who manages the property and leaves a message with the situation going on currently. So I called the landlady, once I identify myself she suddenly starts speaking Spanish until I tell her about my mother's cancer and why low temperatures are dangerous if my mom were to even catch a cold right now. All of the sudden she knows English and she cares so much but we can pay for it and deduct it. That's not gonna fly and we told her that all we need is a professional and a way to bill it to her. She tells us to call the property manager.

Property manager calls us back, and agrees to help with the situation. We now have a guy coming out thanks to the realtor, Lilly, but now the owner and her daughter suddenly show up. The daughter looks at everything, and mentions that she thinks that the furnace looks old and should be replaced. Well now it looks like the owner is attempting to get out of paying for this whole situation and does not believe us. Both the owner and the daughter do not know about the guy coming over and insist upon coming back when he gets here.

Paul, the man hired by Lilly shows up before landlady from hell and her daughter returns and looks over everything, turns out the furnace is okay, and it is just the thermostat that malfunctioned. Just as he is making his list of things to go grab the landlady and her daughter return, and spend a long time talking to him (mind you during this time I am in my mom's room trying to keep the very stressed out dogs calm). Finally they leave so I can let the dogs out for a while, only we notice they proceed to question this guy at the end of the driveway for another 20 minutes. After they leave, mom and I relax for a while, and I get the dogs to calm down, we also have no idea if the landlady and her daughter are going to return in 40 minutes when Paul does to complete the repair.

In the end, Paul was the only one who returned (thank god), and he was here for another maybe 45 minutes cleaning the furnace and replacing the thermostat. He took a few minutes to teach us how to program the new thermostat and run a couple of test to be sure everything is working. In the end the day was very stressful, and I had to call off of work to be home and help out my mother. I am so glad this day is over. Now if I can only get some more of my final paper written...