Out With a Bang, In With A Beep

That's right, 2010 went out with a bang. The 'bang' being the noise our furnace made when it decided not to work anymore! I mean, who can blame him, he was 30 years old and putterin' along on his last leg and all. I woke up that morning to find the house oddly chilly. As it turns out, the furnace had stopped dishing out heat and it was a nippy 56 degrees in our house. No wonder Ben hadn't slept well that night. The poor lil guy was cold. I'm sorry Ben. Did I mention that this all went down 3 days after Christmas? Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to us!

Oh and that's not all, because that alone wouldn't be blog-worthy! That same night I had to go in for an emergency CT scan due to some abdominal pain and the doctor's concern that I might have appendecitis. Yum, barium, 2 bottles of it. You'd think with all the technology they have these days, they could make that stuff taste at the very least, palatable. Perhaps that should be my new innovative mission, or not. As it turns out, I don't have appendecitis or so they think, they couldn't confirm really. But it's been a week and the pain hasn't worsened, though it's still there. So, once again, I'm somewhat of a medical mystery to the doctor. Because that's what everyone wants to hear. But who has time to think about abdominal pain when you have a 6 month old and are in need of a new furnace. Needless to say, that night when we got home from the CT scan at 10pm (which mind you is already past my bedtime), Tom and I hadn't eaten dinner yet, so we devoured a large pizza. That's right, just the 2 of us and I don't feel one iota of guilt about it!! It was that kind of day.

We did get the furnace peeps to loan us some space heaters and they were able to come the very next day to install our new, pretty, oh so shiny, high-efficiency furnace. Upsides, it was installed before the arctic blast blew in the next day, we'll save up to 50% on our heating bill each month, and it happened just in time to utilize that $1500 federal rebate on high-efficiency furnaces. I'd say those are some pretty good upsides. And while we were at it, we decided to have them put in a whole-house humidifier, so no more having to fill 2 silly little humidifiers every night before bed. And did I mention that the furnace is shiny and new? I like shiny.

So that all happened smack dab in between Christmas and New Years, which by the way, were both lovely. So we said goodbye to 2010 with a bang, only to be welcomed to 2012 with a beep. And there may or may not have been a bleep accompanying that beep, if you know what I mean. The evening of New Years day (Sat), Ben was in bed for the evening and Tom had left to go pick my mom up at the airport. I was all nestled on the couch with my tea, rather excited for 2 hours of pure vegging (is that even a word?) in front of the t.v.

Ha, that apparently wasn't in the cards for the evening. No sooner had I settled in and found myself hooked on some TLC show, did I hear the beep, and another beep and another beep, and in between those beeps I could hear the dreaded automated female voice informing me of "carbon monoxide, carbon monixide, carbon monoxide." It was one of those moments or string of moments where the mom card gets tested a bit. I thought to myself, 'ok, we've got to get out of the house a.s.a.p.!' So I went in and woke up my sweet, sleeping little cherub, put him in his carseat, covered him with a blanket, grabbed my purse, keys to Tom's car, phone, and some shoes and headed for the door. Oh and I remembered Sami the dog too, thankfully. That all happened in about 3 minutes tops. The 3 of us trotted out into the 10 degree temps and c-r-a-z-y winds to the car and got snuggled in. Thankfully, I always keep one of B's hats in my purse, so I could keep his lil head warm. I called 911 and the fire truck was there in under 5 minutes. I was impressed and Ben was pretty fascinated. While some of the fire people (they weren't all men) went inside to investigate, a paramedic took my reading for the CO and it was pretty low, only 4. They tried to do it on little B, but his fingers were to tiny to get a reading. The paramedic checked his circulation, heart rate, and overall appearance and thought he was looking and acting pretty normal. Yup, he was looking and acting like a 6 month old who just got woken up from his sleep and found himself awake 3 hours past his bedroom...and that's fun to hold in the car for 2 hours!!

So, as it turns out, before Tom had left for the airport, he had loaded some things into the back of the running SUV which was backed up to the garage. It was running for all of about 5 minutes, but because it was SO stinkin cold and windy out, it blew that CO straight into the garage and when Tom closed the garage door behind him, well it trapped that CO right in there. After 2 hours of 'investigating' and determining that that was the cause, the fire people advised us to stay elsewhere for the night even though they had blown all the CO out of the house and the level now read '0' again. So, we drove on over to my parents' house and called it a night. yawn, sigh.

Thus far, this week has been far less eventful than last week, hence me having time to write this post. We hope it stays this way. Why did I write this? Well, looking back, it's all a little crazy in the "really, I can't believe all those things happened in one week" kind of way. But more importantly, we are VERY grateful for working Carbon Monoxide detectors and thankful that we had one on each floor. Actually we have 4, because I'm a little paranoid that way. But it was the one that was adjacent to the door to the garage that went off. Because it went off first, and we got the hey hey outta there, the CO never had time to get on up to visit Ben in his room, thankfully. So, for those of you who are reading this, do you have CO detectors in your home? One on each level? Have you checked the batteries lately to see if they're working? I hope so. And I hope you never have to hear the automated lady's voice saying either "carbon monoxide" or "fire, fire, fire." Ever.

But like I said, it was all a good test on what I'm made of as a mom. I think I did ok, but one can always learn from situations like those. More on that later.