Murphy's Mistress

Isn’t it always true that bad things happen at the most inopportune times? All the planning in the world cannot escape Murphy’s Law – if anything can go wrong, it will. And I am Murphy’s mistress.
 
In the week before Christmas, I realized only cold air was blowing from my vents. My thermostat showed the furnace as heating, but the air was not even the slightest bit warm. Ah, so the thermostat was probably not working, right? I replaced the batteries. Nope, that changed nothing. Ok, so I just need a new one, right? Of course, it had to fail during the busiest retail week of the year. Off the Grinch went to buy a new thermostat.
 
Now, replacing a thermostat is not brain surgery. But this new one required stripping new lead wires so it would rest flush against the wall. ‘Little Mary I Can Do This,’ namely me, accomplished the task in record time. Take that, you untimely beast of a failure. Ah, but still no warm air. Oh, you mother fork truck. Christmas just took a turn for the worst. No heat in December in Indiana. And now, a service call would be charged as an after-hours emergency and probably cost my life’s savings. Add some socks, layer the sweatshirts, and snuggle under a heating pad. Problem solved until morning.
 
Then, the furnace exorcist arrived. He managed to wiggle and tap and nudge the beast to spew warm air but delivered the much dreaded “perform its last rights” prognosis. It is over 30 years old, and my only reasonable option is a replacement. He said his temporary fix might last the winter or fail tomorrow – no guarantees. The beast was now a son of a biscuit mother fork truck.
 
And remember Murphy’s Law? In less than 12 hours, I had no heat, again. The December forecast was unusually warm, so I decided to cry in my beer over the weekend. I did ask if there was any other possible fix before having to sell my next born child for heat (uh, which is inconceivable, no pun intended). He said he could install a new heat kit, but he would not recommend it due to its age. So, do I spend $700 for a possible short-term fix or contemplate thousands for a new furnace?
 
I was out of my mind for a day. Something inside of me screamed “get a second opinion” although I knew it was a shot in the dark. I texted another technician on Sunday asking to get his opinion on Monday. He responded immediately and even brought me a heater on his way to another commitment until he could check it out the next day. They obviously broke the mold when they made this guy.
 
Thirty minutes into his service call, I had heat. The problem was simply a blower relay, a part that cost less than $50. Old as she is, my furnace is blessing me with heat. He anticipates it has at least a couple more years of life left. The “heat kit” that I almost paid $700 for would not have included the blower relay. It would not have fixed the problem. How service professionals can sleep when they intentionally do not do their job, opting to profit off the desperate, boggles my mind.
 
So, I can look at this in two different ways. My guardian angel was indeed screaming at me over the weekend, and I listened. Or I am just Murphy’s luckiest little mistress on the planet. Maybe it was a mystical combination of both. Ah, but that is fodder for yet another rant.
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