Out Fixin' My Man

When I came home this afternoon, the house was a frigid icebox, which suited my hot-blooded desire for freezing temperatures, but didn't seem to fair too well for my sickly children. Plus, you know I'm a complete cheapskate, so keeping the heater from sucking the sweet juice from our bank account was tempting. Nonetheless, I broke down and switched the miserable sweat machine on and went about my business. That, by the way, was debating with my stubborn three-year-old about whether we should or should not eat sausage and only sausage for each meal that I serve.
He was like, "Mom, I'm hungry. I want the sausage."
And I was all, "Ridge, I've already cooked your sausage once today. I'll make it again the morning. I think you should snack on some strawberries or perhaps some bananas at this juncture so your aren't suffering from massive heart attacks before you start kindergarten."
And then he said, "Listen, lady, save all your fruity hippie talk for my pansy brother. Dad told me that coffee and sausage will put hair on my chest, so cook it up, biznotch."
So I was like, "Well, you make a convincing argument, son. Arteries aren't so important when faced with the prospect of pre-pubescent chest fuzzies."

Anyways, so sometime after I bent to the will of my future fur-coated son, I realized that the heater had, in fact, NOT started blowing blistering air into our home. The temperature measurer on our thermostat (I know there's probably some "technical" name for that, but I just won't be chained to the repression of accuracy. Thank you, Bill O'Reilly) was still sitting on Heaven -- 65 degrees, bitches!

As I've learned from my extensive studies of modern innovations, i.e. photoshopping wrinkles off my pruney face or checking email accuracies on snopes.com, I know that the best way to fix problems with machines is turning them off and then turning them directly back on. Write that down, folks, that's some scientific shit right there.
However, like all repairs, it doesn't have a 100% accuracy. Situations will present themselves that you have to search out a different switch to flip. Such was the case with the heater.

Not long after I realized that it wasn't kicking on, Mr. Fix It himself came home. I've been convinced that Bob the Builder is totally based on my man. Or maybe Handy Manny. Rowdy isn't Mexican, but he'll damn sure work like one. (Simmer down, saying an entire race is hard workers is a compliment. Exploiting it isn't.)

After I reported the need for the repair, he wandered on over to the thermostat and then proceeded to flick it for about 6 minutes. He paused. Damn, no air. No noise from the unit.
He turned the thermostat on and off. I told him I had already deployed that almost fool-proof fix, but he apparently thought I had not properly performed the task. When that, too, proved fruitless, he decided to attack the rebel heater directly.
Honestly, I have absolutely no idea what miracles my man was attempting to perform, but from the hallway it looked as though he was using his Jedi mind tricks to turn up the fire. Hands on hips, he looked that bitch over a few times and declared this conundrum a mystery. He shut the utility door and resumed his position in the recliner.

Now, as you know, I am not a nagger. Our facet has dripped 4 gallons of water each day since Rolan was born 2 years ago. Periodically I will remind my man that a water volume the size of the Nile River flows needlessly through our sink each week and then he says he will fix it in the winter. Fair enough.

But this, this I just could not let go. We do, after all, share our house with two little children. If it was 65 in here at 9:30, my guess is that it would be, like, 50 by morning. While that may be my idea of Heaven, it seems like it might be a teeth-chattering nightmare for my kids. Plus, it might cause some damage to the aforementioned teeth and I hear that dentistry is an expensive venture. Refer back to my cheapskate status.
As Rowdy continued with his "Hell, I don't know, Honey" campaign, I decided to investigate the fuse box. We had to have it replaced about a year ago and that work horse we hired to do it just didn't write down which switch went to what section of the house and then went ahead and threw the old one away before he left. And we think that is totally awesome since it turns the electrical safety of our home into a guessing game. We're thinking about about turning it into a drinking game.
I opened the door and noticed two switches had flipped to off. Like I said, it could've been to anything, but being the skilled problem-solver that I am, I employed my mad fixin' skills and slipped 'em back over.
Presto! The heater fires up the sound of 3 ancient power plants. The house fills with a faint scent of burning rubber as air pumps up from the vents.
And I was like, "Dude, you just got totally shown up by your wife. You have the penis. You are suppose to be the fixer."
Rowdy counter, "There's nothing wrong with you being the fixer."
"Umm......well, I would say there is. Again, I am the lone non-penis bearer in this household. Plus, that's how we ended up with two toilets that barely work and a dripping faucet."
"What?"
"Never mind."