The title does not refer to the temperature outside, rather to the reading of our thermometer yesterday. Grumpy and cold is how I spent the first half of my Wednesday. And a portion of the second half was spent fixing the problem ourselves after the failed attempt of two “professionals”. So many many adventures we have endured experienced in our haven. This whole freezing thing though is a bit much for me…

It all began, well, when the temps outside got cold I suppose. The lack of insulation coupled with the many cracks and holes in the walls and surrounding the windows and doors makes our haven double quite well as a very large ice box. The monster of a furnace downstairs runs at around thirty percent efficiency. It’s an old gravity furnace that someone at some point rigged a fan to that now blows the warm air up through the many and massive metal pipes. Unfortunately, no matter what we set the thermostat at, the thermometer has yet to reach 70 degrees, and some spots are much colder than others. As long as the pilot light is on, what little heat it produces will rise and the house isn’t too bad. But when the fuse blew yesterday and the monster shut down completely… I was so cold, and literally in tears. It might be chilly right now, but I’m just happy my toes aren’t blue.

We have been able to take some measures to assist the heating and avoid turning into icecycles. We removed the thermostat from the wall for instance; some genius mounted it right into a heat duct. And we have been collecting space heaters that we strategically place and utilize. We were actually given another space heater the other day by a friend I really don’t even know very well. I had been listening to a group of women talk about the struggle to keep their homes warm and decided to chime in. Of course, this led to a conversation of why we live in this old run down house on the southside of the tracks in the first place, and to my surprise, we weren’t just offered a free space heater, but a donation to our Wednesday night dinners as well. Once again, God made known His presence, purpose and provision in our crazy life here in the “hood”.