Dummies, We

Normally my ridicule of others is intended to throw you off the scent of my wide and deep swath of personal insecurities. It's standard grade school bully stuff, and it works even better on the internet when people a) have no idea who you are and b) don't care enough about you or even know you exist to fight back. Through a carefully crafted plan and messaging over the past approaching two years, I have undoubtedly convinced you that I have my shiz together and I am the gold source for all of your opinions about pretty much everything.

I am pained, then, to pull back the curtain on the absurdly exciting details of my life to reveal that I am as big a dummy as most of the dummies that regularly bother me.

For at least the past 3 or 4 days, maybe ranging up to a week, I have been absolutely freezing. It had all the preliminary trappings of one of the rare instances in which I get sick - I get so cold it is impossible to get warm and this transitions into a fever with the possibility of vomiting or butt vomiting. Yup, butt vomiting. The weird thing about it was that every day I was freezing, but no other symptoms were forthcoming. It was odd enough that I mentioned exactly this to Maureen when I was showering last night prior to inadvertently giving myself a nosebleed. By the way, giving yourself a nosebleed while in the shower may be the worst time to get a nosebleed. You'd think it might be optimal, but there are several reasons why it's not so great. Contact me directly for additional naked shower nosebleed information.

The solution to all this is obvious. The heat in our condo went out at some unknown point in the past (surprise, surprise). We called the repair service, some talkative guy came out tonight, and bam, not so freezing anymore.

My dummyness comes through in a few different ways in this situation. First, it took me like 2 or 3 days to check the thermostat temperature after I first realized I was freezing. At that time, there was a 7 or 8 degree variance between the temperature setting and the internal temperature. Did this strike me as odd? No. I turned up the setting and called it a day, happy to have diagnosed the disconnect, and content that the problem was solved. Second, on following days, I remained freezing but not once did I check to see if the thermostat setting and internal temperature were out of whack even though I WAS ALREADY AWARE THIS WAS A PROBLEM. Third, a tiny part of me thought that Maureen was trying to cleverly and subtly kill me by freezing me to death. I accused her of this a couple days ago. Finally and simply, at no point prior to tonight did it even enter my mind that being freezing for multiple consecutive days in the middle of winter may have anything to do with a broken furnace.

I'm going to be a fantastic homeowner.