I came home last night. As I sat there, I was cold. I checked, heat’s out. Fuck

So I got up the next morning, emptied the tank of gas into the generator, then the rest into my car. I hunted down a second gas tank, then hunted down a gas station. Not the one across the street, the truck was filling it up, great.

I drove across town, filled the two cans up, the new one blows, great. I drove home, spent the next 45 minutes lifting 5 gallon cans up above my chest to slowly feed the beast. Diesel everywhere.

On me, on the ground, on the snow, on my boots, all over my hands, in my lungs. I lifted the other can, the new one. No go, too fucking ridiculous a mechanism. So I poured that can into the empty one. The wind blew it all over the place. Once transferred, I repeated the process; slowly draining fuel, little by little into the inlet.

After all that, turns out? I didn’t even need it. There was oil in the tank, 1/4 to be exact, just as the float claimed to my dismay.

What now?

The controller. The stupid fucking computer unit that THINKS about turning the heat on is gone. It’s not gone, it’s dead, more so than my spirit right now, which is quite something. We called around, nothing until Wednesday, Tuesday maybe, and that would be a real miracle, a Christmas miracle. It’s only Thursday now.

I did some searching, nothing to replace it exists in stores, I ordered one. Would be here a day before any help came. Shave a day of freezing? Sure. Then, I realized they made generic units, I jetted out for one.

Now it’s mid-afternoon. I’ve spent the entire day searching, troubleshooting, setting up heaters to keep the place alive. I get back with the thing. This is it I figure, I’ve done worse, i can do this, how hard could it be?

Real fucking hard, it turns out.

Wires don’t match up, the thing doesn’t power on. I try different configurations, check the diagrams, all 5 of them. I check the magical lightbox for answers, any answers at all. Nothing but a single video of a hack doing a hack job while being interrupted by his daughter which throws the whole thing off'; inconclusive. I trudge on.

I make a drink.

I check the video again, I must have missed something. I haven’t. It’s too much, I’m fucked.

I try some more. It’s 5, then 6, now 7:30. I’ve made my second and have officially thrown it in. Another cold night. The cats don’t seem to mind. I do have a heater here and there, but it’s still frigid.

Two days before Christmas and I’m sitting here like an asshole in layers awaiting further humiliation of some fat-ass technician to shake his head over the rat’s nest of wires I’ve created for myself. So fucked.

Goodnight.