My Crazy Heat Story

Earlier this winter our apartment was freezing cold. The radiators were rarely on, and it seemed like they never got warmer than my laptop. I slept in leggings, sweatpants, socks, a shirt, a hooded sweatshirt, and a hat. I hated taking my socks off to do yoga. Getting out of the shower was agony. It was just too damn cold.

I called the landlady once and asked her to please check and make sure the heat was on. She said she would, but nothing changed. A few days later Dumpling got fed up and called her. She said she was out running errands but promised to check when she got back. Nothing changed. This is what happened last year. We were freezing cold all last year too. We called a few times, figured it was just a "cold building," and sucked it up. Dumpling was away at the restaurant all the time anyway. And I was preoccupied with a particularly miserable stage of this bizarre early-mid-life-crisis I've been enjoying for the last eighteen months or so. I resigned myself to another cold winter.

The more things change, the more things stay the same. Dumpling is away at another restaurant all the time now. He has a new job at a hawt new place and it's going really well. I'm happy for him. She said through gritted teeth. Nope, not jealous at all. This winter, instead of walking dogs I'm tending bar. Good thing I have experience handling animals. Ba-dum bum.

But something is different this time around. One morning I woke up with a cold nose, gasped when I came out from under the covers, and got goosebumps all over my ass cheeks from the freezing cold toilet seat. I came out of the bathroom and I said, "This isn't right! It's too damn cold, damn it!"

I decided I didn't care how many phone calls it took, I was not going to live like this anymore! I called the landlady again. She said she would take a look at the boiler room right away (she lives in the building). A few minutes later she knocked on our door. Dumpling was still asleep and I had been washing dishes. I invited her in and she went straight to the nearest radiator in the kitchen and put her hand on it.

"It's not on at all!" she said.
"I know," I said.
"It's supposed to be hot!"
"That would be great!"

We repeated this five more times. There is a radiator in the kitchen, living room, bedroom, office, and a small one in each bathroom. We have six heat sources and two bathrooms. How decadent! I love it.

Anyway, she was horrified that none of the radiators were hot, and she pulled out this little tool and turned something on the side of one, and all this air came hissing out. She repeated this five more times. This is why we had had no heat:

We first saw our apartment in March, and it was vacant at that time. The radiators were turned off when we moved in in April, but we had no idea. It never occurred to us. It was chilly in the apartment, but spring was coming and soon we forgot about it. Then we had the first cold winter. It wasn't until this second winter that I was assertive enough to get to the bottom of it. Imagine that! No heat whatsoever for an entire winter! I mean, sometimes the radiators would get warm, but never hot. Now they are hot all the time! It is a comfortable temperature all the time, and I have never appreciated it so much in my life.

Our very sweet landlady was appalled that we had not had heat since we moved in, and she kept apologizing and I kept saying, "It's all right; you didn't know." I'm thankful that I have a good relationship with my landlady. It's an important quality-of-life factor. Like having heat!