What a day we had yesterday . . . First, T and I rushed through before-dawn snow shoveling. Then, promptly at 8, the furnace guys showed up and started demo-ing the busted furnace. T left for work and at 9 I began zoom-teaching upstairs, behind a barrier that T had constructed to keep the cat away from the furnace hoo-hah, which the cat figured out how to circumvent almost immediately. So I was teaching while leaping up from my chair to pluck the cat out of mischief; guys were banging and crashing in the cellar . . . Eventually, while the kids were writing, I reconfigured cat jail and shut Chuck up in our bedroom. By this point a full-sized semi was idling in front of my driveway, and the guys were unloading the new furnace from the trailer and starting to try to get it into the house. From upstairs I could hear their loud panting despair about tight corners and narrow stairs. The cat wailed in the bedroom and scratched at the door. My zoom children sweetly shared the drafts they'd been writing . . .  Ah, bedlam.

This went on till 1, when class ended and I could finally go into the bedroom and settle Chuck down into sleepiness. Midafternoon I heard a rumble, and heat began to seep through the registers. Then the Dump Guys showed up, parking their giant trailer the wrong way down my narrow street (yes, that is actually the name of the business). They'd been hired by the furnace guys to take away the old furnace . . . which they accomplished by Sawzalling it apart in the basement and shoving the pieces through the old coal hatch at the back of the house. My neighbor texted me: "Your house is vomiting."

And by 4:30 p.m., the drama was over.

Well, not actually entirely over because now I am dealing with the unpleasant aftereffects of furnace swapping: nasty greasy particulates from the old appliance, previously caught in the ductwork, are now blowing into the house. The furnace guy assures me that the problem is temporary, and I can see that it's manageable and definitely on the wane. But ick.

Anyway, despite this annoyance, we now have central heating, and just in time, because temperatures are supposed to drop precipitously tonight--into single digits or lower--and our little wood stove would not have been able to fight that battle.

Today will be much quieter without a pack of guys in the building . . . just me alone for most of the day, fidgeting through housework and desk work, getting onto my mat, fetching our CSA order, going out to write tonight. Phew.