Adventures in fashion and furnace repair.

You know how once you get really cold in your bones, it’s nearly impossible to get warmed up?

Yeah. And you’re super-cold because your year-old furnace is out and you can’t sleep because it’s so cold and you even let your gigantic labradoodle sleep on the bed with you but instead of warming you up, he just kicks you throughout the night, and the furnace guys return your call at 7 a.m., which is a good sign, but they can’t give you even a guesstimate as to when they will show up at your house because it’s cold as hell and lots of people are in the same crappy boat as you with furnaces that don’t work, so you’re in for a day of freezing and waiting for your furnace savior to show up?

Yeah. And you ask yourself, “What’s the appropriate attire for these festivities?”

There is nothing worse than being improperly dressed. I overcame the challenge, and you can, too.

If you’re like me, you can’t face showering when the temperature in your bathroom is hovering in the frozen-pipes range. So, you have an automatic, greasy base for your fashion.

Pull your Crisco-esque hair back in a fashionable plastic clip, much like those you sported in junior high. Then, because you’re absolutely kidding yourself into thinking that all furnace madness will be remedied soon and you can eventually go to the gym to warm up, start with a base layer of gym clothes.

Next? Put on another shirt – preferably the shirt you wore yesterday. And then, because you really need to do laundry, top that off with the fleece pajama top you slept in. Pull a pair of paint-covered pants over your workout pants and you’re set.

This ensemble will carry you through all parts of your day:

• Blatantly exploiting your dachshunds’ body heat by cramming them inside your clothes
• Crying on the phone to your husband, who is in freakin’ FLORIDA for work
• Praying for serenity as you realize that in each of the 3 times the furnace tech used your bathroom, he did not wash his hands, even though we can all agree that all wang-related tasks should involve hand washing
• Sneaking out to the hardware store buy a space heater after the furnace tech leaves your house, beaten, at 7:30 p.m.
• Realizing that you would make a shitty pioneer and would probably die on the trail of dysentery, just like in “Oregon Trail”
• Randomly moaning, “I’m wearing 2 pairs of pants” throughout the day, as if this were code for “my life is crap”

And … you’re welcome.

That was yesterday. Today, after additional tech visits, the furnace appears to be heating the house … although I’ve been hurt before, so it’s difficult to really let my guard down and believe.

Better yet? Thanks to the space heater, I was able to shower this morning. And I found my long underwear, so only 1 pair of pants today.

World? You’re welcome.