Not that she needed it or wanted it, but my Headingley friend, Bev Johnson, just got reminded, big-time, of how unpredictable life can be.
Sunday, Feb.10, the day started out like any other. Johnson, a very fit 50ish, was motoring about at home, tidying the place up because it is for sale and she had to run into the city, too. Better hurry!
Coat on, she stepped out the main door of the garage, turned to close it and just like that, thump, she was lying on her side crammed against the eavestrough downspout.
That stupid ice patch! And she’d been salting it, too. Now because she’s on the phone with a friend when her feet disappear, she doesn’t put her arm out to break her fall, so her right leg, just below her hip, lands right on the edge of the sidewalk block placed beneath the downspout.
As the fog clears, she realizes something isn’t right with her leg — she can’t move it and wonders if maybe she’s popped her hip out — and since she’s no longer holding her phone, yells at it, instructing her friend to come over, and maybe call 911.
Cut to the rescue.
The Headingley firefighters arrive stat, as does an ambulance from Elie. Bev is whisked off to Grace Hospital, where over the next couple of hours it is discovered she has broken her femur — the largest bone in the body.
In very short order, she has surgery to repair it (two pins and a plate) and spends some time groggily recovering in the ICU.
Wow! Because of the type of break, she doesn’t have to wear a cast. And within a couple of days, Bev was allowed to go home, where she has a hospital-type bed installed in her living room. Family and friends have been swarming, and she’s able to hobble around some with a walker. Her cat Lucy is being very consoling, and the universe, once again, seems to be unfolding as it should.
Until... this past Tuesday morning, 6 a.m., when I get a phone call from a frustrated Bev telling me her furnace has quit and she’s awakened to a house temperature of 14C.
"Laur’, this is a new furnace! How can this be happening?"
Beginning to feel she is bad luck, I hang up and simply pretend I didn’t get a call.
Kidding, kidding. So I get dressed, ride to the rescue, only to find the resourceful Bev has hobbled over to the thermostat, noticed the digital readout is gone, removed it from the wall, replaced the batteries, and presto, the furnace is working again.
We are both completely shocked that the demise of a pair of AAA batteries can knock a furnace out of commission. But it can, and does — quite regularly I’m finding out, because many modern thermostats are not hard-wired to the furnace. Batteries die, furnace shuts off, you wake up freezing.
Happily, she has since discovered there are "smart thermostats out there now that will beep and give signals when the batteries are running low — well in advance — which can be hooked up to your phone and laptop."
Whose brilliant idea was it, in a polar vortex climate, to make the health of two teeny batteries responsible for preventing your home from becoming an iceberg?
The silver lining in all of this?
Bev’s wretched luck is a blessing for those of us who haven’t been chilled to the broken bone yet, to check for icy patches around our home and to replace the batteries in our thermostats with the most powerful, long-lasting AAA batteries on the planet, like, today!
And maybe some Good Samaritan could repay her by buying her house! That would be great. Check it out at ovlix.com, 37 Alboro Street in Headingley.
Nice place and the ice is long gone, but the memories remain!
Comments or feedback? I love to hear from you at lmustard1948@gmail.com
