Yesterday is over; tomorrow is another day

I'm planning to have a good day today, because yesterday was really really lousy. It started out fine. Ruby's friend Kalei had spent the night, and they were having a great time. Running around in the backyard, taking naps in the sun, sleeping on the couch. I was determined to change the furnace filter, because when I turned the heat on the other day I realized I couldn't remember when I'd last done it, so I turned it off again and of course it got cold. I tried to open the furnace and check for the size, and couldn't remember how to open the damn thing up. The one in my old house had a snap-off front and it was easy to open that, but the bracket was kind of tricky and you had to lie on the dirt floor in the crawl space to reach it. This house has a great basement anyway, with real floors. So I looked up the specs online and bought what I thought was the right size filter.

I went down the basement, with my toolbox, and found that you not only had to unscrew the panel, you also had to remove another panel to get the relevant one to move. It was fairly simple once I figured it out. The bolts were not on the spec sheet, but at least one of them was clearly added later. Maybe they all were. I got the old filter out, and it was one of the fancy high-end reusable ones, which was good because it was also four inches smaller than the one I'd bought.

So I brought it outside and started to clean it out. It was pretty seriously filthy. I decided I needed hot water, so I brought it inside and blasted it with the shower thingy. With which I immediately splashed and sprayed my fleece bathrobe and got soaking wet. Very soon it became clear that the tub drain was obstructed, so I turned the water off and let it drain a while, then decided I needed to add some drain cleaner to give it a hand. As I'm doing this, I hear wild barking and dogs running in a huge circle: hallway, kitchen, dining room, living room, hallway, kitchen, dining room, living room -- up on sofa, down, then run the other direction. There is a dog toy involved.

And then I notice that the floor is covered in blood. There is blood everywhere, and I have no idea which dog is bleeding; they've both got blood on their paws just from walking through it. And they won't stop running. Neither of them seemed upset or angry at the other, and neither of them was limping or seemed impaired in the slightest. I finally shut both of the hallway doors and cornered them in the bathroom.

It was Ruby's ankle. A fairly small cut, but maybe it needed stitches? I didn't see anything still in it, no broken glass, etc. Had Kalei bitten her during the scuffle? I got the bleeding to mostly stop, and the dogs to collectively calm down. I called a friend to come and get Kalei, because every time I turned my back and tried to wipe up some of the blood, they started running around in circles again.

The place looked like a crime scene. All I needed was some yellow tape.

After Kalei left, I got the wound cleaned up. I was still kind of on the fence about whether to take her in, but my friend seemed to think I was overreacting. Ruby was asleep on the sofa. Not fussing with the cut or anything, but the furnace was still not reassembled and it was getting colder fast.

I gave up trying to clean the filter without a pressure washer. I thought about it briefly and wondered how difficult it would be to cut a furnace filter. Not that difficult, it turns out, so I cut four inches off the edge, and went downstairs and popped it into the proper spot, facing the proper direction. Sort of. I couldn't quite get that one corner to pop in the holder. The old one had 16x25x1 inch stamped on the frame and it had fit perfectly. And I'd cut exactly four inches off the 20x25x1 inch filter I'd purchased. I couldn't quite see or reach that farthest-away corner, and kept thinking maybe it was just caught on the bracket or something. And part of the problem is that the furnace is perched on a weird little concrete platform-type part of the floor, which slopes away from it precipitously and in more than one direction, so I couldn't quite get down on my knees and still reach at the right angle.

I tried to reach with a screwdriver, a long piece of wood, a hammer. I was cursing loudly and banging around, and poor Ruby got a bit restless and came downstairs to see if she could help. And before I knew it was out the dog door and chasing something in the back yard.

I rounded her up and got her back into the house and of course her foot was bleeding all over again, and she was all excited and trying to outrun me. I caught her and soaked her foot and cleaned it up again. I also put a sock on it, which she didn't seem to mind too much.

By then I needed a time-out. I sat with her on the couch for a while and listened to the news. Then cleaned blood off the floors again, and I got the bright idea to measure the old filter with a tape measure. Because it had fit in that bracket pretty snugly, and I thought maybe I'd mis-read the dimensions printed on it.

It was 15-5/8 inches x 25-3/8 inches x 7/8 inches. I went downstairs, cut another 3/8 of an inch off the longer side of the filter, replaced the cardboard frame along that edge, popped it right into the bracket, reassembled the front panels, and came upstairs and cranked the thermostat all the way up to 62. And then later I went back and turned it up to 66 and made myself some cocoa.

Ruby is fine. The furnace sounds vastly happier. The bathtub drain is clear. And this morning? I scrubbed all the floors. Soon, I am going to go grocery shopping just so I can use my nifty new mixer (see yesterday's post).