So, I painted the whole week between Christmas and new years. I had hoped to have it done before new years' arrival, but it didn’t happen. It was just more work than I had calculated. So, on the night we were supposed to leave for my parent's second home in the mountains; I was painting my little fingers off. I wanted the weekend to let the paint cure before moving the girls into their new room. Jeremy ran upstairs when he came home, poked his head in the door and said, "I'll get the kids packing, and then whenever you're done, we'll go. How does that sound?"
"That's great. Thanks babe." I answered.
Not more than five seconds later he ran back upstairs to the room and said "The basement is filled with SMOKE! It's coming from the furnace. I don’t know what we should do. I turned the heat down for starters."
"Call Petro, see if they can help."
So Jeremy called Petro. I dropped my paintbrush and came down stairs. Jeremy was on hold forever. "You can be here from seven to nine? No, we don’t have the service plan. There's a ninety-eight dollar diagnostic fee? Ok, yes I'll hold."
"Ninety-eight dollars? Just to come out and look? Ugh. Well, there's nothing else we can do. I'm so sorry I let the service agreement lapse" I said woefully to Jeremy
"I know. It sucks." He started singing to the "on hold" music.
"Hon, I don’t know if I feel comfortable going away with our furnace on the fritz. I'm gonna fret the whole time that it's going to spontaneously combust. We might have to skip out on this trip. I think my folks will understand."
"Yeah." he agreed.
Suddenly this small voice from around the corner was heard, "Daddy? I have a confession to make. Can we go to my room?"
"You'd better tell us here and now!" I said sternly.
He started sobbing. "I-I-I-I-I I put-I put-I-I""YOU HAD BETTER SPIT IT OUT SON!" Jer said in his very scary parental voice. Jeremy is very scary when he gets parental.
"IputwaxonthefurnacecuzIwantedtoseehowfastitwouldmeeeeelllllllllllllllllttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
"Ok, say that again slower, please, because I didn’t catch any of that" I asked.
I looked at Jeremy who obviously understood and was trying to contain his laughter, apparently reliving some childhood science experiments of his own that had gone awry.
"I said, I said, I said...I put wax on the furnace because I wanted to see how fast it would melt" he repeated rather sheepishly between sobs.
"Boy, look at me in the eyes. What do you do with candles?" Jeremy asked.
"You burn them. You light them on fire," he answered, his eyes big as saucers.
"And what are candles made of?"
"Wax." he answered
"So what do you think would happen to wax when it got hot enough?" Jer asked.
"It would catch on fire?" he asked his eyes wider still.
Jer tried not to laugh, covered his mouth with his hands. Tried his hardest to put his stern parent face on, and said, "That's right. Now, tell me where did you get the wax?"
"I found it down stairs...there's this huge block of it in Mama's art stuff."
I'm proud to say, Joshua is still alive. We did manage to go away, and when the guy finally came back on the phone, Jer was able to cancel our service request.
We figured Joshua did some quick calculations in his head. "No mountains...$98? I'd better confess and get this over with now!" After the commotion had died down, he very innocently asked in a small voice, "Daddy, did you ever do something that was so terrible and you knew you had to tell the truth but it was just SOOOOOOOOOOOO hard?!???"
"Yes," he laughed. "But I'm still alive, so it's always better to tell the truth."
Later that night while we were in bed, I turned to Jer and said, "I don’t know WHY I didn’t see that coming. All week he's been obsessing over things that can melt. He asked me questions like what substance could melt the fastest, the slowest, can this melt, can that melt. He looked up things online, and researched it in some of his science books. I should have just KNOWN he was going to attempt his own science experiment!"
Jeremy chuckled. "That's my boy," he said.
