I have to share this story as it is much too good to not share!
Last Sunday when I got out of the hospital, I excitedly called my mom to let her know that they were releasing me. She was in somewhat of a tizzy when she answered the phone and immediately burst into tears about needing to "do something with me, as I cannot continue to keep living this way..."
Puzzled by her obvious distress, I questioned her about what was going on. She, Kristin, and Tyler had stayed overnight at my place. We had a winter storm warning over the weekend, so the temps dropped accompanied by high winds. So needless to say, it got pretty darn cold! And because of my current situation, I was not able to afford propane to heat my house this winter, so I have relied on my wood pellet burning stove and space heaters to heat my house.
Saturday night, I had spoken to Kristin about how to operate the wood burning stove, as they had picked up some pellets. I was walking her through the instructions while we were on the phone and she assured me that she understood what I was telling her and that Tyler confirmed he knew how to operate the stove as well.
Here are the instructions I gave the knuckle-heads:
- First, put the pellets in the hopper. Do you see the hopper? Kristin replied that yes, she sees the hopper and check...the pellets are in the hopper. I told her not to put all of them in as they would be too heavy (as they are big bags of pellets and weigh 40 lbs.) and the feed chute would not operate properly. She said, "Oops, let me take some out because Mom put some in and I think it is too full." So she confirms that she took some pellets out.
- Second, I told her to open the glass door on the front of the stove and place a small handful in the burner basket. Check...she confirmed.
- Third, I told her to push the low setting button on the stove and it would automatically come on in a couple of minutes. Check...she confirmed she could hear it kicking on.
It was so cold in the house when I got home. I went to the stove to figure out why it wasn't working and discovered that there were no pellets in the hopper. Well, thinking that they had all burned up, I opened up the hopper and dumped more pellets in it. I heard Kristin exclaim, "Oh MY GOD!" Thinking that she was going to scold me for lifting a scoop of pellets, I assured her the scoop did not weigh more than 10 lbs.
This was not what she was exclaiming about.....this is where I nearly peed my pants laughing so hard:
It turns out that none of them knew what a freaking hopper was....they had opened the glass door on the front of the stove and dumped the bag of pellets in there. They did not understand that the pellets were fed through the feed chute to the burn basket to keep the fire burning. Instead, they had filled the front up, taken the pellets back out and had been opening the glass door and administering a handful of pellets every 5 minutes or so when the fire went out. The hopper never saw a pellet and they froze their butts off! LOL!
I turned and looked at my son, Tyler, and questioned him that I thought he said he knew how the thing worked! He stated that no, he didn't, but was proud of the fact that he sounded like he knew what he was talking about!
I got the stove working and within an hour had a warm, toasty house.
Mom decided the stove wasn't a piece of crap after all! :-)
1 comment:
That is the funniest story I've ever heard. And of course since I know the three knuckleheads personally - it is even funnier.
Post a Comment