On January 31st of this year, I made a new tag on this blog called "Boiler". Under it, are listed all the articles I ever wrote about the broken boiler in our apartment. The broken boiler that got fixed on Jan 31st of this year, which made me all emotional and decide that we needed a "boiler" section on this blog because I was certain it was the end of an era, and that I wouldn't be blogging about it anymore. I'm sure you can guess by now what the content of this blog entry is going to be about but before I get into all the nitty-gritty, we need to go back to a warm evening from last week.

It was one of those evenings when Shane and I weren't particularly hungry but also just a little hungry. Which meant that we were in no mood to cook a proper meal or order food but at the same time, needed to eat something moderately heavy but not too much. It's all about the balance y'all!

On evenings like these, I take it upon myself to feed us something that maintains the balance because I could never expect Shane to do it right. Expecting him to get the balance right is like expecting him to load the dishwasher the right way. Wait, I feel a list coming. Here goes.

Expecting Shane to get the balance right is like expecting him to:

• separate the whites from the coloured clothes in the laundry.
• remember to turn on the exhaust fan in the bathroom before a long steamy shower.
• respond the first time I ask him a question.
• have a reaction when I lose my shit with him, crack my skull open, tilt my head to the side, and let my brain ooze out of it.

Okay, I'm bored now because I know I can go on forever. But the reason he can't be expected to fix us the balanced meal is that he won't move his ass to do it if he's not hungry enough. He'd rather let us starve.

Which is why that evening, I was in the kitchen putting together a nice, simple, quick and balanced meal for us while listening to an audiobook. Half-way through, when I started rinsing and loading the dishwasher the right way, I could swear that I heard him call out my name. Surely, he knew that I had my headphones on and was doing important things for the both of us so he'd be generous enough to get his ass to the kitchen to talk to me if it was that important? I wish.

He kept calling for me over and over again until ignoring the mild disturbance of his voice seeping in through my perfect audiobook narration was no longer an option. I absolutely hate it when he pulls that shit with me. So I irritatedly turned the water faucet off, dried my hands, paused my audiobook, stormed out of the kitchen and barked, "WHAT? WHAT IS SO IMPORTANT THAT IT COULDN'T WAIT?"

"I just had an idea for the new podcast episode you were planning earlier. Why are you so angry?"

"WHY DO YOU THINK, PRINCESS?"

Let's just say he's not very smart and couldn't understand why I was mad until I drew flow charts and algorithms for him. And once he got it, he got flipping mad in turn (how dare he?). He even did that thing where he sat up straight, threw both his hands up in the air in a controlled but dramatic way, and brought them back to slap his thighs to make an angry sound. That, dear friends, was the sound of an urban domestic war starting. It went on for a while and turned into a full-blown fight that we forgot about the next day.

So I'm sure you can understand why last night, when he called out for me from the bedroom the minute my ass touched the couch in the living room, I involuntarily screamed, "Oh fuck you, Shane! Not this again."

Because remember I said my ass barely touched the couch? That was because I had just returned to the living room after a nice, long chat with him in the bedroom. What could be so important that he had to immediately call out my name and add that I "had to see this"?

At first, I decided to be stubborn and ignore him. This time, if he had something important to tell or show me, he'd better get his ass to the where I was. I didn't move for a while but then I realised that he hadn't called again and I got curious. I guess the reason he continues to pull this with me is that I let him. My curiosity is my bane. It prevents me from completely ignoring him and like all the other times, last night too, I got up from my seat to go to him in order to find out why he needed my attention. And unlike all the other times, I was surprised to see that he was not lounging around with his laptop resting on his chest, waiting to give me instructions. In fact, he wasn't even on the bed this time. He was in our closet, hurriedly pulling things out of the cupboard that stores our boiler and asking me if I could "smell it".

And sure as hell, I could. Something was burning in there.

He told me that he heard a sort of tiny blast followed by the loud, angry sound of boiling water which made him get up to check what was going on. And that it's when he got into the closet that he got the smell.

We've looked everywhere, pulled everything out of the cupboard, turned the blessed thing off, left the doors and windows open and kept our smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in the vicinity. The whole room still smells like something's on fire but we can't figure out what it is. We've sent out emails to our property agents and even called them this morning. We have to wait for them to bring someone over to take a look at it.

But boy oh boy are the boiler issues back with a blast! No pun intended.