Blocked Ducted Heating

I’m not going to lie, the kids are beginning to get on my nerves. I love the little rascals endlessly, but wow do they know how to press my buttons. I’m a single father of two and it’s hard to work from home and look after my children at the same time. They’re both under the age of five and getting up to mischief is their favourite thing to do. 

Yesterday, I had an important work video call and I arranged the meeting to be when my children have their nap. Everything was going well until I heard my oldest yell “Daddy’s going to be mad!”. Obviously I excused myself from the meeting and went to check on the children, only to find out that my youngest child had put all her 200 crayons down the ducted heating vent. They were supposed to be asleep. This is clearly a hazard and something that I don’t have time to fix, so I put both my children in their playpen and turn off the heater. Then before returning to my meeting, I quickly called for heating services & repairs. Canberra is way too cold for us to go without a heater for too long, but I don’t have the time or ability to go through the vents to find all the crayons. That’ll be a problem for the technicians when they arrive tomorrow.

If anyone cares, the rest of my meeting went well and the boss likes the work I’m doing. That was a nice feeling and momentarily overshadowed the feeling of annoyance that I felt towards my kids. I love them a lot, but for once in their life, can they just not put crayons down the ducted heating. Canberra is a great place for them to grow up, but with our heavy reliance on our heating system, they can’t really grow up without one.

I think I’ll ask the technician tomorrow to make up some story about what happens to crayons when they go down the vent, and hopefully this will stop them doing it again any time soon.