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In my family, there are two topics of conversation that are always relevant. One is any conversation that discusses the weather and the other is whether or not you have changed your furnace filter. The importance of changing your furnace filter is emphasized throughout this conversation and old anecdotes told about the daughter who didn’t know a furnace had a filter to change are brought up throughout. Having just purchased a home, the furnace filter conversation has taken place quite often. It is embarrassing to me to admit my ignorance of all things home repair. I do not know the answer to the simplest home repair questions. In years previous, my solution was to ask Dale to fix it and thereby cover the extent of my ignorance. With Dale deployed, my ignorance is now painfully obvious. The plastic bit that held a kitchen drawer in place broke, so I brought it to Lowes to get a replacement. They didn’t have the exact one, so I bought 4 different plastic bits in the hope that one would work. I then wedged myself into the bottom cabinet and attempted to screw the new plastic bit that looked most likely into place. The screw went round and round, but did not penetrate the back of the cabinet. I then shimmied back out of the cabinet and googled “do you have to drill a pilot hole before you put in a screw” - ignorant question #1. The answer to this appeared to be yes, so then I went downstairs to find Dale’s drill and stared at the endless array of drill bit choices and guessed that the drill bit should be smaller than the screw. I may have googled that ignorant question as well. Then I had to figure out how to tighten the drill around the bit and wedged myself into the cabinet again. I attempted to drill the pilot hole and the bit came flying off. Apparently, I hadn’t tightened the drill enough. When I finally got all the screws in, the plastic bit was crooked which made the glide not level, so now the drawer won’t close all the way. My next home maintenance failure was my attempt to put the air intake cover back on after I painted the hallway wall. The screws would no longer hold in the dry wall and I realized I would need to attempt a wall patch or mudding or some such home improvement task that I was ignorant of. Instead, I decided that if I slid it over just a hair, I could get 3 of the 6 screws to hold so that it won’t fall off the wall. I attempted to put a small piece of rolled up duct tape behind the top corner in an attempt to fool the eye, but that didn’t hold. So, the top is hanging out from the wall. When I put the air intake cover back on, the duct was filthy, so I was jarred into thinking about past furnace filter conversations. I then decided that it was best to get down to the basement and change it immediately before I called home again, so that I would have something new to say during the usual furnace filter conversation. Thankfully, the heat pump has a panel clearly marked filter. I unscrewed the panel and was shocked and dismayed by what I saw. The furnace filter was in pieces because it’s paper had gotten so full of dust and dirt. After I extracted all the pieces I could locate, I looked at the new filter. It had helpful little arrows and a single sentence “place arrows in the direction of the air flow”. Ignorant question #2 - Exactly which way does air flow through a furnace?