What's happening down south

So much for staying on top of the blogging. But seriously, let me just tell you the things that have happened since my last post, and then you will be sympathetic. And send gifts.

1. Our air conditioning unit quit working while I was in North Carolina moving Madison into her dorm. We were just rolling our filled-to-the-top-and-overflowing cart when Tom called to tell me this great news.

Me: "I hope you aren't calling to tell me not to spend money,"
Him:  "Pfft. What's a couple of hundred more?"

Actually he was quite gleeful. He has been talking about replacing the air conditioning unit with a new one for the past two years. The first time it went out two years prior he brought up the subject, but when the repair guy appeared and fixed the problem he told me the air conditioner was fine. I told this to my husband and convinced him that spending fifty million tons of money for a unit that was working fine now was silly. So he moved on to replacing our roof. He had all these roofing companies come out to give us a bid, and everyone of them climbed down from our roof and told me there was nothing wrong with the roof.

Them: "You've got another two years at least."
Tom: "What do they know?"
Me: "Uh....Yeah. No new roof."

So when he called he was gleeful, despite the boiling temperatures. I was thankful I was living in a motel, but the AC was still out when I flew home two days later. The temperature inside my house was not fit for human or canine living.

I moved us to The Condo while a company went to work putting in a new AC unit for us the next day. It took all day, and when they were finished they weren't. By law they had to attach some metal casings from the ground up to a certain height and that would have to be custom made. Whatever. Who cared now that I had air.

Me: "How long will it take to get my air back to 77 degrees?"
Him: "I have no idea. I usually leave at this point."

It took nine hours. Nine VERY long hours of me cursing out my husband for making me leave The Condo. I went to bed with the air at 80 degrees. I'm an overweight, menopausal woman. It wasn't good, I slept very little, but the air was back to normal when I awoke the next morning.

2. The dryer broke. The day after my new unit was installed I caught up on laundry. I noticed that the dryer seemed hotter than normal, but my laundry facilities are outside in the garage, and frankly, if I even remember that there is laundry in the units I am in and out of that garage as fast as lightning. The last load I remembered at around 11 pm, and when I pulled it out it was scorching. It registered in my brain that the load had finished an hour before and was awfully hot, but that is as far as it got in my brain. The next day the dryer was dead, and suddenly I remembered how hot the last load had been. It seemed suspicious to me that it quit working right after the AC guys had been working with our electric about three feet away from my dryer.

I finished my laundry at my neighbor's. Two days later Tom replaced the burned out part, and I was back in business.

3. I started babysitting the neighbor's dog. While this wouldn't seem like much it is. The neighbor insists that the dog stay at her own home, so four times a day I would have to trudge across the street to feed and potty the dog. This began during the time our AC broke so I actually hung out at their house whenever possible and used their dryer once. After the AC and dryer were up and running, I brought the dog to our house during the day for social interaction and took her home at night to eat and sleep.

4. Our new air conditioning unit quit working. Yep, you read that right. THE BRAND NEW unit stopped working late at night exactly six days later. I had been hot all day doing absolutely nothing around the house, and late that night I noticed the temperature was two degrees higher than the setting. Tom went outside and sure enough the unit was off.

A repair guy was at our house first thing that morning, and he discovered that a screw was the issue. The screw was not tightening, and therefore, not hitting the wire that set off the unit. Whatever. I didn't care. My house was back to 94 degrees, just fix the problem IN MY BRAND NEW AIR CONDITIONER. He said he had to replace the whole mother board, and he would return. He did so four hours later while I hung out with the neighbor's dog in her house. He also got word that our metal was ready and so he actually finished the entire AC job. Now all we had left was the inspection from the county. He assured me that would be the next day or the end of the week.

5. Tropical Storm/Hurricane Hermine appeared. She started off as a mysterious churning in the Atlantic and worked her way to the gulf side causing headaches and anxiety in forecasters and the National Weather Service. Eventually she rolled into a tropical storm, and we got the brunt of that on Wednesday. It poured. It rained and rained and rained. We had 11 inches in a short amount of time and the sewers went into overload and flooding occurred.

I went to feed the dog that morning and discovered the pool overflowing. It was halfway up to the doorway and the yard was full of puddles. I was afraid the damn dog would drown just trying to pee that morning so I brought her home with me. Just walking out to do her business every time resulted in her looking like a drowned rat.

School was cancelled on Thursday and Friday as the tropical storm turned into a hurricane, but the brunt of it for us came during the early morning hours on Thursday while I slept. I worried some about our huge oak tree uprooting and falling on our house, but I was worn out from the previous adventures and slept like a baby when it came through. It rained off and on both days, but nothing like it had on Wednesday. Once again we were spared.

6. Our roof leaked. It started on Wednesday during the horrific rain. I was folding laundry while sitting on one of the couches. The dogs were on the other couch chillin'. I heard a loud plopping noise, and discovered that big drops of water were landing on top of my new couch. It took some time to find that the water was coming from, are you ready for this, from a screw inside my AC duct in the dining room. I kid you not. I thought I was in an episode of Candid Camera. Another issue regarding the AC and a screw? I couldn't begin to make this stuff up.

I took the plate off and sent the picture to my husband. I had texted him the bad news, and he had responded with a text of his own.

Tom: "I don't think you know where you are. We don't have an AC duct in the dining room, do we? Over the couches? The couches aren't in the dining room."

I sent him a picture of the damn couch, which is half in the dining room and half in the living room, and then I sent him a picture of the wet drops on my couch, and finally the above picture. I put a bucket under the drip, moved the couch all the way into the living room, and got used to the plopping noise.

The next morning, Thursday, both dogs woke me at 6:30 am. We had kept the neighbor's dog with us that night since we were in a hurricane, and she was barking along with Elliot. I got up and decided to take her home to feed her. We headed out into the drizzling rain, and I discovered my husband on the roof in the pitch blackness with a flashlight looking for the leak. I should have taken a picture, but seriously, it would have looked like a black piece of paper. I could see the tiny light from his flashlight, but could barely see him. He, of course, could not find a leak, and when he returned inside he declared the roof looked "in great shape."

My life should be a comedy on ABC.

That was my week, and blogging just didn't make it in my list of duties. Forgive me.