You never know with me. I tell fictional stories as easily as I relate my own. It comes from years of making something funny out of the crazy things that happen in my life. No sense getting all morose about stuff after it’s all over. That’s when it becomes a tale to be told.
Yesterday morning at 5:30, I woke up … violently. I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours. My best writing time happens after eleven o’clock at night. Anyway, I was startled awake not only by the cat bolting off my stomach (how in the world did he sneak up there when I wasn’t looking?), but by a horrible noise coming from my air conditioning unit. It scared TB pretty badly … a cross between a freight train and a low flying airplane.
I went to the bathroom, hoped it would settle down, but knew I’d be calling my A/C guy when *real* morning arrived. I tried to go back to sleep. TB settled in beside me and the A/C kicked on again, making the same terrible noise. Enough of this. I turned it off, made sure my dehumidifier was empty and working, turned fans on and went to bed. Later that morning, I called and left a message, telling my A/C guy about the problem and I asked him to call and schedule a time.
Before leaving for Boone to do laundry, I flipped the light on in the room with the A/C unit, smacked the thing a couple of times to tell it that I was annoyed and made sure it was turned off at the thermostat. I was gone for about an hour and a half, came back to a UPS delivery and the cat under the covers. Nothing had been disturbed and I hadn’t heard from my tech. No worries. I’d be fine.
It warmed up last night, but I emptied the dehumidifier a couple more times, rearranged fans and made myself as comfortable as possible. I was too hot to think, so I didn’t do any writing, but stayed up late anyway (it’s what I do), sewing a couple of projects for Carol. Fell asleep again about 3, woke up over and over through the night, finally got up at 9.
I worried about the techs showing up on me this morning, so I hurried into the shower and ran out to run some errands. I came back and knew that it was going to get warmer and warmer. When I hadn’t heard from them by 3:00, I was done. I called and left another message. I was very nice and told him I just needed an idea of when they might be here. If it wasn’t going to be until Monday – that was fine (I’m really good at martyr behavior).
A half hour later, TB was outside and I figured that I might just turn the loud and noisy A/C on for a while to get some relief. He wasn’t around to freak out over the sound.
And it was quiet. Perfectly, wonderfully, quiet. Say what?
I called my tech and this time he answered.
I said, “So either you were here yesterday and fixed my air conditioning or letting it sit for 36 hours fixed the problem.”
“We were there yesterday.”
“You were!?”
“Yeah, sorry we missed you.”
(Inside I’m whimpering because I was pretty miserable last night and it had been unnecessary. I also could have slept much later this morning … sigh.)
“Can you tell me what the problem was?” I asked.
“You had a mouse in the blower system.”
“Dead mouse?”
“Oh yeah. Really dead mouse. That was what made it vibrate.”
“Okay, well, then. Thank you. Send me the bill.”
They’ve been in and out of this place whether I’m here or not for the last six years. I never worry about that and always tell them to just come on in if I’m gone. They are such good guys. Just straightforward, nice, responsible, hardworking guys. I really like them. And they take great care of me.
So rather than complain and whine about anything, I chalk this up to another awesome story of life in the rural Midwest.
You know what? When I got home yesterday from the trip to Boone, the light that I’d switched on was turned off. I assumed that I had automatically flipped it off … like I always do (Dad trained me well in the energy crisis of the late 1970’s). But no, that was the only real hint that they’d been here. Nothing was disturbed, they’d cleaned up after themselves (and the dead mouse – ack!).
The air conditioning is on, the fans are now blowing cold air on me (this is going to have to end pretty soon, my toes are starting to feel like it’s the middle of January), and I can’t stop laughing about this. If it weren’t for real life, there wouldn’t be any fun stories.
