Yesterday, Bonnie called me to remind me that today was my turn to post.
It was a nice gesture, but I already knew that. I also knew I yet again did not have any idea what to write about. My brain was actually too focused on what happened last Friday.
So, what did happen Friday?
My husband had an early appointment and left the house before the rest of us even woke up. Then, as I was just getting up, my son told me that we’d gotten an alert about an issue with our A/C system.
My husband had been notified and, as usual for him, his solution was to turn it off for now. That had been his solution with the central heater when it started malfunctioning. The only problem was, we couldn’t possibly fix it, so our heater had stayed off for several years. Fortunately, it doesn’t get that cold here and we managed with a few space heaters.
But air conditioning is a different matter. Not only does it get hot here, but I don’t handle being over-heated at all.
I made up my mind I would call our heating and air conditioning service at a more reasonable hour in the day and see when someone could check it out. Then, just as my husband came into our bedroom (returning home) my phone rang. It’s our service. They got the same alert we did and asked when a technician could come out to check on it.
I knew them checking on our system was a free service so having them come out wasn’t a problem. Needing to pay for whatever needed repaired was an issue. I made the appointment for later that day and then prayed it wasn’t an expensive issue. Something minor or easily fixed was the best outcome for us.
My experience with things breaking down is that the simplest, least expensive, solution is often the case. Except when it comes to anything in our house.
Part of this might be because the house is over 20 years old now though we’ve already replaced all major appliances including the water heater and both toilets. And while we’ve done major repairs to our central heating and air conditioning system, we had not replaced them. That alone explains the heating unit dying and the A/C having an issue.
So, the technician checked out our system. The issue wasn’t something minor. It was the system was over 20 years old and needed replaced.
I knew the cost of just repairing something that major was more than we had in our saving account. Actually, probably more than all the money we had combined.
But not repairing it meant spending the summer months dying in the heat with nothing but fans to keep us cool. Maybe in a different climate that would work, but the temps here easily reach over one hundred degrees (Fahrenheit) and usually starts doing that by April, or May at the latest. And clearly it was almost May. Not only that, but I had already asked to have a fan turned on and aimed at me. A fan that I had repositioned twice to ensure it was doing it utmost to keep me from over-heating.
Yes. I was not going to survive without A/C.
The technician told us we couldn’t just repair the A/C unit. The part was too old to repair. It needed replaced. But then so did our heating unit, but we’d known that for a few years.
The only option was to try and see if we (or rather me) could get approved for a home improvement loan at least large enough to cover replacing the A/C.
For some reason I was approved for a loan large enough to cover replacing everything. Still a sizeable monthly payment, but I’ve already figured out what we can handle without tightening our belts too much. Mostly just putting less into savings for the time being. So, hopefully we have no other major issues for the next several years. After all our issues over the last couple of years we simply could not handle them.
Yes, we got everything replaced. Rather quickly in fact. They had our new unit in and functioning by the end of the weekend.
After that was all said and done, I realized that we’ve actually lived in this house for 21 years as of last Thursday. Twenty-one years, and yet my lifetime average in one place is still about 2 years. And most were in the city I grew up in.
Finally, my baby, my biggest kid, will be a quarter of a century old this weekend.
Smile. Make the day a brighter day.
