Cool and cloudy Monday....

.... and we're thanking our lucky stars for that. Our air-conditioning unit won't be fixed/replaced till tomorrow morning. But the weather gods are being good to us... the temperature has dropped fifteen degrees, thanks to a cool front passing along the northern mid-west. Today has been very cloudy, and downright dark this morning when we had a good thunderstorm.

We were supposed to get another estimate from a second air-conditioning service this morning, but their technician called in sick and they only have the one guy who can give estimates. What?! Well, shame on them, because we can't sit around praying for more cool and cloudy weather. Tomorrow is supposed to be back up in the high 80s, with lots of sun, which means the house will be like an oven.

Back to the first air-conditioning company we went, which is fine with me because we've been using them since we moved here. They're more expensive than the rest, but they're also the best, in my opinion. As my dad would say: You get what you pay for. Our next-door neighbor laughs when he sees the guys from that air-conditioning company come into our house--- the service guys have these little blue cotton "booties" that they slip on over their work boots so they don't mess up your flooring. Our neighbor says he's never seen that done before and it just tickles him because he says "Y'all are paying extra for those booties, you know." Well, we know, but I actually like those booties because they do keep the dirt and grass out of my house.

They will be here first thing tomorrow morning, and by lunchtime they should be done. And if those guys have to go up into our attic for any of the connections, they will really be done before lunchtime. I can't even imagine how hot it must get up in our attic when the temperatures get up into the high 80s and 90s.

My husband and I were talking about growing up in the 1950s and 1960s..... neither of us had central air-conditioning where we lived, and we had never heard of such a thing in the first place. Summer was summer, and summer was hot, and you just dealt with it. Now we're melting and wilting without the air-conditioning, and even with the cooler weather, it seems that this house just soaks up the sunlight.

Our next-door neighbor has a solution for that..... new windows. When these houses were built, they didn't have the double and triple glass windows, which are more efficient in keeping out the heat in the summer and keeping out the cold in the winter. Neither my neighbor nor my husband wants to invest in all new windows for these houses. Both of them say they'd rather move into a newer house and start all over with new windows, new kitchens, new bathrooms, new everything. With all the new subdivisions going up all over this area, the older ones can't compete with all the bells and whistles that the new builders are adding to the current homes.

In the words of our neighbor B-- "We need to sell these houses for whatever we can get, buy one of the newer homes, and don't look back." B's wife V looked at me when her husband said that and told me "Should we be getting this in writing?"