Cool this....

The air-conditioning crew has left...... as of late yesterday afternoon, we won't see them back here till late October, when they come to test out the new heating systems that were installed with the cooling units.  We now have new systems in this house, two systems, two thermostats, and I've cleaned thousands of foot-prints on the floors of the kitchen and hallways, and up and down the staircases.  Those guys worked hard, in 100-degree temperatures...... however....... they began their day between 9:30 and 10:00, even though we suggested they could start at seven o'clock in the morning.

Starting at 10:00 gave them a lunch-hour beginning at 2:00, which got them back here at 3:30...... working in the blessed heat of the day.... which gave them a quitting time of 6:00.  What would have taken our old air-conditioning crew in Clear Lake one day to complete, this crew took three days. Three solid days of the screen door slamming shut, footprints all over the floors (the Clear Lake guys had plastic booties that they slipped over their shoes)....... and such disorganization that left tools all over the kitchen, hallway, and I don't even know what the third floor looked like when they were up there because I refused to even look. Ignorance is indeed sometimes bliss.

But..... on the bright side.... we have two nicely working systems that will keep the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter. One can only hope.  We also have a new thermostat on the wall of the second floor hallway that looks like it could be on the control panel of a supersonic jet.  The a/c guy (the Gomer Pyle sound-alike) wanted to install one of those new thermostats downstairs and I told him no..... the thermostat for the first floor works just fine.  "But don't y'all want something new and high-tech?"  I reminded Gomer that we're living in a house built in 1907...... high-tech is not up there on my list of priorities.

I cleaned up all the footprints yesterday....... and the day before, and the day before that....... and last week I did the same when they were here working on the downstairs unit for three days.   My husband and I found little screws and pieces of metal in the driveway, and the a/c crew spent nearly an hour looking for the square metal cover that goes on the face of the downstairs system.  Of course, Gomer told me that the "ghost up in y'all's attic done stole that thing."  I just looked at him.  He told me he would order a new cover and bring it right over when it came in.  I can hardly wait.

Now that the new a/c systems are in, we can call the carpenters back to finish up the trim and the window-seats on the third floor.  That should be an interesting phone call.  I'm anticipating them telling us that it will be two or three weeks until they can fit us into their schedule.  But even that has a bright side.......... when the carpenters were here for the first part of that job, they taped brown paper on the stairs and the hallway and the floors....... they walked on that paper, never putting a foot onto my floors.  When they were done and picked up that brown paper, all their footprints went with them.

The 'thermostat wars' on the second floor of this house will now be history. Gone are the days when I could tip-toe to the thermostat and move the little lever just an itty-bitty tad to the right, making the temperature one or two degrees warmer up here.  Now I'm faced with a neon green touch-pad thermostat that came with a 200-page instruction booklet. By the time I figure out how to use that thing, my husband will discover me shivering in the hallway, wrapped up in blankets and mittens with my teeth chattering because Gomer set the temperature to 65 degrees.

Give me a blessed break.......