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Summer Time


If you can laugh, it will be okay.  If you can chuckle at the huge water stain on your ceiling and the fact that the AC quit just when you had 12 people in the house, and at least one guest spending the night, then it will be okay.

So far I’m still chuckling. . .but then again, the downstairs AC is working.

Niobe, our chocolate lab has been with us three months now.  She’s grown comfortable enough to bark at every guest and ringer of the doorbell, be they 5 or 40.  But she’s still a bit confused about where to go when she needs to do her business.  A few weeks ago she was using the upstairs carpet as her spot of grass, oh, about every other day.  That didn’t do well for my view of her.  I was getting really annoyed, if not angry.  She only did it when the kids were upstairs, and I would hear, “Niobe! No!  oh no . . .Niobeee!”

That’s my cue to grab three rags and the carpet spray.  Blot, blot, spray, spray, blot.  Grumble, grumble.  All the while I wondered what a special infrared light would reveal about the carpet.  I didn’t really want to know.

In my better moments I remembered the toddler potty training days, when it’s not really the toddler being potty trained--it’s the parent who’s training herself to take the toddler to the potty.  So Elisabeth and I learned to take Niobe outside more often.  Lately it seems to work best when we take out the compost or trash or recycling and invite Niobe to come with us.  Waste begets waste perhaps?

But I didn’t really chuckle until last Friday when I glanced at my ceiling and noticed a huge water stain that could only mean one thing: a leak in the upstairs guest bathroom.  Our house is 20 years old and various parts are wearing out, including very small pieces that connect pipes to things like toilets.  A very tiny drip slowly covered the bathroom floor with water, which then soaked down and put lovely sepia artwork on our bedroom ceiling.  But thankfully Henry had left an entire package of toilet paper just next to the tub.  That absorbed quite a bit of water.  Who knows--we might’ve had a torrent rushing into our bedroom had it not been for the toilet paper.

There’s a pan collecting the drips now, and the plumber is coming Tuesday.  After all my stress over the dog peeing on the carpet, the real damage was done by manmade contraptions designed to take care of human waste.  

Then yesterday, while four kids were running around creating lots of warmth, Peter, my cousin and our summer resident, came downstairs and quietly asked, “Is it supposed to be so warm upstairs?”  In fact the upstairs AC had finally died and the thermostat read 89 degrees.  Here’s when the homeowners exhale a guilty sigh.  We knew this would be happening soon, given the age of the unit, and in April we’d gotten quotes for replacing both the upstairs and downstairs systems, but somehow since things were working, we kept putting it off.  

Now Peter is staying with us this summer while he works in a residency in the Houston area.  When his friends in Colorado asked him why he was going to Texas in the summer, he said, “Oh, it’ll be fine.  My cousins have a pool.”  Indeed.  Now he has a really good story to tell.  Yesterday with ceiling fans on we lowered the temperature to 83 degrees, but it began rising again early.  This morning Peter was up just after six o’clock, so maybe we’re increasing his work efficiency.  Henry was up early too . . .with a headache.

That being said, the kindly AC repair man will be by tonight to see if he can provide a temporary fix, and he is scheduled to come on Wednesday to replace the units.  I’m so grateful to him for squeezing us in tonight at 8 PM that I thought I’d bake him a loaf of bread . . .then again that won’t help keep the house cool.

Happy Summer to all!  I’m going to get a popsicle.

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