After having a brief sprint of Fall weather over the weekend, the weather report calls for a high of 90 degrees as you enter into the work week. This will require a slight adjustment to the dress code you sported the last few days. After a day of dewy makeup, sweaty hairline, and frizzy up do, you cannot wait to get home and change into your grunge wear. But fate has other plans for you…when you cross the threshold of your home, you feel like you have been hit with Dragon Breath (literally and figuratively). For the literal part, it feels like 99 degrees in your house when it is 90 degrees outside. After mumbling a few curse words wicked enough to humble even the Grinch, you stroll over to the thermostat where you retrieve a reading of 82 degrees. Figuratively, it smells like a bear died in your house!
First thing first, change into grunge wear appropriate for 100/100 temperatures. Check on all the pets to make certain they have not had a heat stroke. Next, remember that you had the infamous E5 error reading on your portable AC unit in the garage over the weekend that required draining. Therefore, go outside to look at your condensate line. Voila…sure enough you have the same problem! Call your Dad requesting his assistance with this task (you have been given strict instructions not to attempt this inevitable feat each summer). Leave a message when there is no answer. Go back inside to investigate the only stench worse than lamb cooking within a 12 yard radius. This is where you begin to wonder if your house would normally smell this bad without air conditioning. Before preceding to the next step, grab the vapor rub out of your medicine cabinet and place some in each nostril, as an attempt to block out the nauseous odor. Turn all of the ceiling fans on the highest setting…LOW barely works; MEDIUM maybe, kinda works; HIGH will have the fan shaking and rattling like wind chimes in a tornado but you should have some sense of breeze.
Fearing the inevitable, you set out to find a volunteer willing to relieve you of the next dreadful duty. No such luck…UNTIL…you remember your youngest has been trying to save some spending money for an upcoming trip! When you try to hire her services, you are hit with “Mom, you could not pay me enough money to do what you are asking. I have been there with you, before…remember…uh, uh, no way, no how…and finally HELL NO”!
Ok…so…by now… it is late, it is dark and you have not heard from your father. You decide to make the best of things for the night and hope that you will wake up the next day with enough courage for the next task. Refresh the vapor rub in each nostril and grab a clothes pin from the Laundry Hall.
By the next morning, your sense of smell has grown numb to the vapor rub and you decide that the only way you can withstand the odor long enough to prepare for work is to switch the aromas up and use essential oil, instead. Decide to move the remaining house pets to the the rabbits domain (climate controlled garage) for their welfare. After crossing the threshold into odor free, humidity free, 68 degree temps…you realize that your bunnies live a life far better than you! After basking in the delight for a few minutes, you decide it is time to head to work. At least the truck now has AC (after 4 different visits to the mechanic). When you arrive at the office, your colleague remarks how sweet you smell. You begin to panic, wondering if you may have overdone it with the perfume oils earlier in the morning.
After your return home, you immediately gather the items you will need for the dreaded task you put off the night before: disposable gloves, gas mask, disposable bags, flashlight, defense arsenal… and make your way to the attic. Once in the attic, you begin to shudder with the same anxiety you endured when you were younger and coerced into going thru the haunted mansion with your gang of misfits. The feeling of “let’s get this over with prevails and you set out to find the decaying corpse of a rat, snake, squirrel…or bear. As you work your way thru the boxes of Holiday decorations just thru the door within arms reach (because you never dare to walk into the attic), over the joists careful not to lose your balance and fall thru the sheet rock, under the insulation pipes, avoiding direct contact with insulation, dodging spider webs…you make your way around the attic without any obvious sign of a decaying corpse. You now begin to sense some relief that you may not have to dispose of dead remains, as on other occasions. As you exhale a sigh of relief (and windiness), you have achieved an expanded sense of appreciation for Simone Biles. However, the question remains where is the odor coming from on the north wing of the house? At this point, the only other place you can imagine looking are the gutters, as you recall many occasions when squirrels would chase one another around the eaves of the house. Decide, again, that this task would be better suited for someone that does not suffer from vertigo and who has had more experience using an extend-a-ladder.
Fast forward thru the work week…the outside temps are gradually cooling again and the foul odor on the north wing of the house seems to be tapering…or am I just getting used to the dragon’s breath? And, no, my Dad has not found his way over to flush the condensate lines. Therefore, the cooling system remains off, so as not to cause the drip pan to overflow. Since my dad lives by government temperature settings, I do not anticipate that he will be in ANY hurry to enable the indulgence of temps cooler/warmer than he feels is necessary. Therefore, you precede with final step of the mission…call your “go to” technician and leave a message since it is now after 5PM on Friday. Before hanging up, be sure to ask if they specialize in search & removal of dead critters after flushing your condensate lines.
Homestead Memoirs 