Just Cool Like That

As I sit in my nice, cool, air-conditioned home, it reminds me how thankful I am for my brother, and that he works on air conditioners for a living. HLB, to be precise.

You see, a few weeks ago our A/C went out. At 10pm.

Husband and I were laying all snug in our bed, watching The O'Reilly Factor or Good Eats, I don't remember which, when the A/C kicked on and started making a terrible screeching noise.

It's never good to be jolted out of reality with a screeching noise. Especially at 10:00 at night. Especially when it is late June and the noise happens to be your A/C. And especially when your have a sleeping baby.

So, silently muttering curses and threats at the noise in case it should wake up Chickster, I climbed out of bed to try to locate the source of the screech. It was coming from the air return, which just happens to be right outside Chickster's door.

With the screeching still going on, I turned the A/C off and peeked in at the little booger. Still asleep. Thank goodness. For me and for the offending air conditioner.

Then I did what any good sister does. I called my brother. The conversation went something like this:
Me: "Hey, did I wake you up?"
HLB: "No." (Why would he, a young, strapping man be asleep at 10:00?)
Me: "So, I know I'm a terrible sister and I only call you when my air conditioner is broken, but my air conditioner is broken."

My sweet brother proceeded to semi-diagnose the problem over the phone and promised to come over the next afternoon after he got off work. Because he's cool like that. He mentioned something about hoping those parts were still under warranty, which sent me into an immediate mental frenzy.

After I hung up the phone, I began to have flashbacks of when we lived in Texas and our A/C went out along with nearly everything else electronic in our house. Because our house was struck by lightning. Two days before the 4th of July AND a weekend. In the middle of a 40+ day run of temperatures over 100 degrees. We were without A/C for five days. Five days of holiday and weekend. And dealing with the warranty and insurance paperwork was almost as bad as sweating profusely for five days.

It was, as Husband would say, "a nightmarish situation."

And I was praying this would not be the same.

So the next morning, we opened the windows and turned on the ceiling fans. It was a warm day, but not hot. And there was a nice breeze. We did rather well, and the house really didn't get hot until late in the afternoon.

That's when Chickster and I went outside to play and ended up with the Rash Of The Century which is just now going away, in case you were wondering.

But HLB came and climbed up into our sweltering attic and had the problem fixed in no time. Because he's cool like that.

Apparently the geniuses who manufacture air conditioning ducts put giant warning labels on the inside of the ducts.

You know, just in case you ever have a spy climbing through the air ducts in your attic. He should be aware of whatever it is they feel warrants a giant warning label.

But with constant heating and cooling, wear and tear, dirt, dust, and whatever else happens to be in the air ducts (including spies), those labels tend to come off sometimes. And get caught in the fan. And cause a terrible screeching sound at 10:00 at night and nearly give people heart convulsions, not to mention nearly wake up babies.

And should they dislodge from the fan, get sucked up into the heating coils and possibly set your house on fire when you turn your heater on months later.

It's a nice thought, isn't it?

HLB saved us from not only the heat but from the fire. And from an enormous service call bill we would've had to pay anyone else. And he even hung around a while to play with his nephew.

Because he's cool like that.