Attached to comfort

I am so damn glad my AC is working.

The unit hadn't been serviced in seven years, and it was, as it turned, just too damn dirty to run. The service guys found it jammed with ice, a result of the vents being clogged with dirt. In addition, a piece of flexible duct connecting the return to the unit had collapsed under the house and required replacement.

So, after about two weeks of the AC running its ass off and barely keeping the house tolerable (I dread my electric bill this month) it's now just right — maybe a little cold, actually.

It actually hasn't been all that hot outside. I don't think we've had a day above 95. But the humidity seems higher than normal. I'll go outside in the morning and the air won't feel especially warm at all, but within a few minutes I'll be sweating because of the dampness in the air. It's very pleasant having the AC sucking the moisture out of the indoor air.

But when this house was built in 1930, it had no air conditioning at all. Somehow the original residents got along without it.

I have also agreed to have a friend landscape my back yard. Her college freshman son went in and cleaned the yard out over a couple of days, and it hasn't looked this good since in six or seven years. Lots of old underbrush and weeds are gone. She's talking about extending the deck, which was something I had already considered, and adding a Zen garden and a water doodad of some sort.

We went 'window shopping' at the rock yard over the weekend. Rocks are cheaper than I had imagined. I can get a really hefty volcanic boulder for three or four hundred bucks.

I have mentioned, I suppose, that I have rarely used my backyard. My back porch, which was enclosed at some point and turned into a laundry room, is also the cat litter station, and has literally become a shithole. I hate even going back there, and my aversion to walking through my laundry room helps restrict my access to the back yard. Sometimes, I'll go out the front door and walk around to avoid traversing the shithole to reach the back door.

Another impediment is the noise frequently coming from my neighbor's garage and back yard, plus the view of junk cars that are often in his driveway. Seventy per cent of a '67 Mustang is up on blocks out there right now, half-wrapped in a tarp.

But my friend says she can screen the view and filter out a lot of the sound. If she can turn this into a yard space I can actually use, I figure it will be worth spending a few K's on it.

Then I can start working on my laundry room, and maybe work my way through the house.