Life Is Hell (When The AC Breaks)

We interrupt your normally programmed, thoughtfully curated conversation starters for a story. If you pay close attention, there’s probably a moral in here about the importance of framing our experiences. If you don’t, hopefully it’s at least good for a laugh. If you see me IRL and I tell this story, you’ll know here’s where I started working it out.

My AC went out the other night. To be fair – it’s fall and I’m in New England, so it’s not like we’re talking Death Valley heatstroke risk or anything, but allow me to explain why this was hell and I’m in the market for a new winter coat.

My building’s got spider issues. I try not to open the windows TOO often or else I’m endlessly running a Doc Ock preventative wellness seminar. Plus, sometimes those spiders are ticks and I’ve got dogs. But, on this fateful Sunday evening with no AC, the windows were opened.

If it were a normal fall night, a cool breeze would have wafted in, I’d have reminisced about sleeping at summer camp, and life would have felt good (re: cool). But why would my AC go out on a night like that?

Instead, this was one of those 75 degrees, humid and rainy fall nights where the air gives you fever sweats. We’re talking hot, cold, and damp all at once. And that’s before the indecisive dog started his “Mind if I sleep on top of you?” routine. Great. And, it gets better.

Because it’s fall, and because “nature,” the geese are migrating. What you might not know is that geese like to sleep/spend their nights in bodies of water where, as Wikipedia taught me, it’s safer. They even take turns keeping watch.

Since I live on the river, this meant I had the pleasure of a whole flock of new neighbors, conveniently camped outside my wide-open window.

Have you ever slept at a roadside motel in central Ohio where a bunch of random dudes used the complimentary (and rusty) charcoal grill, pounded beers, and talked all night over a turned-up car radio so you couldn’t sleep?

I have. And these geese were worse.

They weren’t just road-tripping idiots with a passion for Garth Brooks and Budweiser. They were all that plus a choir of midway through puberty broken bike horn voices.

From the moment my sweaty forehead hit the pillow, I listened to them honk. By the time my alarm went off, I was maniacally standing in the window, waiting to see when they’d leave.

The rain had stopped. The sun came up and sure enough, that was their sign to fly off. I took the dogs for a walk came back to a working AC. I closed up, cleaned up, and started caffeinating.

It was Monday and time to get to work. But first, I had an undeniable, irrepressible urge to shop. I went to Amazon and searched, “Goose feathered…”

“I guess I’m getting a new winter coat,” I thought.