I make no secret of my hostility towards air conditioning. I put up with it because I have to, and nothing more. Any slight breeze or hint of cool air and it's off. More than once I have stuck my head out the window searching for a single leaf quivering in the air in order to justify calling it quits on the air-con, and my stubbornness has left us tossing and turning in the suffocating heat over the course of many long, hot nights.
I hate the way the old wind bag makes the air smell and I hate having all the windows closed. It gives me a terrible sore throat and more than my fair share of dry boogers. When the air conditioner is really working hard it goes into this rhythmic drone that makes me car sick and keeps me awake at night. I don't let Gus stand right in front of it because I'm convinced it's pumping out something carcinogenic and sinister that one should not come into direct contact with.
I'm kind of scared of the contraption, too. When it begins to rain my rules dictate the unit must be immediately turned off, leaving us in a virtual sauna as the thunderstorm rolls through. Slightly obsessive maybe, but seriously, who puts an appliance out in the rain, plugs it in and then turns it on? I have yet to hear a good enough answer to this, so until then off it goes.
Unfortunately, many a rainless summer day the air conditioner makes itself indispensable and we have to crank it up. Not so much as a blade of grass is moving across the entire mid-Atlantic, the heat is murder and Gus keeps asking "Aren't you hot?" as I stave off the inevitable for as long as I can. As he presses the "Power" button and the thing fires up, it becomes one of those can't live with it, can't live without it types of relationships.
And so today I let out a real cheer when Gus hauled the old beast out of the window. We tipped it to the side so it could pee out the last of its strange toxins onto an old towel, straightjacketed it in a cardboard box and unceremoniously pushed it deep into storage until next year. A beautiful cold breeze blew all day today, too cold for all the windows to be open but we left them as is, allowing the wind to sweep into every last hidden corner, clearing out the last bit of stale sadness left over from summer.
The next time we see our air conditioner we'll have six months left in Philadelphia. At that point we'll be within spitting distance of closing this chapter of our lives and heading back to the Land of No Air Conditioning. There are a lot of things I'll miss greatly when we leave, some I'm even preemptively sentimental about, but air conditioning is most definitely not one of them. To it I say, good riddance!
Here's a photo of my nemesis, in joyous memoriam:
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