As I’m writing this post, it is May 31. As you might recall from previous posts, in AZ, springtime weather in AZ is in February, March, and most of April. After that, summer hits with a vengeance. So, guess which appliance in our AZ house decided it was going on strike? Yes. You guessed correctly. It is our air conditioner. The first day, I was in denial. It’s just not used to working this hard, I thought to myself with a nod to the outdoor temperature that hit 102, with a wink at 103. It will get itself back on track and start cooling our house, I tried to convince myself.

It didn’t. So, Sunday afternoon — yes, the day before Memorial Day — I called the company that had installed our air conditioner and left a voice message begging for assistance. I didn’t have a lot of hope, but by golly, the owner of the small company called me back that night with many apologies for not having called sooner. No prob I told him; after all, it’s Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. You’re beating all of my expectations. That doesn’t happen often these days.

We are preparing to leave this very afternoon to return to Denver. Nevertheless, it would be idiocy to leave a house with no air conditioning at all. We generally turn the temp up to 85 or 90 and keep our fingers crossed that the appliances don’t melt over the summer. Leaving it unfixed was not an option.

The nice young man who came out to check out our unit on Monday looked almost sheepish when he told me what was wrong with our air conditioning. He slowly and clearly told me what was wrong and what had to happen to fix the problem. He may as well have been speaking Japanese because I didn’t understand a word he was saying because I don’t speak Appliance Repair. I did understand, however, when he broke the news about the price. Aha. I understood his sheepishness. Of course, I’m not generally into killing messengers, and swallowed hard and told him to go ahead and do the necessary work (after checking with our fellow homeowner Jen). Miracle of miracles, he was able to find the necessary part. The fact that it wasn’t stuck somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was shocking.

As I speak, the house it 88 degrees. However, my new BFF Marc is installing the part, which will take several hours. God willing, we will have a cool bedroom our last night in the desert.

Oops. The house temp just went up to 89. Denver, here we come.