The 35th Precinct

The Red Bloat made its appearance yesterday, and so I am cranky and logy and pitifully slow on the uptake, but what the hell is going on here:



Flake looks like he's been possessed by the spirit of his great-aunt, Magda. That...blouse(?) is vintage spinster schoolmarm. It's so brazen in its awfulness that I grudgingly admire him for it.

It turns out that the AC aten't dead. It turned out that we had run it so hard for so long that the compressor froze. After a twenty-four-hour thaw, it's rattling happily away, though the coils will likely need a thorough cleaning this week to clear out the stray leaves and spidersilk left from years of neglect by my oblivious mother, who has probably never done more than wash the filter every six months. Still, that can be easily done, and it's certainly much less expensive than the four to six hundred dollars the various stores wanted for a new unit

My mother, of course, has been badgering us incessantly, demanding updates on the situation as though she were discussing the stratagem for the Normandy invasion. She saw fit to explain the concept of BTUs to Roomie as if he were a blithering simpleton who had never heard of them before, and when he informed her that we had priced new units, she said, "Oh, really?" in the proud, awe-stricken tones of a mother whose toddler has just taken his first dump in the big-boy toilet.

Why, yes, mother, we have, in fact, lived independently of you for thirteen years, and we are functioning adults. We are also, as George Carlin once put it, "partially-educated". Both of us can use the Internet with far more facility than you. It's not hard to hit the great god, Google, or tickle the plastic ivories to call forth the wondrous bounty of Amazon.

She's always thought me a soft-headed invalid in need of shepherding through the simplest of tasks, but why that patronizing attitude has bled over to Roomie, I can't say. It annoyed and amused him, in any case, and I could hardly blame him.

It's amazing how far a comfortable environment can go to improve one's disposition. When the AC was an inert bulk in the window and my shirt was sticking to me because the poor pedestal fan could only push warm, sluggish air at my back in feeble, breathless arcs, I was pissy and irritable and entertaining the logistics of hacking Roomie to pieces and using his blood to cool my overheated skin, but now that I am cool and hydrated, shoes off and soup simmering on the stove, I love my Roomie with the weight and conviction of thirteen years and think there is no finer place in the world than the view of the mountains from my sunroom window.

Another very fine thing:

( The Walk )

Just two friends walking a mile together. They look so peaceful, and the surroundings are so bucolic and tranquil. I love Richard's open collar and Flake's neatly-tucked pant cuffs in contrast to his shaggy, nerd-beatnik hairdo.