a/c at the landfill

“This place is humid!” That’s what Wyle said before he installed central air in the Landfill yesterday. I said, “yeah, this place is a swamp!” This is the first time I have ever lived in a place with air conditioning. Am I using it? No. Or at least not yet. I have mixed feelings about it. I do not like to be hot and sweaty unless I am doing something active enough to make me hot and sweaty. On the other hand, I don’t like to have the doors and windows closed. I like to be able to hear the birds, insects, mammals, and amphibians that inhabit my yard. I feel shut in when everything is all closed up tight.

Some summers are hotter than others here in southeast Michigan. Most summers have at least a few days when I feel like crawling into the freezer. But my favorite way of cooling off is in cold water. When I am on the Shores of Gitchee Gumee, I can just walk into the water until it’s up to my neck. As an added bonus, hanging around in Gitchee Gumee also makes you feel clean. I suppose some might say it freezes all the dirt and sweat until it cracks off your body. Here on the Planet Ann Arbor, I don’t have easy access to such a large body of clean, cold water. I used to use the kids as an excuse to truck over to KMart and pick up one of those little plastic kiddie pools. I would put a canoe chair in it or just hang my feet over the edge. Nowadays, I just suffer in the swampy landfill.

One summer back in the day, the Twinz of Terror took Lizard Breath and her identical cousin, The Beautiful Renée, off on a road trip to the Badlands and other points of interest. While they were enduring death marches and buffalos in the road and tornados dropping trees on their tent, Mouse and I were stuck here on the Planet in 90-100 degree heat. One night it was particularly hot and sticky and I decided there was just no point in either of us even trying to go to bed until we were so dead tired that we couldn’t keep our eyes open any more.

We filled up the kiddie pool and I sat there with my feet in the pool watching vigilantly for skunks. Mouse had a tricycle parked so that its front wheel was *in* the pool. I’m not sure why she was riding a tricycle because, at seven or so, she had long graduated from those beasts. But we never throw anything out, so she found one and was riding it around the yard. Froggy had learned to drive the Little Tykes Coupe that day, another long-outgrown vee-hickle. He was careering and careening wildly all over the yard and I guess that was the beginning of his descent into delinquency. Naw, actually, he has always been trouble. grok grok. Whaddya mean, you old bag? Anyway, I think we finally went inside and crashed on the fold-out couch in the back room.

I suppose there will be times when I do turn the a/c on here in the Landfill. I have to admit that when Wyle was testing it yesterday, I was sitting at my powerbook and the feeling of *cold* air coming out of the vent next to my feet was pretty darn nice. Actually, the heat that usually comes out of that vent has turned a large area of my ugly kitchen floor into a horrible orange and black mess. I wonder if having cool air coming outta there will reverse that. Hmmmm.

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