Franzone Family Blog

Last night (Monday, September 8, 2008) our home group met after a long break for the summer. It was an absolutely awesome time of fellowship. However, that’s not what I’m going to talk about. This story starts when we finally arrived back at home around 9:30 PM. I unlocked the front door and walked in, immediately noticing that the air inside was hot, humid and smelled of burning electronics. Yikes!

As Aubrey was getting all of our stuff and the baby in (she’s not really a baby anymore) I dropped my things and headed to the thermostat. 85° F was the readout, and the A/C was running. I grabbed a flash light and headed out the back door to check the outside unit. Ah, there’s the problem. The thing wasn’t running at all and it was scorching hot to the touch. That also seemed to be the source of the slight burning smell. Back inside where Aubrey was exclaiming to me, “It’s hot in here!”

Now I’m obviously extremely irritated by this point because I’m already dripping sweat, I don’t know what is wrong with our A/C unit and I’m trying to convey what little I know to Aubrey. Meanwhile Ragan is interested in what is going on too, so she’s hovering and watching me intently, which apparently set me off like an adolescent. So I yelled at her and shoed her out of the room. Later on I reminesced about being a kid and fussing, “she’s looking at me! Stop looking at me!” Apparently there’s still some child left over in me.

I called my brother-in-law, who is quite handy and used to work for an air and heating supply company. He couldn’t come up with anything that really made a difference and said that it was probably a bad capacitor, which would require a new part. Great! Aubrey called the realty company (we rent) and their emergency line greeting message was something like, “Hey, this is Dawn. Leave a message.” Huh? She called back again after double-checking the number and left a message with that line and the main realtors line. Looks like it’ll be tomorrow before anything gets fixed.

We got all two fans we have in the house and put one in Ragan and Gavin’s room and one in Avery’s room. Our ceiling fan is the best in the house so it puts out pretty good airflow. I took some time with Ragan to apologize for my earlier behavior and to hug her; she’s my first little girl after all and I hate it when I lose my temper. After much complaining, moaning, groaning and gnashing of teeth we got the kids all tucked warmly in bed. Aubrey and I were up for a little while longer and then off to bed ourselves for a humid, overly warm nights un-rest. Things will be better in the morning, I kept telling myself as I drifted off.

The next day (today) the A/C repairmen were extremely responsive and got on-site quickly. Turns out it was that blown capacitor after all. They patched it up in no time and performed some other maintenance tasks then went about their merry way. Well, it wasn’t really merry… more sweaty and forced friendly, but I’m not complaining. Anyway, thank you Jesus that the air conditioner is fixed!