Sunday, July 19, 2015

I'm Melting

   So last summer was a bitch, and I sat in my apartment and was miserable. This summer, I vowed that this would not happen. I would not be hot and miserable like I was last summer. But in the area that I live, none of the apartments come with a/c, so I had to take matters into my own hands.
   I decided on a swamp cooler, also known as an evaporate cooler, which works by somehow turning the tank that you fill with water into cooler air. There is some kind of science involved here, folks, but the hell if I know what it is. I just know that the cooler was working. It was too small to cool my entire apartment, but it cooled the couch area so that we had an area of relief in the apartment.
   Then one day I noticed a slightly damn spot on the carpet. It was leaking. I turned the cooler off and let it all dry out and went to my sister's for a couple of days (her apartment is cooler than mine, and even though it freaking haunted, there comes a point where you'd just rather deal with ghosts and ghouls then BE HOT FOR ONE MORE DAMN MINUTE. I was at that point.)
   When I got home I unscrewed all the back filter stuff, cleaned everything out, tried to find anything like a crack in the water tank or something disconnected, but could find nothing. So I got a trash bag out and set the cooler on a trash bag in order to protect the carpet and I turned that bitch back on. Leaking be damned, I was going to be cool. So I let it run, but it wasn't leaking. Yay! I had fixed it. Then, being that I live in Washington, the weather decided to revert back to normal and stop with the heat in the 90's bullshit it was pulling, and for a few days, I either didn't run the cooler at all or I only ran it for a couple of hours. Life was livable.
   Except this weekend, that 90 degree weather was all like, "Guess what, bitches? I'm back." I ran that cooler nonstop. And this morning when I woke up and walked over to the cooler, the freaking carpet was so wet that it splashed when I walked. Fucking A. What is this shit? Water had run off of the trash bag and pooled into the carpet, and I didn't have time for this bullshit because I had to go to work. But I filled the tank up with water and turned it on and kept an eye on it so I could see what it was doing while I got ready, and in less than an hour, half the tank was on the floor. So I turned it off. It's still got half the tank of water in that cooler sitting pretty, so the tank is not leaking. I'm letting the little bitch of a cooler dry out. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the damn thing other than the fact that it's upchucking water all over my carpet like it's freaking Linda Blair. In a couple of days I bet it's back to working fine again; I think what is happening it's running too much for the filter thing to keep up with the flow of water, and once it becomes oversaturated, water starts to leak out. That is where the leak is coming from at any rate. It's only a little cooler, I think I need a bigger model. But I could be totally wrong, but wrong or right, I have to let my damn apartment dry out before I get mold, so I can't turn the stupid thing on.
   And of course, today it hit 93 degrees; I'm sitting here yelling at my daughter, "Light is heat! Turn that shit off!" Bullshit, I call bullshit. This is not the South.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Why Doesn't My Daughter Know That There Are Monsters In The Closet?

   Bam. I'm back; it's been so long! I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I had computer issues major, and then I guess I just got out of the habit of writing. Such a bad thing for a writer to do. No good. So here I am, back, and with lots of stories to tell you.
   We are going to jump right in with one about my lovely daughter; thirteen now. A moody teenager who likes to sit alone in a dark, dark closet.... Yeah, that's not a joke. My daughter recently decided that her bedroom closet made a great hang-out. She sits in there. In the dark. With a flashlight and her Ipad. What the heck, child!?
The culprit

She uses that purple thing as a pillow and stretches out.
   When I was younger, closets in the dark meant monsters. There  was something in there; I was sure. Some creepy, slimy, green skinned boogeyman that would jump out and eat me alive. The closet being open a mere crack would be cause to frantically jump out of bed and turn the lights on to check that everything seemed good - and then to go get in bed with my mom or my sister. Yup. I was THAT kid.
   This one I've got makes it a freakin' fort. One of her best friends came up to me at the store where I work the other day and asked me, "What's with her and the closet?" Yeah, she is that obsessed with being in the closet. She even takes phone calls in the closet. It's her office; all her friends know that she think thinks the closet is the place to be.
   Really, child?! Don't you know that the closet is where the monsters live?