breath fresh air

 The most magical event of the summer of 2026 (to date) was when our home AC unit decided it was done with us. 

I like to keep my home at a crisp 72 degrees or less.  The AC has been struggling for about a week- but well, it’s a big house and it was also 100 degrees outside- so I couldn’t be too hard on the thing. 

But then things went off the rails and the temperature was 87 degrees in the house, while it was 83 degrees outside in the night!- of course it was the fourth of July on a Saturday-  we opened all the windows employed all the fans, took cold showers (again, it was 5 days of cold showers when the water heater went out) and went to bed hoping for a miracle. 

Miracle of miracles-  a dude was available to come to check it out on Sunday morning- and he just happened to have the exact part we needed for our AC to start working again in his truck!  Glory be!   God Bless the AC man!

It did remind me of growing up with the fans in the windows- the fresh air and slanted twirling sunlight coming through the fan grates.

When I was a kid I could hear the sounds of the cars and big rigs slicing through the night on the highway nearby. The headlights would race across my ceiling in an all night display. I could smell the grass and in the mornings I would hear the kids at the playground, alerting me it was time to get started with the day.

When I was a teen, the sounds and lights were quite different. My window looked out on a shallow lawn area, more sand and weeds and sand spurs than grass. Behind that was a dense palm frond and old growth pine forest. I could hear the cars entering the neighborhood, but no light show to accompany the infrequent sound of tires on shells, gravel and rough pavement. In PA the summer nights had been cool and dewy. In FL the nights stayed hot and humid. The crickets, cicadas and birdcalls often overpowered the sounds of vehicles. I could smell the pine, but the air had a different quality, not crisp and bright, but languid and indifferent.