Oh yes, there will be air.

Let me set the scene...middle of the night, I'm sleeping as much as I ever do when I am woken up by the most awful banging noise. My first thought is "oh dear God, someone is breaking in!" my second thought is "damn air conditioner." Now I will have you know that all night the wind blew and all night the A/C banged and crashed and all night mommy got no sleep. I decided sometime around 3am that I was going to fix whatever was broken--I had asked my father to fix it a few months back, and well, from the sounds of it, nothing was fixed.
Just so you know, I am terrified of heights...as a child I can clearly recall passing out from my fear of heights twice, once in Germany and once in St. Louis, and I live in a two story house with the A/C is on the highest part of the roof. However strong my fear of heights is, my need for sleep is greater and with this realization I made the decision: Eff it! I'll do it myself!
I borrowed my Dads ladder the very next day and within two days I had gathered enough courage to at least walk the 40 pound ladder up to the second floor, climb out the window and set the ladder up. I took two steps up the ladder, looked onto the roof of the second story, climbed down the two steps and sat on the first floor roof trying hard not to panic/cry.
I thought to myself, "I can't do this. I can't possibly climb onto the second story roof--for God's sake its a vaulted roof!" And then I thought, "yes, you can do this. Now get up that ladder." My first steps were shaky, but I did it. I climbed up the ladder and I got on the top floor roof! Once up there, I went to the unit, looked at it, saw what needed to be fixed--screws fell out leaving access panel flapping in the wind. As I was standing there looking at the A/C unit I thought, "you know, I can probably get this thing turned on myself." So I made mental notes of what was there and what was not and I headed out to Lowe's.
With the awesome help of Robert at my local Lowe's I bought everything I needed, was given a quick lesson on cutting copper wire and was off! I climbed back up to the roof, assessed the situation and got to work figuring it all out. I had the advice of Robert, I had a screw driver and I had a desire to do it myself.
All in all I replaced the float, replaced the overflow thingie (in my universe, thingie is a very precise and technical term.)that sits on the bottom of the unit, I replaced some copper tube that attaches the water tube from the house to the unit and I replaced the pads. I traveled up and down that damned ladder no less than 15 time when finally I was ready to turn my A/C on! I went into the kitchen, turned the water on, went into the hall, flipped the switch fully expecting a blast of cool cool air to hit me....nothing. Damn if I didn't forget to plug the damn unit in!! I had to lol at my own foolishness.
I went up again, removed the pads--not easy if you've never done this--plugged it in, back down stairs, turn everything on...BLAST of fresh cool, A/C smelling air! Such pride! Such relief! Feminist songs filled my head, I was a woman and I was a roaring! Then I heard it...drip...drip...drip...damn! A leak!
Back up ladder, back up to uint--massive leak coming from copper tube. I did have to call in help, Kenny was able to come over and help me replace a bad nut and teach me all about couplings. Nice.

I mean come on! Look at that awesome work! I should charge myself a couple bills!

 I thought I had conquered the A/C...but the plug conquered me!

See that! That's water getting ready to cool my house!

And that would be the leak.

The beer was to celebrate my success, but was in fact, not consumed.

Listen, here is the deal, I faced my fear of heights, I asked for help, I figured things out. I made mistakes. I laughed at myself and I bruised the crap out of my legs but I did it. Now, every time I turn on the air, it's on because of ME!

Coming soon...the joy of chickens, the heartbreak of roosters.

The reason for this blog is...

So my blog idea was to journal my quests towards self sufficiency--not as a negative, pouting, no one is here to help me kind of way, but rather, as a "I CAN do this myself!" I have always seen myself as an independent kind of gal, but I do still ask my Dad to help me fix sprinklers and I still pay someone to change my oil...no more! Not to sound like too much of a geek, but when the zombies rise, there will be no one to depend on! And so I started just joking with a friend about blogging and raising/growing my own food, a logo was conceived and then I thought, Eff it! Let's do this! So, here we are. (Please forgive this first blog, I have a bit of a hangover and am not firing at full speed.) The logo will be created sometime in May, the chickens are a growin' and the crops are a sproutin' so let's get to bloggin!!