Our Air Conditioner Stopped Working With Temperature In The 3 Digits!

My husband was making a huge ruckus on Tuesday evening which is very unlike him.  When I popped my head out of my office, it was clear he was in distress.  He had just seen a huge cloud of smoke coming out of our air conditioner compressor and the ducts inside our house had no cool air blowing through them.  Even more distressing, our favorite air conditioner fixer extraordinaire, Charlie Blair, is OUT OF TOWN.

What to do?!  Turn off as many lights as possible, open some windows, turn all ceiling fans on high, and bring up the fans from the basement.  Luckily, we have a gas grill, a screened porch and a pool.  

Believe it or not, this has been incredibly delightful.  Last night, my husband and I sat outside and talked.  We were remembering that this is actually how we grew up.  In the evenings it was way too hot to stay inside so all the neighbors were outside on the porch and talking with one another while the kids were playing whiffle ball or the like. 

Which of course led to my own reverie of memories.  My grandpa and grandma lived and worked on a farm.  Grandpa was out in the heat all day long, making hay, feeding livestock, driving the tractor.  Everyday he wore a long sleeved shirt buttoned up to his neck and his sleeves were buttoned at the wrist.  Everyday he wore a big straw hat.  My grandma worked her garden and canned and gathered eggs among other things.  They lived to 100 and 101 respectively.

We would visit them a lot in the summer in the afternoon, at about 2.  We would sit under a big shade tree, right next to the beautiful vegetable garden edged in flowers, in a magical oasis my grandma had created.  We had a homemade hammock tied to the tree trunk, a table laden with fresh country food and comfortable lawn chairs and swings to sit in.  My grandpa would come in from the fields for a time to join in a glass of Kool-Aid or fresh milk and a snack.  Grandma and grandpa paced themselves.  They got their work done, they mixed some play in it and they lived with the good and bad of nature.

So early this morning when I awoke with the gentle breeze of the fan blowing on my face, I decided to watch and listen to the morning opening up it's light.  I lay looking at the sky - a plane mixed among the stars, the moon giving me a little light, the trees sometimes moving as the squirrels jumped from branch to branch, the birds flying over me from the roof of my house to the electric line to the trees (just what are they doing?).  I was so busy watching nature I didn't even hear the noises of the city.  

Wow!  I wondered, have we advanced as a society?

What do you think?