In Which the Air Conditioning Stops Working

Some of you know that a few weeks ago, I tried to change the fan in my car from the defrost position and discovered that it would not move. Then I tried again and something let go, and now the knob that adjusts the direction of airflow turns a lot, but the air only comes out on the windscreen. My air conditioner only works as defrost, and because I live in Indiana, it causes condensation on the outside of the car and means I am driving around with my windscreen wipers going on a day without rain.

It's hot in my car, most all the time.

Yesterday, after a thunderstorm, I arrived home and got out of the hot car. I walked through the humidity, and I walked into the house.

It was hotter inside the house than outside the house. This was a problem.

We investigated. It turned out that the thermostat was working. the fan on the furnace that moves air around the house worked. Except the box outside wasn't moving. I flipped many switches throughout the house. Nothing happened.

I called the AC Man. He said, "Turn off the power. Turn it all off. And wait 15 minutes. Then turn it back on."

I did this. I did not electrocute myself. I was proud.

Nothing happened.

I called the AC Man back. I said, "Please help us. Come as soon as possible. I have asthma and might die. No worries, though."

He agreed to come today. He said he'd come over in the afternoon. I got home at 12:30 PM and ate, then I waited. And waited.

The man finally arrived. He stayed for about five minutes, just long enough to rip the side off the air conditioning and flee, because inside the air conditioning unit, there was a NEST.

Now, last year we had a giant snake living a few feet away, but it was not a snake nest. The AC Man did not even know about the snakes, which is good, because they moved out ages ago and that story might have freaked him out a bit.

He told us he'd seen WASPS. And that there was a nest. And also that there was buzzing. And he said, "I don't know who you should call. But you should call someone. Also I cannot put the machine back together until they are gone. Also when you clean out the nest, it will still not work."

Then he drove away in his minivan, leaving us to heat and eventual death by hornets.

I called Dad. "Bring home as much deadly poison as the store will sell you," I said. "Also bring home some that sprays from far away, because you will have a head start."

A few hours later, Dad came home. He had a bottle of unimpressive-looking wasp spray that didn't even come with any safety gear.

I showed him the nest. I turned off the power to the AC so he didn't accidentally electrocute himself through the stream of deadly poison leaving the can. He said, "Oh, that's not wasps, I don't think."

And then he took a paint-scraper. And he stabbed the nest with the scraper and waited for the wasps to come out and attack him.

Nothing happened.

"It smells like mice," he announced. I did not ask him how he knew the smell of mice. He proceeded to use a garden trowel, a mini-crowbar, and the paint-scraper to dig all of the nest out of the air conditioner.

I made him spray for wasps anyway, just so they wouldn't get any ideas. Then I called the AC Man back again. He could not come, but he is coming tomorrow, so that's something. Just one more day of sticking to furniture and gasping for air as my lungs swell closed, then the air conditioner will be fixed.

Unless he needs a part.

Unless the whole unit is ruined.

Unless there are basilisks living under the paving stones around the air conditioner.

Wish us luck.

Running, Day Two

Yesterday I went for another run. I left the house. Wind was howling. The temperature was hovering right around 40 degrees. A mist of rain was falling. The warm up was a lie. It was impossible to warm anything.

I wore leggings, a tee shirt, a running shirt, and a fleece because I stepped outside and could not bear it. After a few minutes, I regretted not bringing a hat and gloves. But then I realized my hats and gloves are not designed for running, and are all hand-knitted wool. I may need to 1. knit something different or 2. find something for running.

But it is spring (heh), so that will wait until I see if running takes.

Mum came along, as did Darcy. That was a nice change from last time. Darcy ran at least three times as much as I did, and it seemed as if she was having a blast.

I followed my running app. The lady was evil. She showed no mercy. And I thought I was going to die. Maybe I did die. After a while, it felt as though my brains were coming out of my ears, but I looked when I got home, and I couldn't see any brain matter in my ear canal. Maybe it was blood and not brain. Maybe it was just too dark. It did feel like my ears were bleeding or SOMETHING.

Mum impressed me by running. She did very well. I ended up further ahead than she was, so she couldn't follow the app along with me, but she ran, skipped, jumped, and did other cardio-things as she went along. Good for Mum!

I collapsed onto the ground when we got inside the house. I took off my shoes and then stayed on the floor for probably 45 minutes. Then I sat in a chair for a while longer. And then everyone was eating dinner, so I tried to eat, but it didn't so much happen.

I felt better after a bath, but still. The muscle that runs down the inner thigh? That hurts so much. It's right in the chub-rub area, and it is demoralizing.

And then I got out of the bath and made myself dinner. As I walked over to the table, the fork fell from my plate and landed tines-down on my bare left foot, stabbing me brutally. It drew BLOOD. Debra Lynn from my college saw the story on my Facebook, and she said it was a fitting injury for Holy Week. That first made me confused, but then it clicked inside my run-addled brain and I laughed so hard I dropped avocado on my lap.

Later, as I crawled into bed, I thought I'd look ahead and see what further tortures the app has for me. But then I noticed something. There was only one other workout for Week One. I looked ahead. There are only THREE DAYS EACH WEEK that running has to happen. THREE DAYS. That is all. This means I don't have to run at all until my next day off. No more suffering. No more waking up early. No more holding dinner until later in the evening so that I can run first. No more brain-dead-ness OR brain-melting OR ear bleeds. I am free until Friday, when I have part of the day off. Maybe it will stop snowing by then. Maybe it will not rain on me! Maybe it will be above 50 degrees.

Corpses, Running, and Terrible Rain

I started Couch to 5K again, but for me it is more like Couch, Skip the 5K, Death.

Apparently running kills higher brain function for me and sucks out all energy, leaving me a wasted husk of a person unable to string even the shortest words together to form the most rudimentary sentence. I tried to talk to friends today, but no. Mostly I listened. And then we went to a candy store and I walked out with a box of cookies that was the size of one of my legs, so running seems not to curb my unhealthy eating habits at all.

I went home and ate steak.

Mostly, I find that running makes me want to give up and just lie down on the pavement. I'm sure if somethign really was pursuing me, it probably would want to catch me much more than I would want to get away, so fine. I will let whatever the thing is win, and I will just rest. It's cool. Who can outrun a bear, anyway? No one. It's better not to try.

I am using an app to help me time my running, and the thing started off by having me walk for five minutes. Then it said, "Start Running!" It sounded overly chipper and made me want to kill something. But nature misunderstood and it started raining pretty hard, right then, so my first real run was in the rain. Nothing is worth that. Health and long life are not worth that.

My feelings, post-run:

I ran and walked and part of me died and I don't know how to make that part come alive again everything is melting and terrible rain falls.

— Laura Beutler (@darcybear) April 13, 2014

I should also mention that I had to drive 20 minutes to go run, because I didn't want a repeat of last year's incident involving the semi truck and the harassment. Before I left home, I told The Brother that if I didn't come home in an hour, he should call me, and if I didn't answer, I had been murdered already and he should call the police.

It speaks to how good a brother I have that he did call me, in exactly one hour.

He can share the giant box of cookies I brought home.

There was something dead next to the trail I ran on. I ended up running faster to get away from the stench of rotting flesh. Even as I ran, I thought, "Soon, the corpse on this trail will be mine. No one can survive this." Somehow I did, but this was just the first day. It is only a matter of time. Who runs five kilometers on purpose? I think this is a sickness.

I'm supposed to run again tomorrow, and Mum says she will come with me with Darcy. She says we will run closer to home, but not on the main road so we will be left alone by horrible truckers. I am thinking of dying in my sleep tonight just to avoid this run, but there is a 5K a friend told me about happening in June, and I told Mum, and now she thinks we will do this 5K maybe.

I also forgot to bring water on this run. There was water in the ditch next to the trail and I considered drinking it because I was thirsty. And then I wanted to cry. And then the phone app lady told me I was all done running for the day, but I had not reached my car yet so I had to walk even further than I was supposed to. That's the true tragedy of today, I think. Excess walking.

I thought of taking a picture of myself post-run, to share it with you, but then I said I would rather die than lift my arm above my waist to take a picture, so I just drove home.

There really isn't' anything else to say about today. If you were here, I would share some of the box of cookie with you, if you brought me water. I am still thirsty. It's been hours.

Epoxy! Epoxy on Both Your Houses!

I started this evening with bits of broken curtain rod and a container of epoxy.

I finished the evening with a partially-used container of epoxy and a broken curtain rod. And did I mention that the curtain rod is now disassembled, torn from the wall, and outside the house?

Apparently, when the bottle of epoxy says, "Do Not Inhale" it really means, "If you use this inside a dwelling, even one with no walls and barely a roof at all, it will dissolve your brain like an alka seltzer tablet in 30 seconds flat."

I tried to fix the curtain rod, but the epoxy could not seal without some kind of clamp or stabilizer, which wouldn't work with the construction of the curtain rod, so my hand had to be the clamp, and I have a tremor, so it wasn't all that stable. In the course of a few minutes, I had gone from a happy, hopeful person to a violently ill shadow of a girl.

And then I said, "This is ridiculous," so I ripped the whole curtain rod out of the wall, mostly with my bare hands because the screwdriver wasn't fast enough. Then I drug the whole assembly outdoors and chucked it into the garage, probably ruining it further.

Now I'm in bed with a migraine, and I might be dying. Was this worth saving money on a curtain rod? No.

Was this experience worth it, just for the Shakespearean home-improvement joke? Yes. Yes it was.

Why I Am Crying and Lying Under the Dining Room Table

This is all Erin's fault.

Erin with her quiet determination, Erin who decided to make fitness a priority, Erin who extolled the virtues of a workout DVD called 30 Day Shred.

Look. It's like her abs are judging you. That's what Rachael said when she saw it, and she is totally right.

See, Erin kept talking about how she's on level two now, and how she's lost weight, and how she feels like she's making positive strides toward fitness and life is good and...

I just can't hear that stuff without feeling a glimmer of hope. Like, maybe, just maybe, this will work for me. Because it's an indoor thing, and so the weather will not be involved. Because it doesn't involve me running or anything that might cause an asthma flare-up or mean that other people could possibly see me sweat. It is a video. How horrible can a video be?

Turns out, pretty horrible.

I have lots of Fitness Theories.

The first one is, that because I lift things all day, chase children, and run up and down stairs, I am getting a workout just by showing up to work every day*.

The second theory is that, since my lungs are constantly struggling to function, what with the asthma, walking around and breathing at the same time counts as cardio**.

The third is, since asthma makes my lungs and heart work harder than they should, I am actually more fit than other people. I would be able to outrun you, if my lungs worked right***.

I also think that if God had wanted us to exercise, he would have made more bears. And also zombies. Or, like a girl on Twitter told me, He would have made couches out of scorpions.

I feel like, without something chasing me, running has no purpose. It is like math that way. If you don't need to work out how many yards of lace-weight you need for the gorgeous shawl pattern you found, than why are you multiplying numbers?

On Tuesday, I was killing time before meeting Rachael (of the judging-abs comment), when I found myself wandering through Walmart. And picking up 30 Day Shred, and picking up hand weights (with Velcro straps that will prevent my throwing them accidentally) and buying both of these things and resolving that, if Erin can do this workout, I can do this workout too, because I have legs and arms and can do things****.

And so today, I did 30 Day Shred for the first time, and now I am dead. I never got out of breath, so maybe my lung-function leading to better heart health theory is actually valid. But my muscles are now made of some kind of Jello-like substance and I am pretty sure I am a corpse that is somehow walking around and talking to people.

This is what 30 Day Shred is like.

Jillian: "I am skinnier than you. And also I have more money. Now do what I tell you, and you will be skinny, but unfortunately, still poor."

Me: "I hate your face."

Jillian: "Now do jumping jacks!"

Me: "At least I was skinny when I was a kid. Unlike some people."

Jillian: "You are doing really well!"

Me: *sweat drips into eyes* "Don't patronize me, Jillian."

Jillian: "Just four more of these lunges!"

Me: "I think you are the Devil."

The only problem with my surviving level one of the DVD is that I have to survive it again when I repeat the process. The DVD says I should do this every day.

I can see myself continuing this process only for one reason: I violently dislike Jillian Michaels, because I feel that, though she has never met me before in her life, she actually hates me because I am less physically fit than I ought to be. I realize that this belief is inherently flawed. I am sure that the Real Life Jillian Michaels is actually a really nice person who loves her family and just really wants people to be healthy, but for some reason, I interpret this desire of Jillian's as hatred directed at me. The sane part of my brain feels guilty about believing these terrible things about Jillian. The crazy part of me thinks she didn't really need that car of hers when she has such an awesome, tricked out broom she rides around at night*****.

I'm a bad person******.

(But, in my defense, I am mostly dead.)

* This is probably a lie.

** This is almost certainly a lie.


*** This is definitely a lie.


**** Clearly, I was suffering from some kind of delusional break from reality. I cannot do things.


***** Honestly, Jillian. I am really sorry. I'm a bad person. But I promise I will change my errant ways if your DVD makes me healthy.


****** This should come as news to none of you.

Le Morte d'Cell Phone

I have been reading many fairy tale retellings lately, so I decided to try my hand at writing my own. I haven't thought of a name for it yet, but I was thinking I might go with something along the lines of "Kelly B and the Cell Phones Three." What do you think?

Once upon a time, there was a lonely man, and he lived in the middle of a field. On one side of his house was a river with water not fit to drink, filled with fish so bony they were not fit to eat.

Every morning the man rose at dawn, went to work, and stayed there until sunset. He was So Very Important that, when a peddler offered him a magic box that would connect him to all the townspeople, he traded all he had to buy the box.

"Beware," said the peddler. "You might think this box will make your life easier, but in fact, it will cause you infinite complications."

But the warning fell on deaf ears because the man was, quite literally, hard of hearing.

At first, the box was wonderful. The man talked to his friends when they were far away. He spoke to his sister, who lived on the other side of the mountains. He spoke to his wife and children while he was away from them. But then he began to notice something.

The box seemed to vanish at the oddest moments. When he thought he'd placed it on the table, he would return to find it gone. But the box was so precious to the man, he would search for hours until he found it once more and placed it securely in his pocket. But when the man reached into his pocket to retrieve the box, he found it had disappeared once more.

Moreover, the box developed the habit of slipping from his grasp. So the man searched far and wide until he found a special sheath in which to store the box by his side, so it would be ready at any time he might need it. Just as he relaxed and returned to his labors, the sheath snapped from his belt and this happened.



Distraught, the man searched far and wide until he found the peddler once more. Holding out his hands, he showed the peddler what had become of the box and began to plead with the peddler for help.

"I must have another of these magic boxes," the man said. "I will do whatever you ask. I will pay you anything."

The peddler smiled sadly and presented the man with a second magic box. "Have a care," the peddler told him. "You may believe that this box will serve you well, and that it will ease your worries. But in fact, your worries will grow ever greater as long as you keep it with you."

But the man was already gone.

Months passed. The man clung to the box, hardly noticing the worry in his wife's eyes or the dark glances of his children. One day, the man went on a journey. Before he left, he polished the box until it shone and promised his family that he would use it to speak to them while he was far away.

After crossing the known world, the man arrived at a little house by the sea. The man was so happy to reach his destination that he leapt into the clear blue water and let it rush over him. The box, in his pocket, was covered with the water. When the man walked back out of the waves, he discovered that the box's magic had been reclaimed by the sea.

Distraught, the man returned home and searched far and wide for the peddler. When he found him once more, he explained what had happened and the peddler nodded gravely.

"Please," the man begged.

The peddler handed him another box. This box was even more beautiful than the last, with a shining surface that seemed to come alight at his touch. The man was filled with joy.

Once again, the peddler warned the man, "This box will make you think you are happy. But the box deceives you."

The man nodded distractedly. The peddler smiled sadly and wheeled his cart away.

This box never left the man's side. It was as if it had been made for him. With the box in his hands, the man spoke to all his friends, even while he toiled. He was never lonely. He was at peace.

One day, the man put the box in a place of honor in his home, high above him on the window ledge where it would be bathed in light. Beneath the window, there was a sink where water could be pumped into the kitchen. The man smiled at the box and was pleased by the way the light sparked off its surface. He was blinded by its beauty.

He went into his room to recover from his labors. But while he slept, the man's friends tried to call to him through the box, and the box shook with the effort. It fell from its resting place and landed with a plop-clink into the water. There it sat.

Two hours later, the man returned from his slumber only to find the box had vanished. He searched far and wide until he looked into the sink water and saw the box resting beneath the surface. With great sorrow, he removed it.



He packed his belongings and went in search of the peddler, but no matter how far he traveled, he could not find the peddler or his cart. It was as if he had vanished without a trace, taking his wares with him.

The End.