76 - saturday

buckle your seatbelt because this post is all over the place.

I put my mom on a plane home to new england this evening, after a whirlwind last 24 hours of our epic trip.  it was way too hot last night for cooking at home, but not at all too hot to go out to drink and eat someplace else. sitting outside in (dry) 90-degree heat is surprisingly tolerable, especially when you have a giant margarita in front of you. yum.

 

two cocktails the size of our heads for us, please! we earned it sweating & unpacking!



we slept well* last night, and woke up this morning ready to tackle the backyard. our original plan was to spend all day today in savannah, but my mom told me last night (after we killed that spider. I am still shuddering thinking about it.) that she would feel better about leaving me if she knew my yard was in good shape. the grass needed mowing, the beds needed weeding, and the backyard needed a heavy dose of invasive vine-battling.

and so we did. for two and a half sweaty hours.

discovered during this morning's yard work: t threw our halloween pumpkins in the compost heap, and now we have a pumpkin patch in our backyard. sigh. if you look closely, there also appear to be tomatoes growing in there. I half-joked to him earlier that I might as well just take down the chicken wire and convert the compost heap into a raised bed, since it's already planted and thriving.

the yard looks SO much better. with the exception of one happy healthy grassy section, our backyard is essentially a big dirt lot for right now, because every time t starts to gain steam with planning and planting the air force steals him away again. so inconvenient. the grass back there, by the way, is a huge deal. we have never had intentional, healthy grass in the backyard, but the seed t put down this spring seems to have taken. hooray! I am hopeful that once t comes home and we can actually work on it together, that it will turn out great. I can't wait for my mom to come visit again and for her to see a beautiful, finished backyard. 

when we finished working, we took quick showers and headed to savannah. managed to squeeze in an hour and a half of hurried sightseeing/late lunching before we had to literally RACE like madwomen to make it to the airport on time. five+ hours of driving for an hour and a half of touristing with mama? worth it. great way to conclude our trip. 

on the way home, I was struggling hard with the setting sun. have to wear glasses to drive + sun in the eyes = maximum squinting. I am going to be a wrinkly old lady if I keep that nonsense up. I tried swapping out my nonprescription, $11 at a cvs on the beach in florida sunglasses for my regular ones, but that just meant that I no longer had to squint but I couldn't see anything at all. the compromise?

 

that's right. I drove for over two hours with my cheap sunglasses over my regular glasses. like a gangster. it was not comfortable, but it got the job done.

*an aside that has nothing to do with today's post but everything to do with reassuring you that I will in fact be OK in this new home of mine: I'm happy to report that this morning I flipped the switch to change the direction of the ceiling fan in my bedroom, and things have gotten MUCH better. cool circulating air = able to sleep at night without sweating buckets. win.

creepy crawlies

just found and killed (ok mom killed while I stood and screamed) this bad boy in the front flower bed. EEEEEEK.

post spider-murder follow up conversation with t:

t: why'd you have to kill that spider in the garden?

me: because it was THREE INCHES LONG

t: if you use that as an excuse, get ready to kill a lot of spiders...

doom.

75 - friday

the air conditioning is broken. the heat index is 104°. mama and I are hot potatoes.


when we arrived yesterday afternoon, the system was set to 75°, and we tried to be fancy by turning things down to 70°. instead of cooling off, it got warmer. and warmer. soon it was up to 85°. we thought we must have just warmed up the house by having the garage open to offload the moving truck and then by having the doors open to schlep stuff inside. overnight, the temps outside dipped to 65°, and I opened the windows in the bedroom and set a table fan in the window to keep myself cool. but when we woke up, it was still over 80 in the house. 


t sent me an email last night suggesting that we check the air filter. this morning, heeding his advice, we took the filter out of the return and found it was completely clogged with dust. which is to be expected, since t has been gone for over two months and that's the average life of an air filter. next we tried running the system filter-free for an hour - it should have flowed freely without anything in the return to inhibit air movement - to no avail. so it's not a filter problem. we also checked the condenser, which was moving fine and responding to commands from the thermostat (on/off). so it's not an electrical problem. 

should be opaque, but should be as white as the framing. dark grey = several months of dust. gross.

we went to lowes and got a new filter anyway; even if it wasn't the source of the problem, the old one was gross. while we were there we spoke with an employee who seemed to know a good deal about hvac. he suggested we go up in the attic (sir, it is HOT outside. you really want me up in the attic?) to check out the air handler. he said the coils could be iced over, or there could be a secondary filter in the handler unit that needs replacing. so up into the attic I went, after battling the fold-down steps (t, come home! I'm too short to reach them without a step stool! seriously though). the steps won and now I have this sweet gash on my right shoulder:

WAHHHHH

the air handler unit is fully enclosed (unlike the one my parents have), so we couldn't look at the coils, but a nice woman on the tech support line of a local hvac company told us that if it were frozen, there would be frost on the outside of the unit. neither frost nor condensation = no frozen coils. so not an overload problem. and since the unit is fully enclosed, that means there's no secondary filter to blame. mystery. we let the system sit, turned off, for over two hours, just in case it was frozen. but when we turned it back on the air that was blowing (and I'm using "blowing" liberally here, there is very little flow) was very warm and the temperature immediately shot up to 84° from 82° - indicating that the air isn't being cooled and we were just recirculating attic-heated hot air. 

feeling hot hot hot

the only remaining possible problem is that the freon needs to be recharged, which apparently can happen in systems that work really hard because they are in really hot places (like middle georgia). that, or the freon needs to be replaced because there's a leak somewhere. the hvac company we called can't come out to the house until monday morning, but it's fine. we will be ok to sleep tonight with all the windows open and fans going, and tomorrow we're off to savannah to see the sights before mama catches a plane home to new england. 


thank you baby jesus for ceiling fans. even with the house at 84°, it's still almost twenty degrees cooler inside than out, and the air movement that comes from the fans is helping tremendously. 

is it weird that I'm contemplating spending the second night in my new home sleeping on the floor of the living room? 

74 - thursday

we made it to georgia! I am so excited to be here and to be settling into my new home. I'm also thrilled to have been able to share this journey with my mom.

here's a heavy dose of photos to compensate for the total lack over the past few days:

 tuesday night - with my uncle kevin, aunt cathy, and cousin abby in northern virginia

 mom and me in virginia

 south of the border, nc/sc state line. stopping for gas and to gawk at the spectacle. america is an extraordinary place.

mama strolling like a proper southern lady in charleston, sc 

pretty pastel houses on rainbow row, charleston, sc 

mama in battery park, charleston, sc

 I would love for this to be my house. charleston, sc.

immaculate window box #1. love the shock of bright green from the sweet potato vine. 

immaculate window box #2. so simple, yet so elegant. love the height/length play between the fern and the ivy. 

 so much more than we bargained for at a truck stop in cobbstown, ga. a petting zoo! with goats! a bison! a big red cow! emus! llamas! geese! ducks! 

a very hungry, very outgoing giant red cow. bull? might have been a bull.  

I KNOW. after three days of travel, I couldn't agree with you more.  

finally made it to my new home! SO HOT. definitely not in kansas rhode island anymore. 

73 - wednesday

I blatantly forgot to blog last night. I talked to t on skype for a bit and then he went to bed, and I went to bed, and nothing got written. SIGH.

I am in sunny (and hot!) Charleston, SC after Day 2 of our journey. My mom and I got into town around 3 yesterday afternoon and after a cocktail and a shower were ready to get out and explore. We strolled - because that is what southern ladies do, I've decided, to avoid melting in the crushing heat - through the residential neighborhoods on the tip of the peninsula, ogling the mansions and oohing and ahhing over immaculate window box arrangements. We had dinner at Magnolias, a restaurant I have been to once before but my parents have been to many times. We left feeling sated but disappointed in the food; their executive chef, who had been there for the restaurant's more than twenty years of service, just left three months ago.

After dinner it was back to our hotel and straight to bed without any blogging for anyone. I took a lot of pictures yesterday, which I'm excited to share when I can get on my computer later tonight! One more 5 hour drive until we're there!

P.S.

I found my license yesterday! So glad I didn't spend $30 on a new one. It was in the poctet of my Nathans handheld. I always carry ID when I run, but usually my Brown ID and not my license, and I must have forgotten that I tucked it in there on Monday. Found it yesterday before my boulevard run. I had planned to stop on my way home from the run to get a new one.

How's that for good timing?

72 - tuesday

Day one of our trip is in the books. I woke up this morning at the fine hour of 5:15 to shower and pack my car. A misunderstanding between my mom and me about our planned departure time meant I had an extra hour and a half to kill, so I drove to Allie's Donuts for one last raised chocolate frosted before leaving the Ocean State in my rearview. Delicious.

Our drive was mostly uneventful. We took a wrong turn at a rest stop in New Jersey and wound up in an employees only lot, and beltway traffic in DC was pretty snarly. But, all told, not a bad drive. It took us right around nine hours to reach my aunt and uncle's house in northern Virginia.

We were greeted on arrival with cold cocktails and the promise of grilled steaks for dinner. This has been such a nice mini visit; I only wish we could stay longer. We are up first thing tomorrow morning to drive south to Charleston, SC. We'll spend tomorrow night there before making the final push to GA on Thursday morning.

I will add pictures when I can - blogging from my iPhone is hard to do! :P