Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air

This is the tune I've been singing to myself for a week. That's right. A week. It took about 5 seconds after getting home from work Monday to realize that somehing was very wrong with our air conditioner. But yet it has been over a week and still no air.

Here is the short of it....we have a home warranty which is great until you have something that needs to be fixed pronto. They don't do pronto. But the upside is that with them you pay a flat $50 deductible everytime something happens. The alternative was to buy ourselves a new unit at the going rate of $4600. So you can see the motivation we had to wait for our air.

The warranty company picks the people to come and do the work. Well, the person they picked took about 30 seconds to tell us it had been struck by lightning. Shawn and I took that at face value because what do we know about air conditioners??? After telling people at work the diagnosis they started saying...that does not sound right. Get a second opinion. So we did. The 2nd opinion stated that it was out due to wear and tear. Right.

Warranty company will not pay for storm damage or "acts of God"
Homeowners insurance will not pay for wear and tear

So we have two diagnoses and two companies that we pay to insure our house. This should be easy right??? Wrong.

Homeowners still has a $1k deductible and will not cover wear and tear. Even though company #1 says lightning we are pretty sure that they do not know what they were talking about (apparently this air man was a professional photographer very recently and has done just about everything under the sun....none of which he was good at). So when the homeowners insurance sends out their adjustor they will quickly realize that it was not lightning and therefore will cover nothing.

So our best option is the warranty company. Know that we are not trying to beat the system. I can't help it that the warranty company deals with sketch people who just wanted me to pay them cash for a new unit.

So we have been battling Warrantech for over a week at this point. Shawn figured that we have logged about 40 calls with them. We have been nice and ugly. At one point I told a girl that I refused to get off the phone until I had an answer....so we just sat there for a while. And I have been drafting a letter in my head that I will send to the president of the company.

I should note this....our upstairs does have a separate unit. But I don't like to point that out b/c it makes my complaints not seem as valid. But they are valid b/c upstairs is just a bedroom. There is no kitchen, living space, or any of Olivia's stuff. But I told Shawn that we should be grateful that we have that...a lot of people wouldn't. Shawn and I debated calling again at lunch to check the status of the parts that sketch repairman is waiting shipment on. But we decided we didn't want to set ourselves up for dissapointment and have prepared ourselves that for the 9th night in a row we will not have air.

How much does it cost to go to the lake???

An extra $100 if you are part of our crew and didn't realize that the KY Lake is so shallow in some areas that your pontoon will drag bottom. And then the nasty marina man had the nerve to insinuate that we "should have known" that every cove you enter coming from the north has a sandbar. Really?? Really???? I am sorry Mr. Marina Man but where we come from in Arkansas the lakes are several hundred feet deep. Ok. Rant is over. There is a rental pontoon with a brand new prop and I'm sure we are better for it. Whew....glad I got that off of my chest:)

But yes, outside of the extra dough we had a fabulous time on the lake! Both of my brothers came for a visit along with my brother Philip's girlfriend Shellie. All of us plus a couple of friends from work and we were set.

Most things these days are adventures b/c it is usually Olivia's first time for everything...lake included. So there is always the tiny bit of me thinking....I hope she does ok with this. No one wants to be stuck on a boat in the lake with a miserable baby...myself included! But she was great and seemed to really like it. There was one minor glitch of a forgotten binky, but that was taken care of by Shawn (who was I think secretly terrified at being on the lake without the binky). So we made our slow way back through the no-wake zone to dock and get binky (I think it might be a harder day for him than it will be her when the binky goes away).
One thing that goes along with our boat draggin bottom in the shallow lake is that feet also drag bottom when you get in to swim. I swim in lakes fairly often but for some reason had the creepers this time about all the possibilities of what could be in there. I resolved to never let my feet touch the bottom and made one incredibly inappropriate comment about the possibility of bodies being at the bottom. I meant it with all reverence and just did not want to come across one with my feet.

Big thrill of the afternoon? A leech. On our boat.

Before moving to KY I had never encountered wildlife like I have here. And I'm going to put the leech in the category with wildlife for right now.
It was disgusting. And somehow Philip convinced Shellie it would be a good idea to put it on her finger and let it attach. Bless her, I don't know how she will recover. Nevertheless, we threw the leech back in the water and all checked our privates when we got home to make sure we had not acquired any more unwanted wildlife.

I think it's ironic that even people who are clean and try to (in general) avoid germs will jump into the lake like it's a chlorinated pool (and I myself fall into this category). I mean this is basically a big bathtub full of thousands of people's germs as well as scary wildlife. One of my brothers tried to defend the lake water by pointing out...doesn't it all flow into a river and therefore cycle out the dirty water? Not fast enough my friend, not fast enough.




We are fixing to leave the house. We have packed everything but the kitchen sink. And we have one very excited duck on our hands.

Prior to the realization of missing binky/past naptime saga.

Stephen, Philip and Shellie. Prior to the leech incident otherwise Shellie would not be smiling.

And she is asleep....

We think we are alone in the water....

Until this...

And this....

This picture is a tribute to the missing sibling Kathryn. Please know Kat that our empty arms and bunny ears means we missed you bad:)

Happy birthday Shawn!!!

Happy Birthday Shawn!!!!!

You are an unbelievable father and husband and we love you soooooo much! Have a great day....and don't worry...34 is like the new 26:)