And so, we choke. This –- the rainiest and most unseasonably cool summer I've seen in years – has finally turned HOT!! Miserable hot. Steamy, humid, sauna-like hot that'll take your breath away. Humidity around 750%, or so it feels. Very hard on someone like me, with lung disease, because I think you're breathing in as much water vapor as you are air!!! Now in late summer, these conditions are what my Granny always called, "Dog Days."
And, of course, the air conditioning here at the Dawg House goes on the blink, barely cooling at all. And I had to buy a portable room air conditioner, which is hooked up in my bedroom, so at least I can sleep comfortably at night. The rest of the house is cooled, more or less, by three fans, running at medium to high speed at all times. I'm making it, but it's definitely NO FUN!!
I can't afford to have my HVAC system repaired right now and I'm not even sure it can BE fixed. It's an antique dinosaur of a system, having been initially installed in the mid-1980's and it's all but outlived its usefulness completely. It needs to be jacked up, moved aside, and a new HVAC system put in to replace it. The A/C part of it uses (or "used," past-tense) the old R-22 refrigerant (which the EPA has now outlawed completely, all due to the phony ozone scare back in the late 80's, which turned out to be another hoax, like the so-called "man-made global warming" crap that they're still trying to con us all with today.) The result is that I can't get the stuff my A/C uses and I don't know if it's even compatible with the stuff that replaced R-22 or not. If it involves an expensive conversion to the new stuff, forget it. It'd be cheaper to just replace the whole enchilada, in the long term.
My natural gas furnace works, at least. But it's ancient history, too, and now that I'm home all the time and won't be turning it down to save money every week, as I was when I was on the road, I shudder to think of what my bill might be like about January of next year. The furnace is old, too, and is held together with baling wire and duct tape, where I've performed various 'surgeries" on it in the past, to keep it going. Will it last another winter?? I don't know at all. KUB, our local electric/gas/water utility here, will finance a new system for me, I've learned, but they add it to my bill, and with no or little income right now, I can't afford a $300 - $400 bill every month until it's paid off.
I don't want to draw out the rest of my 401K money, but it looks like I might be forced to, if I am unable to find some kind of work I can physically do without gasping for breath and tiring myself out after ten minutes. I could take some of that and pay for a new system, I suppose.
Going to be making a decision on that very soon. You do what you have to do, when your back is to the wall.
In spite of my financial and household woes right now, I had an inspiring moment last week. I was sitting out on my front porch after dark one night, enjoying the cool breeze out there and taking in some fresh air, when a little spider caught my eye. It was busily at work, doing what spiders do – building its web, from the branches of a shrub in front of my house, to the wrought iron railing on the porch. For some reason, I grew fascinated watching it; that little fellow (or gal) was more interesting right then than anything that was on TV. The street light that was illuminating the critter's efforts served as well as any spotlight could have done.
I marveled at the spider's patience, as it descended on a super-fine string of web and the wind caught it, blowing it to and fro. The spider never gave up. It bided its time until the breeze faded and it could light on the railing and attach that strand of its web. The human word, "quit" was never programmed into its genetic code at all. I think I watched my little friend for an hour, as it wove part of its web right before my eyes, and I was very careful when I finally got up and went back inside, careful not to disturb the web and destroy all the hard work that creature had done. I know many people sweep away a spider's web, as I have myself, but not on this night. It was live and let live and that spider got a free pass from me. Why should I mess with such a marvelous little miracle from God??
Now I know that there are some people in this world who don't believe in the living God that I do. There are people who flatly deny that such a Supreme Being and Master Designer exists. They seem to think that this intricate universe and our planet, with its teeming life, just got here by some cosmic accident somehow. To that I say, "baloney." Let them go run the numbers on that premise sometime and they'll see that the odds against such a random happening are so astronomical as to be laughable. You wouldn't bet your next paycheck on those odds, unless you enjoy giving your money away!!
Some folks refuse to believe in God because they can't see Him, therefore, they think, how can God exist?? To them I would say that if they can't see God, then they aren't really looking for Him. Want to see God? Then just look at a spider, as I did that night last week. He is right there, living in that tiny creature that He created. A spider is an insect with no real brain at all – just a bunch of nerve endings. But hardwired into that creature is a code – a code that tells that spider exactly what to do and how to do it. Think that code got there by some sheer accident?? That's crap. God put that code in the spider when He created it, along with everything else on this planet and in this universe. Just observe that spider, non-believer. You are observing God in the form of one of His amazing creations. Let's see some scientist create anything like that spider in a laboratory!
God is all around us. All we have to do is look for Him.
