Too hot to hug

We live in Oklahoma.
It is June.
We don't have an air conditioner.

Those three things right there have led to death by heat stroke, death by dehydration, death by getting scalped when you get too close to the fan and your hair gets caught and death by spouse when one insanely tries to snuggle with the hot-natured one during the night.

It is not a happy time around here.

We have cooled this house (1922 sq. ft) with ONE window air conditioner for 6 years and I really have to admit that Kenmore makes a dang fine air conditioner. We have put that thing through the ringer. The living room had to be an igloo for there to be any semblance of cool in the back of the house and even then the kids had ceiling fans and stand fans blowing on them at night. They also don't play in their rooms in the summer because during the day it's unbearable. But we were cool for the most part.

At the end of last summer - actually the first of Fall (Oklahoma doesn't have real seasons - just summer followed by a brief interlude we call "Christmas") - the air conditioner kept freezing up. Fortunately, like I said, it was at the end of summer and we didn't suffer but about two weeks before it cooled off enough that we knew we wouldn't die a horribly hot, sweaty death. Paul said it was the thermostat. I said, "Okay. Sounds plausible to me, dear." But now I'm convinced it's possessed. We were sitting in the living room last November, enjoying a nice crackling fire, all of us in our sweats and flannel pajamas when suddenly the air conditioner roared to life in the dining room. Thermostat indeed - more like poltergeistostat. After that Paul unplugged it and while it still made suspicious clicks every now and then, it never fired back up.

A month or so ago, Paul tried to run her again and within 5 minutes she was locked/frozen up. Yesterday, as I was trying to put makeup on my sweaty face (only because the kids' VBS program was last night) and was nearly crying because said makeup kept sliding right back off my sweaty face, I begged him to try to run it again. We both started shutting windows all over the house, he turned the magic dial to "ON" and within 5 minutes we were running back through the house, opening the windows back up again.

So, because my mother is a saint among women, she told me to start calling air conditioning dudes and get some estimates. She's given us a dollar amount we can borrow and if the bids are higher than that, she's going to buy us two - TWO! - window units. And maybe then I can touch my family again. Because as it is right now, we hug without touching, like that commercial that aired during flu season.

When it's too hot to hug, it's too hot.