The Ghost of the Dead Air Conditioner

Yeah, I know, it’s been a couple of weeks. How’ve you been?

The weekend before Derby the thermometer topped 85 degrees for three straight days. The house climbed to 80º so it was time to test out the air conditioner. I cranked it up before bed hoping it would pull the humidity and heat from the house overnight but awoke in the morning to find no relief. The condenser fan motor seized during the night. Less than two years out from the five year warranty expiration and planned obsolescence proves that it can stop a Trane. Luckily the temperature backed down to springtime temps following the heat wave. It took a couple of weeks to get the parts and service aligned. Yesterday, we got the system running full steam again.

You would think that we moved in to the 1890’s house the way the girls were acting. Imagine sleeping with the windows open. Oh, the horror! Even worse than the humans was the canine. Polly would roam the house at night upset by all the nighttime noises that happen out in the real world. After a couple of days of this, she took to wimpering. The fifty pound mutt first tried to hide her head under our bed, which was not built for the clearance necessary to secrete a dog of substance. But sure enough that dang hound figured a way to scoot her whole body under the bed.

If she could figure a way under, she could figure a way out but at 4 in the morning who wants to hear the whining of a cowardly canine echoing up from under the mattress. We had to exit the bed, lift it up and drag the dog out from underneath so we could get back to sleep. When the air conditioning came back on and the windows were shut, she slept through the night. How spoiled is that? She’ll chase chipmunks and squirrels all day but night comes and she’ll cry over the chirp of a cricket.

A stranger thing happened in the house while the air was out. Even more strange than the neurotic pup. Renee thinks we may have been the victim of a break-in. Or, she said, we have ghosts. They must have come through the screens. I guess they can’t come in to the house when the windows are closed. They are double panes.

Mysteriously, the waste basket in Cassidy’s bathroom was partially filled with liquid. I went to empty the weekly trash, noticed it and asked the girls who dumped what in the can. Both were completely unaware of what I was talking about. There were no signs of a container nearby that may have been dropped or emptied. It was not wet around the basket so it could not have been rain coming in through the open window. The liquid had a familiar yellowish tint.

Renee’s paranoia got her and she jumped to the conclusion that someone broke in. I said, “What, they broke in just to pee in the wastebasket?” Now, this is a criminal mastermind. Polly is a low pee-er plus the can is too tall for her hind quarters. It could not have been her. So, we’re left with two culprits, the ghost or Cassidy.

A ghost coming in and haunting us by peeing in a garbage can is completely plausible, right? I called Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murry and the rest of the Ghostbusters to check it out. They came up negative for paranormal activity in the house. Darn, there goes our outrageous reality show.

The other explanation is just as absurd. Would the child pee in the waste basket? Why would the child pee in the waste basket?

Cassidy is a heavy sleeper but she has been known for getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. She is usually sleepwalking as she does this. Since we were up tending to the doggie, we heard her go into the bathroom and we thought kick the garbage can as she headed for the commode. We keep the can close to the toilet but you really can’t mistake one for the other, can you? The only conceivable explanation is that she did just that. In her sleep state she somehow confused the two and used the garbage can as a chamber pot. If we didn’t hear her kick the can in the middle of the night even we wouldn’t believe it.

Or, was it really a ghost that spooked the dog and slimed the garbage can?

Life without air conditioning sure is spooky!