Where a highly competent individual who has managed complicated moves and even changes in citizenship cannot figure out how to set the AC in her house

Because I am away from the house at times when it is sometimes opened up for a real estate tour, I need to not only keep it immaculate (bummer! though it never fails to impress anyone dropping by – so clean! – they say, at once telling me that they themselves live in slovenly rat holes because it is not that off the charts tidy). I also need to keep it cool.

As I am continuing with My Summer Without Air Conditioning and Without Car, I do not normally resort to tampering with their mechanical configurations and idiosyncrasies. I basically ignore them and they ignore me right back.

So when I finally was forced to preset the AC timer so that it would miraculously flip on and spread its icy nets over the cavernous expanse of the house in my absence, I was surprised that it made no sense. It is a new timer, put in just a handful of month ago. I set the day. The hour. The temperature. And when the day and the hour come around, it automatically, out of spite I guess, flips up to 85 and stays there.

Normally I would not even notice. 85, 75 – what’s the diff. So long as it is not 65, I am happy. But people touring the place may think that it is a tad on the overheated side. And I definitely want to place them in the buying mode, not the frying mode.

Incompetence, especially my own, bothers me. I like to believe that if thrown out into a lion’s den I will figure out a way to cope with the onslaught of big fangs and sharp claws. Someone recently told me that I do well with new things and places. They are right. The fact that I cannot deal with a new thermostat control is, therefore, so irritating that I swear it will prove to be the proverbial straw. If you next find me moronically sitting in a corner, chewing on a shirtsleeve and singing nursery rhymes over and over you’ll know why. It was Mr. AC, in the parlor, with a control panel.