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Broken AC During Deployment? Get In Touch With Your Inner Repairman

I was cutting corners on the grocery bill while I talked to my mom on the phone one night.

“Things are tight right now,” I said. “I have to replenish our savings while he’s deployed, so I have to be extremely frugal.”

I despise money, finances, budgets.

But it’s been a crazy year, and the rest looks to be just as taxing. So while my husband is gone, I’m trying to tighten up the purse string.

My mother, of course, expressed concern.

I promised her we were fine, but if, say, the air-conditioner went out, we would be in a real pickle.

And then the next morning, as I padded to the kitchen, with two girls in tow, I heard it.

There was a trickle of water coming through the air-conditioning vent.

I immediately began to breathe heavily, as if I knew that we were on the precipice of surviving a Georgia summer without cool air.

And then I began to panic.

I tossed some toast and peanut butter at my kids and proceeded to climb in the tiny closet that houses the indoor portion of our AC unit.

Knowing more about almost any other topic on Earth than heating and cooling houses, I was clearly not the best choice for this task.

But I was the only person I could afford.

So there I was, standing in a puddle - a puddle of water that had seemingly appeared from the bottom of my air-conditioner.

With one hand I began downloading AC manuals on my iPad, and with the other, I texted friends and canceled our plans.

I bribed my kids with cartoons and started reading.

None of it made sense. It was worse than reading a different language. And the girl who avoided the physical sciences her entire life started to get bored one paragraph in.

I was in serious trouble.

Ironically enough, my husband is an expert in heating and cooling and the transfer of fluids. It’s what he does on submarines. Which is why, as I read AC manuals, a few tears escaped to join the puddle below me.

Home repairs are extremely stressful. I had no idea if I should keep going or throw in the towel, bust out a credit card and call a weekend repairman. And I had no one to talk the idea out with, either.

It took me until the next day to find a random YouTube video that opened up a world for me.

What had happened to the AC involved a condensate pipe, which meant nothing to me. Hours of reading manual had taught me where it was and what it did, and when I traced it back up to our second story, I realized I’d found the problem.

And then I knew I could fix it.

And I did. My house is cool. My AC is no longer leaking. I even know now that a cup of bleach or vinegar can prevent this problem from happening again.

And I did it all without my heating-and-cooling expert sitting next to me. And without a penny spent.

It was single-handedly one of my proudest Navy-wife moments. I may have even gloated a little in the e-mail to my husband that night.

But it was also one the most terrifying. Which is why I never want to do it again.

I am capable of a lot. Deployments are nothing if not proof of that.

But if I had the choice, I’d hand the reigns over to my heating-and-cooling expert any day.

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