cooler heads, indeed

I’ve been known to have a bit of a temper, it’s true—if you don’t know, now you know. (And if you’re curious, you can read more.)

Suffice it to say, my anger burns white hot and strikes like a cobra. Like Jules in Pulp Fiction, I, too, view myself as an occasional mouthpiece for “great vengeance and terrible anger.”

The point I’m trying to make is that, for me, anger is an ongoing spiritual project, a permanent self-improvement venture that can never be fully completed. For I know that I cannot simply uproot my anger and have begrudgingly accepted that such an action would be heedlessly misguided, anyway.

Given all that, however—and with an eye toward change and liberation—I’d like to take the opportunity to do something I don’t typically do: give myself some kudos for a job well done.

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Photo by Pawel Janiak on Unsplash

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As I suspect many of you are already well aware—and some of you, no doubt, are enduring firsthand—a vicious heatwave of epic proportions currently grips Eastern Canada, my neck of the woods. These last few days—and the next few too, if the forecasts are proven out—have seen the daytime temperatures easily slide into the low-30s, with humidex values well into the 40s.

We normally associate summer’s warmth with freedom, leisure, and relaxation—but this kind of heat is downright dangerous. It’s the kind of heat that forces husky owners to wait until sundown to take their arctic-adapted pooches for a walk; that makes leather seats so hot they sear your thighs on contact; that saps your energy and renders you lethargic and sweaty.

In anticipation of the heat, k and I recently purchased two air conditioning units for our apartment; one for the bedroom; one for the living room/kitchen. Big, floor-standing behemoths that promised to handle our modest two-bedroom apartment with ease.

When I attempted to install the first unit in the bedroom, however, I was disappointed to discover that the plastic sealing plate that came with the unit did not fit our window.

But, hey, this is why you set things up early and check, right?

I grabbed my phone, opened Amazon, and quickly found a universal replacement kit. Crisis averted.

When the kit arrived the next day, I MacGyvered one of the plates to fit both our window and the A/C unit. Quite proud of myself for my ingenuity, I slept soundly that night in the inviting embrace of freshly chilled air. Further buoying my sweet dreams was the knowledge that, should we find the coming heat unbearable, we still possessed a second unit that could help cool the rest of the house.

Well, the heatwave arrived in full force yesterday and, hoping to pinch a few pennies, I rode it out to see how bad it would be without the second machine.

Yeah… well, it was pretty bad.

Like I said, when this kind of heat hits you, you don’t play games, you just play it safe.

So this morning, I pulled the second unit from its box and set to work MacGyvering another sealing plate to accommodate our strange, little windows. A veteran installer at this point, I managed to set the second machine up in less than half the time it took me to complete the first. A good thing, too, since the mercury was touching 32 and the air felt about 57.

Eager to regain my energy and retain what little moisture my body still possessed, I took a moment to admire my handiwork and then hit the power button on the second air conditioner.

The motor kicked into gear with almost sluggish trepidation at first but the unit was soon firing on all cylinders, pumping out great draughts of air so chilled, that it’d make a grown man cry.

For a few blissful minutes, I went about my household business, secure in the knowledge that our home would be cool and comfortable by the time k returned from work.

And then I heard the breaker snap. Fire radiated from my reddened cheeks and an instantaneous surge of anger accompanied it. I felt like a fool—somehow it had never occurred to me that we might overload the circuits with two units.

Lacking a better idea, I reset the breakers and tried again.

As before, everything ran smoothly for a few minutes and then—click.

I felt the anger swell, renewed and inflamed. I was embarrassed and frustrated, worried that I had saddled us with an expensive machine we might not be able to use or return.

I Googled… but Google was no help, so I stomped back to the breaker and reset it again, this time, turning the speed down and the temperature up on both units.

Perhaps I’m just asking them to do too much, too soon, I think to myself, even though I don’t dare to hope for a different outcome.

A few minutes later and the breaker trips again.

It’s at this moment that I make the decision—a decision I am so proud of, that I’m sitting here writing about air conditioning, of all things—in that moment I decided not to freak out and fly off the handle. I chose not to smash or break anything, even though I wanted nothing more than to pitch that fucking thing over the side of the balcony and watch it explode into a million pieces.

Instead, I returned to the breaker panel to see if there was anything I might have missed. And sure enough, it catches my eye that I’ve plugged both units into the same circuit—despite the units being located at opposite ends of the house. I couldn’t move the bedroom unit to a new breaker, I realised, but I could plug the living room unit into an outlet by the stove, which just so happened to have its own separate breaker.

I made the switch and what do you know? Both machines have hummed uninterrupted like a charm ever since.

My home, like my temper, is now cool and comfortable. But it might not have been so. Under different circumstances, I would have declared the situation impossible to remedy and allowed myself to become an enraged beast for the rest of the day. I wouldn’t have attempted to further diagnose the problem, nor would I have had a productive response to the setbacks I faced.

I’m glad things didn’t pan out that way. I’m proud of myself for allowing my anger to cool for an extra moment before I decided to act. Now I can remember this example the next time my anger flares up and use it to help guide myself down a gentler, more productive path.

Wherever you are, dear reader, I hope you’re staying cool and safe.

Until next time,

c.d.