Rednecks in Heat Waves

God loves rednecks and I can prove it. Our central AC breathed it's last early in this most recent and newsworthy heatwave. We're cheap and at the moment broke, but mostly cheap so some of our fellow rednecks gave us a couple beat up window units they had lying around like ordinary rednecks do. They were literally stacked between the broken down car and the chicken coop. We were thrilled! The first unit was installed right away and, to fill the gap left from it being the wrong unit for the window, I cut a proper size piece of dirty, weathered plywood from the nearest scrap pile (I have several right now just to make sure we're not mistaken for HOA types). My fortune was so good that a single cut yielded the perfect board and our new-to-us AC is now securely roaring the last hours of it's marginally efficient life away cooling our living room to a chilly eighty five degrees or so. 

"But what of the second unit," you ask? Why, I installed it improperly in a window on the opposite side of our house this very day! And when I went looking for the correct size board to make up the difference, I stumbled across the trashy plywood scrap I had saved from installing the other unit and, guess what?! Perfect fit with no cuts! Now we're enjoying the cool breeze and death rattle of cheap AC units in stereo! Life is good! The last part of this story is that I realized I could remove a panel from the ugly, crooked, broken, central AC on our roof and make it suck huge volumes of fresh night air into the house when it's cooler outside than our window units can accomplish inside.

I feel like we just won a championship game against the heat and I should thank some people while the cameras are on me. Thank you to my redneck friends who kept trash knowing someone like me would be stoked to call it my own one day. Thank you to my redneck wife who shamelessly cheered me on every time I solved a problem related to doing things wrong in the first place and who couldn't be happier to use someone else's trash to death with me for the thrill of a barely adequate, cool breeze. She even contributed the solution of stuffing the small whole in the board with cotton swabs so it no longer serves as a mosquito portal. And, of course, thanks to the God who has the foresight to arrange who I marry, who my friends are, what trashy board I grab at random and how I cut it to get an accidently perfect two-fer on the installation. Take that, you oppressive heat wave!