Today, Today, Today

Yikes.

A/C guys just came. I hired them for the $28 duct cleaning special (with free dryer vent cleaning). Our A/C desperately needs cleaned and I thought this would be a good stop-gap measure until we had the money to do so.

August 09 we bought this house and had the A/C inspected. There's mold, dust, and general gunk in the handler. Cost to disassemble and clean everything is around $700.

Guys showed up today. Told me that I should save my $28 because it was so bad as soon as the a/c turned back on... it would pretty much be a waste of money.

And then, "you really need to take care of this, ma'am."

"I know."

"Do you want to see this for yourself?"

"I know. I saw in August."

"Why haven't you done anything about it?"

"I don't have money."

"What's your budget."

"Look, I'm filing for bankruptcy. There's no money. I'm sick all the time and it's frustrating as hell."

He understood. The second guy came back up and took a look. "Oh my god. This is awful. You really need to do something about this."

"Can't."

"Why not?"

"No money."

"Doesn't your husband have a job, ma'am?"

So I repeated that I was filing for bankruptcy.

"Are you keeping the house or what?"

"We just bought it. It was a foreclosure. We're keeping it. But we had to make choices like keeping the kitchen sink from exploding versus cleaning the A/C. Guess which we picked."

They wrote me an estimate, were very polite, and headed out.

Damnit.

About $700.

I know they're not pulling my chain. I've seen it. And I'm allergic to dust and have asthma and we've all been sick. But it's one more thing we need to take care of.

So my plan?

I'm tracking down videos on youtube and tutorials on DIY sites to see if we can do this ourselves. Failing that, I'm going to ask my best friend who's now a VP but used to be an A/C tech a lifetime ago if he might be able to help.

How do I feel?

They were very nice, but I felt defensive. I told them about the bankruptcy just to shut them up. I feel bad that I've known about this for seven months and haven't taken care of it. I feel bad that I have an almost-70 year-old in my house in poor health, and a toddler, and the two of us, both who have asthma and allergies, and I've not made it a priority.

Grr. Today's a rough day.