Central Air

Apparently, it is not common to have air conditioning in New England. It is especially not common to have central air and heat in New England. Which means you have to heat and cool the house in other ways than a mere switch of a thermostat. For example, I have a good friend who heats her house with pellets. I'm not kidding, she has a big heater in her kitchen and bags and bags of pellets in her garage and that's what she uses to heat her home.

Now, in the south, it is very common to have central air and heat. I would go so far as to say that the entire southeastern population, at least in Georgia, have air conditioning, whether it be a unit or central air. I don't think you could survive down south without it. It is humid and the temperature hovers around 95 degrees all summer long.

When I discovered that most people didn't have ac up here, I thought that it must not get hot enough to need it. Yes, maybe the summers don't even get above 90 degrees. Hello good hair! Yet unfortunately, most good thoughts must come to an end. Today was 95 degrees up here. Luckily, the genteel southerners that we are (translation: wimpy), bought one ac window unit last August because we couldn't stand sweating in our home. So, we pulled that out. But still, with one little unit in our kitchen, it is not easy to keep the entire home cool.

So my day went something like this: turn on the ac before 8 am, draw all of the shades to prevent the sun from adding any heat to our house, cook dinner before 10 am so as not to have to stove running later in the day, run the dryer and use the iron before 11 am, and turn on all five fans in our house to circulate the air that our little ac unit was putting out. Alas, the house was pretty cool all day, but my goodness, what a change from down south where you walk to the thermostat flip the ac switch on, turn the dial to 72 and viola.