Troubles come in threes

Ihave heard people say that troubles come in threes. That is to say that if you have had one or two, you had better hold on, another one can’t be far behind. I can’t say one way or the other about that, but last week in the middle of that terrible heat wave our air conditioning went out. It just flat quit working.

After a few checks of breakers and fuses, and hot wiring the old Honeywell thermostat, we determined that the compressor was good and the fan unit in the attic was good. A buddy of mine said it was in the controls, that it was either the wiring in the wall or in the thermostat.

Not wanting to start pulling wires through the walls, I went to Lowes and got a thermostat. After church on Sunday I took the old one off the wall and wired up the new one. It did not work. Then, I did the sensible thing; I called the air conditioning man. He came over, took a look at it and said, yes, you have a bad thermostat.

Then he took the one I had just bought, looked at it, and said it should work. He wired it, just a little bit differently from what I had done, and the a/c/ has been working just fine since then. That’s one.

Thursday night we were going out to dinner, and the garage door wouldn’t close, using the opener in the car. Linda got out and went in the garage and hit the button. Nothing. I remembered that the garage door openers were on the same circuit in the garage as the refrigerator, which is on a GFI circuit.

So, I got out and pushed the reset button. It would not stay in, indicating, I guess you would call it, a dead short. I unplugged the old fridge and pushed the button in again, and it stayed in, and the garage door openers worked. I had been waiting for the old ice box to go out, as it had been making unusual noises lately. So, the next day was filled with emptying the old box, taking it to the landfill and going and getting a new one, which we did. That was two.

On Saturday, I went out to the shed to put my potatoes in crates and put them in the basement. I had dug them about a week and a half ago, and I laid them out to dry. That chore done, I checked on my hanging onions, which I had hung up in the old time way a couple of weeks ago. About half of them were soft and starting to rot.

Next year I hope I remember to grind them all up and put them in little freezer bags and freeze them. I guess the summers have changed or something, since we used to hang them up like that when I was a kid. I will not try it again. That was three. Yes, that was a minor thing, but I hope that is all the trouble we have for awhile.

Here’s hoping your troubles only come one at the time, and that they are little bitty ones. Stay well and out of this terrible heat. God bless.