Growing up in Pennsylvania, we had a basement that was always damp. To correct that, our father got a dehumidifier. From an early age, I remember a hose running from the dehumidifier directly to a floor drain. It has always been thus...until I moved away from home when all things humid left my thoughts... until I lived in Florida these last thirty years. Sure, my husband Bruce would always warn me, "If we don't keep the air conditioning on, our shoes will turn green." With that statement, he proved he is the obvious scientist in the house. Well, I got to thinking. This often results in a decision that leads us on some sort of adventure...and so it goes like this:
"We need a dehumidifier," I declared.
"If you just leave the thermostat alone, the air conditioning will keep the house dried out just fine."
Naturally, I didn't believe him. So since I have the art of pestering aka nagging perfected plus a $15 coupon I found in the paper for the local hardware store, we bought a dehumidifier for our master bedroom and bath, which I might mention is at the back of the house and closed off from the cat who... well that's another tale. Okay, so we got the machine home, out of the box, removed all the tape holding its pieces-parts together, opened the instruction booklet, decided there were too many instructions to bother with, except it did say to let it run for twenty-four hours before you push the buttons, and plugged her in. She purred like the kitten who was banned from the room.
We closed the bedroom door, the dehumidifier humming along, ate dinner and enjoyed the rest of our evening. I like white noise to sleep and drown out any activity, including the cat's and the bing-bong of the major grandfather clock in the parlor. To that end, I happily anticipated our machine would lull me to sleep. When I entered the bedroom, I immediately noticed the room was warm. It was so warm, in fact, I didn't turn on our electric blanket controls although it was near to freezing this particular night. (Bruce was still watching a movie in the parlor so I bundled him up in his hooded sweatshirt and covered him with a blanket. I cranked his heated back massager pad to high and there he sat, snug as a sausage in a snowsuit sitting on a stove burner. He's used to this sort of treatment because I like to keep the house cool in the winter. Well, he calls it cold but I don't like the way the furnace dries out one's sinus cavities in the winter. It can't be good for you.)
Back to the bedroom. It was so warm in there, I even turned the furnace off at the thermostat. I marvelled how the dehumidifier would not only prevent mold in the house but it would lower our heating bills since it appeared to be a heater, too. Just before I snuggled under the warm covers, in the warm room, I applied my lip gloss as I always do each night. I can report I slept like that baby we all hear about--for about forty-five minutes. When I awoke, I realized my throat was dry and thought of all the money we would save what with the high cost of Kleenex for I wondered if I would ever again have to blow my nose. My head felt so dry, I anticipate my brain exploding into flames by spontaneous combustion if I sneezed. And my lips were so dry, I tasted blood. (Actually, that part isn't true but it sounds dramatic, don't cha think? Besides, they were/are really dry!)
It was about that time Bruce came to bed. He also noticed the room was unusually warm. "Let's open the bedroom door and let in some cold air from the rest of the house." The cool of the comfortably humid air was refreshing and I tried to get back to sleep but ...Well, that's why I'm up in the middle of the night writing this particular blog. I think the only way I will get back to sleep is from pure exhaustion. After I type this, I can check my research for Mark of Man, (my next historical novel), make some clay wings for my fairy, design a leprechaun trap and paint fifty shamrock Secret Pebbles. That should tire me out, me thinks.
In the mean time, I recalled Bruce's words- remember he hasn't been in the bedroom long enough to feel his head turn to tinder. I expect he'll be joining in my creative clay sculpting activities any moment. He said, "Tomorrow, I'll read the directions. That's always a good place to start." I told you he was a smart guy.
Now I'm wondering how to counter the powerful drying effects of the dehumidifier. We could buy a vaporizer. We could take turns showering and bathing hourly to make certain there was plenty of steam in the room or we could get a machine that is smaller for clearly this monster was intended to dry out a tobacco barn, not our little cozy cottage. Lesson learned- When buying a new, untried appliance, always save your receipt and, in this case, have plenty of lip gloss handy so you can properly apply it with a caulking gun because you'll surely need it!
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