But The Cool Side Won't Stay Cool

I remember very little from my science classes. While my students today don't see why literature matters to them, I never understood why a keen understanding of the mathematical formulas of kinetic and potential energy would be important in my life (side note: I've never once had to use any such formula in my life, whereas I read something every day, and I'll bet you do too).

But there's one thing I do remember from school, and that is the principle of entropy. For those of you who have forgotten, entropy basically means that (as Yeats said) things fall apart. The world almost always gets disorganized, not more organized. It's why things decay and the universe expands.

It has also been a principle hard at work in my life over the past week--specifically the part of my life I like to classify as "Things That Keep Me Cool." As a portent of things to come, my car air conditioner stopped working a few months ago. This is an annual occurrence in my life, much like the harvest or Lindsay Lohan getting arrested. Still, this time I had to bite the bullet and pay for an in-depth repair, because summers in Georgia should come with a warning sign and a permanent heat advisory--how anyone ever actually settled here, I'll never know. Anyway, in May I got that fixed and thought, "Ha, Summer, I laugh in your face!"

Then on Tuesday my refrigerator broke again. This is also a frequent occurrence. The fridge (really the freezer is the problem) will work fine and work fine and work fine, and then suddenly everything will melt. I'll bang on it and maybe take a piece or two apart and mess with the dial, and then once all those steps are proven useless it will start working again.

Only this time it didn't. It has slowly been melting down all my frozen products. The ice cream was a goner right away, while the meat, due to it's denser mass, has been hanging on for dear life. Still, I have been unable to repair it, and with repairmen charging $120 just to come out and look at it, I decided drastic steps needed to be taken.

Which is when the air conditioner for the house stopped working.

Long story short, in the past few weeks I've put out a few hundred dollars on the car and home ACs, bought a new refrigerator (coming on Thursday--thank goodness for clearance items that are still awesome), and, just for fun, started paying a guy to spray for bugs and bought a new dining room table and chairs, two big purchases we began before the planet decided I should be hot and sweaty all the time. In short, not only have my appliances fallen apart, but my wallet as well is now completely disorganized. By which I mean empty.

Screw you entropy!