(written on August 20th)
I was up late again this morning, and despite getting a bunch of sleep, all the patience that I’ve had recently just evaporated somehow overnight. I couldn’t find something that I was looking for (I don’t even remember what I was looking for at this point), and for whatever reason, I just had no patience to deal with it.
I was super grumpy
Not sure what my deal was. 😕
I was hoping to get Happy’s AC figured out, wondering if it was just really slowly leaking refrigerant, and indeed I found that the high pressure port was leaking refrigerant (as soon as I pulled the cap off, I could see bubbling up refrigerant 😕).
Now I don’t know for sure if what’s leaking is actually leaking out of the cap, but there’s probably a pretty decent chance that it’s slowly leaking into the cap is leaking past the cap as well.
I was at my mom’s house until my she left, and then shortly thereafter, I grabbed Happy and headed over to my friend Miguel’s shop to help him and hopefully get the AC figured out and fixed.
Miguel had a vehicle that they’d been trying to figure out for a while that was overheating, so I took it on a test drive hopping on the highway and heading north. I figured I might as well take the opportunity, since I was putting the vehicle through its paces, to swing on up to Anderson and take a look at the houses that I’ve been looking at on Zillow.
I tried to get the vehicle to overheat on the drive to, working it hard, but nothing I did would get it to overheat. So then I decided to let it sit and run at each house that I looked at, and it still wouldn’t overheat. 🤷
As far as the houses are concerned, the five bed three bath was nice. It was older and needed a little bit, but seemed pretty solid, and the view of the creek from the backyard was just beautiful. Unfortunately, the house was in a neighborhood that just didn’t feel very… comfortable? It was clearly lower income, and in and of itself, I don’t mind that at all, but when the houses are run down, the yards are unkempt, there’s broken stuff everywhere… that’s not… very comfortable for me.
The second house with the double decker wrap-around deck was pretty cool, but it was going to need a lot of work. Rehab the inside, new deck in a few years, if not right away, (and that’s a lot of deck to replace) 😅, significant earthwork in the back to shore up the concrete columns holding up the deck and what not, and the the creek running through the back was actually more like a cesspool of trapped water that gets water flow during rain storms?
Of course, Right to live there, I would definitely do a little bit of excavating and turn it into flowing portion of the creek 🙃, but given the neighborhood and the feel of everything there (similar to the first), it just… didn’t feel very good. Guessing they’re going to have a pretty hard time selling that one for the price they are asking. Not to mention all three of the houses that I looked at are in flood zones. 🚣
Speaking of the third house, I went to that one more out of curiosity than anything, as it’s a huge house square footage wise (I think over 5,000?), and it’s only $389,000. Massive rooms, super comfortable, and it is in a nice neighborhood with lots of big houses, but because of the size of the house, it just feels… squished on the lot. I think it’s got a large backyard, but it’s a super long house and just feels squished end to end on the lot. It’s also more than I want to pay, but it’s super cheap for what you get. But again, it’s also in a flood zone.
Seems like just about all of Anderson is in a flood zone. 🙃
Speaking of flooding, I’m starting to flood a fair bit. I’ve been good for the last couple of weeks, or whatever it’s been, but I’m starting to let the seeming urgency of several different circumstances with family members stress me out more than I have been.
One of the things that I struggle with in my desire to help everybody that I can is that I tend to take upon myself the weight of resolving the challenges they are dealing with.
Not very effective. 😅
Not a sustainable way of living. 😅
Anyway, I got back to the shop, still unable to recreate the overheating problem, and then I chatted a little bit more with the tech who was working on it. By talking to the tech, I realized what was wrong: two of the coolant hoses were swapped. 😬
Glad it was an easy fix.
Was nice to figure that one out, as it was Miguel’s biggest stressor. 🥳
I helped out in the shop for a good while, and then I started working on fixing happy late in the day only to realize, in a nearly identical circumstance as my experience with Rover, that I didn’t have the right part to fix the AC in Happy. 😕
And now Happy didn’t have any refrigerant in it, because we’d sucked it all out, which meant a toasty drive home. 😅
[sigh]
On the way back to my mom’s, I decided to swing by another house that was for sale, this one in Pea Ridge. It was a really great price for the square footage, but when I drove to the neighborhood, every driveway seemed to be filled with cars, so the whole neighborhood felt more like a parking lot than a neighborhood. 😕
And since the neighborhood is only a few years old, there aren’t trees to make it feel more homey.
I think a lot of the houses in the neighborhood are rentals, so that’s probably what it is. People saving money by cramming several to a house?
I don’t blame them, but it certainly doesn’t help the desirability of wanting to buy a house there when you feel like you are living in a parking lot, which I would imagine could fairly significantly impact resale value (and is possibly why the people who bought the house when it was built in 2024 are wanting to leave? I guess they also found a house they want more in Bella Vista and supposedly had originally wanted to be in Bella Vista anyway, so that might be the only reason, but who knows…).
Anyway, back at home I chatted with my mom about all the crazy that’s going on right now, chatted with Thomas a bit as we all ate dinner together, and then I headed out to my van early for the night.
Not being in a good space, when I started my van, instead of moving it to my night-parking spot, I started heading to the Neighborhood Market… hankering for junk food despite being on day two of trying to be junk-food free again.
As I drove, I was hoping my sister Heather would text me back to maybe get some external strength I didn’t have on my own (I could have called, but I wasn’t strong enough to do that).
Gratefully, as I got to Walmart, she texted back, and I managed to leave the Market with just cheese and bananas. 🥳
🙃
We texted for a bit, and then I headed back to my mom’s for the night.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
