My Friend the House

My sister said they are starting to use AI at her job, and that she observed an exchange between an AI and her co-worker wherein the AI said another parameter needed to be supplied. 

Her co-worker provided what was needed and added, "My bad."

My sister said, "You just said 'My bad' to an AI."

Her co-worker said, "Well, I don't want to make it mad. They're going to be in charge of everything."

The new air conditioner was supposed to be installed by yesterday, a five-day effort. The installers arrived and the electrician turned up as planned for the final day. I had decided to get back to my roots with a little Metallica; it turned out the electrician is a huge fan, has seen them 18 times, is about to see them again, and has a piece of Metallica art tattooed on his forearm, so he was happy when he came in and heard them.

The yard guys also came yesterday. They did a lovely job with the majority of the spring cleanup and plan to return Monday to finish up. 

The lead air conditioner installer (who I’m halfway in love with; roofer? What roofer?) hit a snag when it comes to wiring up the thermostat. This house has a water heater, which heats the water one uses for a shower or running the washing machine. It also has a boiler, which heats water to heat the house via baseboard heaters. (It has taken me about two years to grasp this, and that we do not have a furnace.) Boilers and therefore people who can fix boilers are increasingly rare; many houses these days are heated via forced air. (My father used to drain his boiler, now my boiler, every single month. When some technician looked at it for some reason or other, he said it was the cleanest boiler he’d ever seen.)

The lead A/C installer was trying to figure out yesterday how to connect the new air conditioning system and the boiler to the thermostat without destroying both. He got as far as he could get, and then called various people seeking tech support, not one of whom responded, being as it was Friday afternoon.

He said, “Just curious: Did anyone by any chance say anything about a Mitsubishi thermostat?”

I said, “No. Would it have been better to use a Mitsubishi thermostat?”

He said, “I think that question is going to be asked.”

I said, “Let the record reflect that I asked it, at 2 p.m. on Friday, April 10, 2026.”

The installer finally just had to put the original thermostat back and call it a day, but before he did that, he took me on the tour of the attic I had requested. I had never been up there before. It requires climbing up a ladder with shallow wooden steps that can be pulled down from the garage ceiling. One thing I really appreciated was that this person didn’t say, “Ma’am, are you sure you want to go up there?”

Lower down, you can stick your toes out on the far side of each step, so that your foot is securely on the step, but at the top, there are a couple of steps with a firm surface immediately beyond, so you have to hang on with just your toes there.

The installer casually said, “You go first,” which maybe was inspired by thinking he might have to catch me, but he didn’t make it sound like that, and I climbed up the ladder. Digressing to say that the attic in my childhood home was like a true third story of the house. You walked up a normal flight of stairs and then were in a long room with a high ceiling and solid floor where you could easily walk around. This room had sloping walls, but it was such a large room that there was plenty of space where you could walk around. This room led into a second room the same height but not as long. We regularly played up there, especially in the second room, which was a little cozier and I think not used for storage; a lot of things were stored in the big first room. It was warm up there, and had kind of a musty smell, not unpleasant. In that second room was a giant box of old comic books that had belonged to both of our parents when they were children: Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Little Lulu.

The third and final room had a much lower ceiling. Either you could not up in there, or you could stand up only along the center line. This room was used just for storage of I forget what. Maybe some seasonal thing, like screens. My father would have, once a year, taken down screens and installed storm windows, and then done the opposite approximately six months later.

So I was a little shocked when I got to the top of the ladder in this house, crawled on my knees into the attic (not wanting to risk trying to step from the top step of the ladder into the attic, especially while hanging onto the top step with just my toes), and found that it was just one expanse, in which I could not stand up. Fortunately, I am Mrs. Squats as well as Miss Grumpy, so I could easily crouch down the whole time I was up there, though it also wasn’t that long. The air was unbelievably foul. My throat was immediately irritated and it remained so for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I can still feel it a little even now, more than 24 hours later.

The A/C installer showed me the new system and how they had reorganized the ductwork. He said that my office, in the back corner of the house, basically does not have any insulation over it. He said spending $1000 on fixing this might pay for itself over a couple of years. There is plenty of unwrapped pink, fibrous insulation up there, though not of the vintage expected to contain asbestos. It looks like it could benefit from someone spending some time up there with a mini shop vac. (Mini because how would you get an actual shop vac up there?)

The installer said they had just gotten light in the attic, a couple of bare bulbs thanks to the electrician. He said that before that, they had worked for days by flashlight! While crouching down. Good lord.

While it struck me as a hell realm, he said it is the nicest attic he has ever been in. He said, “This is the Cadillac of attics.” For one thing, it has a floor. He said usually people don’t want to pay for a wooden floor in an attic, and so you have to walk from joist to joist. My sister said later that it would be pretty easy to miscalculate or stumble and put your foot right through the plaster into the room below. (Could not your whole body follow that foot, being as the two are attached?)

But also, according to the installer, some attics are so low in height that they have to slither along on their bellies. I felt unpleasantly mashed in that attic just having to crouch down; when he said that about having to wend his way through a little crack, I almost said, “I’m sorry, I have to get out of here.”

I once read a long piece in The New Yorker about cavers who slither along on their bellies in a crack with a trillion tons of rock below and the same above. They wriggle along, able to feel the rock with their backs, and they do this for hundreds or thousands of feet—I can’t remember the details—until they get to a place where they can stand up. That is the one thing I’ve read in my entire life that I genuinely wish I could unread. What happens if you panic at the halfway point? It makes me feel a little short of breath to think about it. (To mention the one thing I’ve seen in my entire life that I genuinely wish I could unsee, that was a photograph of a teratoma.)

The first roofer who came to provide a (totally ridiculous) estimate said you should be able to see daylight at intervals all the way around the edge of your attic. The roofer who ended up doing the work assured me he had achieved a good balance between the air coming in at the edge of the eaves through the vented drip edge, and the box vents on top of the roof that let the air out. All I could really see up there was insulation, but the roofer, who I texted right from the attic, assured me everything is copacetic.

I thought of asking him to come by and show me, but I decided not to hassle him about that, since he had previously said he could hook us up with strong young men to carry stuff, which we will need later. What I need here is an attic insulation person who can achieve good insulation throughout, cover up the insulation as needed, and ensure it is sufficiently away from my vented drip edge.

I’m having to do so much for this house and learn so much about it, not one bit of which I had ever felt the slightest interest in learning before, that it’s starting to feel as if it’s my friend. Don’t worry, house! I’ll take care of you. I’ve even named it. I call it “The House.”

So then it was time to depart from the attic. Again to his credit, the installer casually remained where he was while I navigated the ladder. I was actually a tad uneasy about going down, especially those top couple of steps. I realize now that maybe he was not thinking about catching me if I fell; otherwise he would have preceded me. Maybe I didn’t appear feeble to him.

I took a photo of him smiling a winning smile next to the huge part of the air conditioner that is outside the house. He looks darling, but I actually prefer his customary I’m-over-this expression, maybe because that’s how he has looked every other time I have seen him. However, there were many laugh lines that magically appeared in the photo, so he must routinely smile, just not at work.

Today I had lunch with my father’s friend Julian, who sent the extremely timely note about sealing the new air conditioner against mice, which has been done. I was going to go to Seva in any event today, but while Julian and I were corresponding about the air conditioner, I asked if he would like to join me. I had my usual vegan tempeh Reuben, a side of roasted rosemary potatoes, and a bowl of Senegalese peanut soup. Julian had a side of avocado. I thought it might be a fiscal decision, but he said he was fasting, more or less. He did accept the offer of my pickle.

The new air conditioner is a mini-split. Thanks to my lunch with Julian today, I can now state with at least mild confidence that the “split” is because it provides both cooling and heating; it is possible that the “mini” is because the first such systems were huge industrial ones, whereas this application is smaller.

The mini-split’s heat is appropriate for the “milder” temperatures of spring and fall; it is not expected to keep you warm in the dead of winter.

I told Julian that the contractor is having problems with wiring both the boiler and the new heat pump to the thermostat. He asked why anyone is trying to do that in the first place. Per his understanding, each should have its own thermostat. For one thing, if one fails, you still have the other. His advice was to consult the different company that installed his Mitsubishi system and whose people are now replacing the motherboard that was damaged by the mice that got to the part of the system that’s in the attic. I plan to call them on Monday. I might even ask them to take over the rest of this project, or pay them to consult with the first company.

I was also wondering if the new system should be connected to all three of our existing thermostats, but after I got back from lunch, I discussed it with my sister, who has some expertise in this area, and she said she agrees that the boiler and the heat pump should not try to use the same thermostat, as Julian said, and she thinks only the boiler needs to connect to our two other thermostats.

I have been taking a walk every day, regularly miscalculating what to wear but so enjoying the lovely fresh air and the smell of growing things. Today I had a chat with a man arriving to visit his mother, who lives two doors down. If I stay here, one day I will know a lot of people around here by name.

I ran my theory about death no longer seeming theoretical past my sister, thus explaining why she and the other sister keep mentioning mine, and she said she thinks that is exactly it.