No Hope

The variables:
a - Hope, our 10 year old lab mix has heat exhaustion, almost died on Friday. She's recuperating slowly but needs cool air because she can't pant

b - The Dad's truck is old and barely running. He has no AC, the windows don't roll down without assistance because the motors are shot, it's got over 230K miles on it. We've been trying to pay down bills and be very frugal so we could afford another car payment

c - the AC is shot. Dead. Won't ever run again. It quit for good today. We've tacked up curtains to keep the cool air in the living room from the window unit. We're all sleeping in there. The rest of the house is 86 and it's 9 at night. I can't imagine what it will be like tomorrow when it gets back up to 100 outside during the day.

so...
we can have an AC but no new truck because we can't finance both and hopefully we can do something about all of this AND keep our dog cool while she recovers.

I could try to come up with ideas of how this circumstance might have been avoided. The only one I get is if I was working full time at a different job or if The Dad was working at a different job. Or both. But in this economy and with special needs kids ...

there's an answer. There always is. We'll muddle through this one more trial. We'll do our best to keep smiling. We'll try very hard not to envy people that don't endure these things in their lifetimes. We'll remind ourselves that at least we have our wits about us and thought to pin up sheets to keep at least one room of our house cool. And thankfully our living room is large enough to sleep five and a dog. Or maybe not because The Dad's allergies are really bad when Hope sleeps near him ...

I can't solve all the variables. The answer to the algebraic equations do not have a rational solutions. The quadratic formula is not crunching these factors with real numbers.

x = [ -b ± sqrt(b^2 - 4ac) ] / 2a