Okay, so we're back here today and just to recap again: this is our how we live with the HVAC life video series: this is part 2, if you guys haven't already. I would strongly encourage you guys to go watch part 1. First, there'll be a teaser card. Popping up right now with a link to part 1.

So that way you guys can kind of get some context as to what we're doing, but I will reintroduce ourselves. My name is Chris and I produce the HVAC our videos. I make these videos just to help the next technician to share the mistakes that I've made and to share the little bit of knowledge that I have to try to help the next guy. Ok, next to me, I have my wife Jill sitting here hi and we just kind of decided to do a little project where we're going to kind of shed some light on how we, as a couple, have learned to navigate the HVAC life and how to deal With some of the hurdles that we've run into, we are not professionals, we are not into them yeah.

We still run into those problems to this day, we're not professionals, we're just sharing how we have what the problems that we have run into and how we've learned to deal with them. At least we think made it through so far, so we're we kind of wanted to start was in the very beginning. Before we had children. You know we were both working a lot.

She was a waitress and I was obviously an HVAC technician and we decided we got married and then we decided quickly that we were going to buy a house. We bought a house and like most people that were starting out, we weren't making very much money at the time and we bought way too much of a house for us. We bought it right as the market was going up in 2005, so just before it peaked, we bought a house for way too much money, and we just you know, realized a lot of things after we did that. I think we went in to it with the wrong outlook.

Like you know, in that, with a house when you're buying a house, you typically go into it like this is my house. This is gon na, be it we went into it with okay, like we'll see if we can make this work and if it doesn't we'll turn around and sell it yeah, and that's why we went with such a bigger house. You know a bigger house, a more expensive house yeah and you know we bought a house with no traffic about 45 minutes away from where we both well. Where I worked, you transferred up into the area, so we currently were living before we bought the house.

We were living in the Inland Empire and I was working. My office was in Riverside California and we bought a house in Victorville which was 45 minutes away and at the time victory was an up-and-coming area. Houses were quote, unquote, cheap for California. I know a lot of you guys in the Midwest and some of the places back east are not going to think what we say is cheap, but it was Nets.

Okay, it was a struggle for us, and but it was the only place we could afford a house. We had to move out of our normal area to go up there. 45 minutes without traffic was kind of a lie, because once we got there, we realized that a lot of other people had the same idea as us and they moved to the same area. So therefore, the way main way to Vegas that's right so any holiday weekend.

It was like, if you wanted anybody to come up and visit you. I was a struggle because you know somebody's gon na be sitting in traffic and I would say that on a normal day again with no traffic, it was 45 minutes, but more commonly pretty much. Every day that I went up and down the hill, it was about an hour and a half each way, because we sat in traffic going down the hill with everybody else commuting, and then I sat in traffic going up the hell with everybody commuting, so on average I spent three hours a day, just traveling up and down the hill. We lived on, you know up in Victorville to get to work, and that was added to my normal eight to ten hour day at the time yeah.

So you would leave early to try to beat traffic. You left much. You know much earlier than you yeah. On average, my days normally started at 7 a.m.

I used to have to be at my restaurants by 7 a.m. and I would leave at 4 a.m. yeah as when I would leave just to be safe, yeah 4:30 somewhere in there just to be safe. Because again, I'm a person that on time is a half an hour early and that's just the way that I work even to this day, I think I've even gotten you guys Noor used to something like that.

Yeah, usually, we will sit places and wait for people to get there so that way we can, you know, be pleased yeah beyond time exactly so we moved to a place that was way too far away. So because of that flash forward to when we had children, you know I didn't get to be at a lot of the stuff. Okay, even when you were pregnant with our first daughter, I probably made it to a handful of the doctor's appointments yeah and we kept our doctors up like doctors down. You know the 45 minutes away.

We didn't move doctors, we never moved doctors, we never because there wasn't too many options up there from what I understood. So I just went ahead and stayed with what we knew good care and stuff, but it was Drive always so yeah it was. It was everything like just not making everything, not the whole life up there, so that was kind of hard yeah. You know it was in it's it's funny, because we're kind of remembering as we're going through this Jill - and I are both remembering things - we're reminding each other things that we both forgot yeah.

You know you forget, yeah. We used to live like that. For a long time, so you know I wasn't able to make it to a lot of the family functions. You know or I'm sorry, my kids functions.

You know for whether it was dance once our kids got older or you know just school assemblies mm-hmm. I I don't know that I ever know because any time I ever said you were like, I don't think I'm gon na be able to make that yeah. I don't think I'll be able to make that and yeah so, and I really I mean there was, I think there was like. I remember, making different things yeah.

I don't think I did that, but I remember making it to our daughters pre-school, graduation. That's that's! One of the things that the only things I remember yeah was our daughter's preschool graduation and then I remember our daughter's first day of kindergarten because she went to school behind us yeah yeah. I went. I remember like going to drop her off at school that day, because I stayed home or some other state went to work late or something, but I mean there was so much that I didn't make it to guys very minimal and there's a lot of regret that I have there too, for a lot of stuff and I'll explain the regret, as we get further into this and that'll kind of make more context and everything, but so you know moving up.

There was just something we had to do now: some of the what were some of the hurdles, some of the things that I could think of by moving up there was the lack of family and friends. I mean we had some friends but but yeah we had a good family friend, move up there as well, like kind of with us yeah around the same time, so that was nice having her up there. But you know, schedules get busy. People are busy.

We have different, you know different things going on and it was still different not having family close by, even though when we moved up there, it was like it's not that far. You know like it'll, be fine and I remember we were doing something with your family and your cousin said. Oh, oh, haven't you like joined a mom's group yet, and I had no idea what that was. She told me to look up this website and she was like they should be.

You know they should be up there and when I did there was one and it was completely out of my comfort zone but yeah. I went and met with a group of moms and then it was pretty awesome, Meetup yeah and then even recently too now, like my kids, are bigger and stuff, but still a lot of like family. You know friends are far away and different schedules, so I kind of roll back into that and we joined another moms group and meeting new families and friends. It's it's always nice and the mom's group.

The first time you joined the moms group up when we were up in the dictor Ville area. Obviously you had our really close family friend who's, still a very close family friend. I wouldn't even call them a friend, it's a family member and yeah. You know we've.

We basically all adopted each other, her family and our families, kind of intermingle together and we'd become closer than brothers and sisters. I would say, but when you did join the mom's group, we still have a lot of those family friends to this day. The first you know out of maybe like the 10 friends you made or 15 friends. You know we probably still commute.

Ladies out there that were so. You know we still keep in touch and some of us still get together so yeah. It was really like important and it helped a lot with Chris being gone so much, and that was something that really helped me was knowing that Jill had something to do, because in the beginning, when we first had our first child, you were just home alone by Yourself, I mean occasionally a friend from high school or something like that would come up and busy you or we had our close family friend that was living near us, but you know you didn't, have a lot of people yeah. I was like plans like you.

You had things like they were, you know they, they go. Do things and you're like okay, like I don't just have to go with me and my kid like there's gon na be other people that I know they're tuned. It just makes it more like welcoming and fun and exciting, so that was a very, very cool thing that I was excipient. She joined the mons group because that just gave me so much more comfort to know that she had someone she had people to lean on a large group of people now to lean on, so it wasn't just one person, that's counting on all the time you know So that was a very, very great thing and other people to talk to you.

You know you're busy during the day like it's still like. I still had you know, friends, and you know people to talk to you. We joke, though an hour at least I joke. I have kind of a dry sense of humor and probably an obnoxious and say things that I shouldn't say at certain times, but I was a myth I mean I wasn't around.

So it was very rare that anybody from the mom's group knew me or ever saw me yeah. You know there was a few promise yeah. It was. I think that you know with the advent of social media.

It's helped out a lot because social media was still kind of up-and-coming. At that time. Yeah you know Facebook or whatever you know we use an Instagram, didn't even exist. I don't think Twitter.

It was just Facebook at the time. No at least I didn't take it to MySpace, because my space was even bigger, come on. I, like my space, better than Facebook, because you could have music on your page, and that was cool. So at this point you know Jill's made some friends, but it's not enough for her and she's starting to struggle with with the fact that I wasn't home right yeah.

I think I miss you like mist right. If I needed help, I needed a backup. No, no - and you know you kind of - had planted a seed a few times and I really wasn't having it about moving and about moving back to where we came from back down to the Inland Empire yeah. I just started thinking that it would just be so much more convenient the traffic.

Then tea was even worse. It kind of just seemed like every day. There was something else and it was like either you weren't coming home or it was taking hours to get home, and I just thought man. It would be so much better like if we just lived down the hill like you would be home already, and I really wasn't into that at the time.

But you know I'm gon na add some context to that too, which he just said. You know it's funny. Looking back on it now because there was several times that I didn't come home and when I say I didn't come home, I wasn't doing anything bad, but I was thinking about work and again we lived up in Victorville. We had to go through the cone pass and there was often times when the Cohen pass would get shut down, and I was deathly mortified of getting stuck up there and not being able to go to work.

I was always worried, what's gon na happen, if I can't make it to the work, I wasn't worried about getting fired. I was worried about the business me not being there again, I'm kind of a control freak. So me not being there stressed me out. So there was many times when we would have a rainstorm coming or the potential for snow, and I would just go stay at my dad's house and I wouldn't come home.

There was a snow storm that we had that where I wasn't home for three days yeah and she was again - this was kind of before the moms group, or maybe right in the beginning, the mantra because she didn't have a support staff, a support group. At the time she didn't have a lot of people and we had some unprecedented, like 11 inches of snow at our house, you were snowed in for one full day for sure where you couldn't leave yeah, and you know I couldn't be there. I was stuck. You know 40 miles away and couldn't come home and I was gone for two days.

I know it was. I mean we had everything we wished. You could have been there and I wish I could have been there too and little things like we joke to this day. But when we lived up there the climates a little bit different and they were probably will deal with yeah.

She thinks it was that much worse, we'll get into that in a minute, but what they liked and that's funny, because I didn't live up there. I I slept up there. That's what I did. I slept up there.

I did not live up there. She shopped in that freezing cold wind yeah, but you know one of the things one of the things that I missed out on the most, and this is so silly, but I missed out on the thunderstorms. Do you remember how excited like it was very rare? We would have thunderstorms up there every summer. We would have a lot of thunderstorms and it was very rare that I was home for a lightning and thunder storm, and I guys I'm obsessed with lightning and thunder.

I love it. I the very few times that we were up there. Do you remember the times when I would drag you guys all over the place, so we could chase the storm and watch the lightning. I would follow it through the valley out into Lucerne Valley or up into Barstow, just to be able to see the lightening and thunder storms in here and be close to it and smell it.

I was so to this day a lightning and thunder is one of my favorite things, but those are some of the things that I missed out on was what you guys, calling me and saying: hey, there's a thunderstorm, and I wasn't there. You know, and it's little things like that, just the little family functions that I wasn't home for so you had planted the seed. You had kind of started talking about moving and I just really wasn't having it. I wasn't in my head.

We were fine. What we were doing worked, but in your head it didn't yeah, not so much. I would just be better easier to be closer to move down so started kind of getting. I don't know fixed on the idea that that was gon na.

Like fix everything. I don't know yeah and to make a long story short. We ended up moving okay after a couple years ago, and back and forth we moved, and I will tell you that and I've told you this many times the first day that I woke up before work and I now lived. You know five minutes from my office.

I woke up 45 minutes before work, took a shower or got up, and I remember thinking this is why we moved down here like I was so excited to think. Like I, you know I, it was so normal for me to live an hour and a half away from work. It just did didn't faze me anymore. You know getting six hours of sleep.

Five hours of sleep, a night was no big deal for me to this day. I can't think of getting five hours of sleep right now like that would drive me insane. I need eight plus hours of sleep and I get that now but back then I didn't you guys. It made our lives so much better.

The world of difference like and the first day at school, to, like you, remember you getting a walker oldest up your school in the first year again, we like daddy-daughter dance, and you were there for that. I was there for like spring festivals and you're home. For that - and it was just like wow, yeah III - have family again yeah. I quickly realize like again how much I missed and how much it affected us, because there were so many school functions that I went to that first year and it was insane.

I went to everything and I was able to be there, the daddy-daughter dance that was so huge for me to be able to go to a daddy-daughter dance and, like you said, to walk our daughter to school for the first day, Walker up even now, as I'm Remembering, as we're talking is like, sometimes you beat us home in the afternoon, and it's like when you don't that's kind of like more like yeah yeah, there's a lot less late nights. It was so hard for me to think about moving. It was so hard for me to move down here, but once I did it - and I lived here for you know at least by the first week I was I was hooked and I couldn't imagine being that far away again and we struggle with that. To this day, because you know we're talking about moving again yeah and you know, the housing prices are insane right now and it's just stupid how much houses cost and like in the areas that we want to live.

I just can't I can't fathom paying that much money, and - and here we are like looking oh okay - well, we can afford houses that are yeah in this area, but we won't do it. We won't do it. I won't do it there's no way because I'm not gon na move us. I have these horrible images of if we move to that area, wherever it may be 45 minutes away, not even the traffic, just the grocery store visits, and you know I mean where we live now.

You know it made our lives so much better to finally decide to move closer to where we worked yeah, we had to sacrifice a little bit. It costs us more money, but those sacrifices are worth it to me and they've made. You know it's so much nicer to be able to be there for my kids. Now now we have our second daughters in fourth grade now, and/or she's going into fourth grade, and you know to be able to drop our kids off at school to be able to surprise our kids.

I mean I'm not saying I do it all the time. No and the cards at all up there. I don't think that our school, our kids schools, would let me pick them up up there, because they didn't know who I was besides, just being a name on the emergency pick up sheet, you know, I mean yeah, it was crazy guys, so so for us, you Know the hurdle of us living so far away from where we worked and where our lives were. You know we we, we thought that would solve our problems.

We thought just being able to afford a house and we could make a new life. It didn't really work out for us that way. It depends what you are. You know what works for you guys.

You know. If it, you know, we thought it worked, but then there's a lot of times like just petty stuff, like I think I would feel like irritated with you and I'd be short or you know, and it was just like I didn't like where that was going. So I don't feel like that you know was working for us, but if you can live you know far and you know, what's the word travel or can you commute to work and make your family life work, but it does feel a lot easier to be closer To work and to each their own, like you know, I mean because you know, for some people may work just for us. That was a struggle that really added to everything and it wasn't helping us yeah yeah stuck stuck that's a great way, and I think that's where we're gon na end this for this this time, okay, we kind of covered.

What I think we needed to cover. We have a lot more to go into guys. Some things that we want to address and some of the next ones would be. I really want to go into and it would it'll kind of intermingle into back into the house stuff that we had to deal.

But I want to I want to talk about my my depression, my anger, anxiety and then I want to talk about your mental mental, your health problems that you had two that affected you, because that all intertwines into our whole story and and the struggles that we Went through and guys I just want to clarify we we're not experts again in what we are talking about we're just talking about how it worked for us and in our hopes, are that you know again. I was you know. Our hopes are that we can. You know bring light to what some people might be dealing with them might not know how to address things again.

Don't follow just what we say. Obviously you want to consult someone who really knows what they're talking about family, therapist, family counselors, different things. You know, but um you know just just. Maybe our hopes are that us sharing our story might help to bring some context or help you with whatever you're going through.

So I just want to say thank you guys so very much for taking the time to watch this video. Please please, please leave us some feedback. Let us know guys just like I say in my technical videos. If I'm saying something wrong, tell me I'm I'm always looking for improvement and guys if you can tell us something that worked for you tell us in the comments.

Send me an email HVAC, our videos at gmail.com. If you want to address something that Jill says just put her name first say this is for Jill and then talk. You know, send me an email. Send me a text in the comments you guys.

We really really want to hear to your feedback whether it be good or bad, or you know just just share your story with us. You know, and in hopes that maybe you can help us with something because we still deal with stuff every single day, we're still struggling to this day. So again, thank you guys so very much, and I guess we will see you guys on the next one. All right,.