Dear Son...
Take note...
"Flex-i-frames"...
does not mean...
your glasses will also...
bend in half...
Good news. Our house didn't catch on fire.
Good news. The electician came and fixed our problem.
Good news. It didn't cost a fortune.
Bad news. Our breaker box had enjoyed a small fire at one unidentifiable point in time.
Good news. Our house didn't catch on fire whenever that happened. Seriously.
Bad news. We have to have a whole new air conditioner because it burned up over night on Wednesday....
Good news. Our house didn't catch on fire.
Bad news. Air conditioners aren't cheap. CHOKE.
(I think if the Captain and I each sell a kidney, that could really help toward the cost of the A/C. We can live with just one kidney. How much is a kidney going for these days? Somebody check eBay for me....)
Worse news. We won't get the new unit until the end of next week.
So right now we are without air downstairs.
I'm not going to lie to you. It's hot.
I met the Captain outside when he got home last night. He said, "You're glistening."
Which is really a nice way of saying, "You have sweat running down your face."
Now, this isn't a complete disaster because we have a separate A/C unit upstairs for the playroom and spare bedroom.
So we gathered all our toys last night and headed up there to sleep. But when we went up there for the night, we discovered that the electrical problem apparently fried our TV and our Wii. Hmmmmmm.
So, we have air upstairs, but no TV. Which isn't too bad.
Last night, the Captain and I read while the kids watched I Love Lucy DVDs on the laptop. (Yes, I have raised them to realize and appreciate the finer things in life. )
We are fine upstairs. It will work. It's cool air. Although I may have to somehow remedy the TV situation if we are going to be living up there for another week.
Now downstairs is a different story.
It's a bit warmish.
It's Box Fan City.
I have five fans going. (Thanks Mom, for the fan-loaning!)
The TV is so loud over the hum of the fans I think you can hear it from the street.
Current temperature in my den is 78. Which is already up three degrees since I got up. Yesterday's high temperature was 85 with a heat index of 107.
Winds calm with box fans gusting up to 3 mph.
Tempers hovering at 27%, but I anticipate these will be rising as the weekend progresses.
All in all, it's not a great situation, but it's not an awful situation either.
We're just a little inconvenienced.
And hot.
And glistening.
And running around in our underwear.
Enjoy your long weekend people. Think cool thoughts for me!
Peace. Out.
Today I have a little hypothetical situation for you....
Let's just say that.....
Your home security alarm system battery goes out.
When that happens, your daughter will call you at work and say the control panel is beeping.
About that same time the alarm company will call and say you are having a system failure.
Which will make the control panel beep.
Continuously.
Until you can open the big box thing upstairs and replace the battery.
But if you can't find the key to open the big box thing, the control panel will still just keep beeping.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
And then your daughter will call you at work again and tell you and she also smells smoke.
So you will come home.
That is when you will find out that in addition to the beeping alarm situation, your air conditioner has gone out.
And the air conditioner fixer man can come.
The next day.
But, in the meantime, when you turn off the air conditioner, the beeping alarm will stop.
After five hours of beeping.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
And you will wonder if this is a coincidence.
But you will sweat it out for a night.
And you will put big box fans in front of your kids' beds.
And hope your daughter doesn't lean into the fan too close trying to get cool and get her hair sucked up into it.
And hope your son doesn't lean into the fan too close listening to it make his voice sound funny and get his tongue sucked up in it.
And your Captain husband will turn the ceiling fan up so high to cool off your bedroom that it makes the sheets blow around on the bed and it would be considered "gusty winds" by any meterologist.
But the air conditioner man comes the next day.
Three times.
And he will fix the air conditioner. Kind of.
Because then you will hear him say the four scariest words in the world.....
You need an electrician.
And he will say something about the control panel shorting out and something about a low voltage problem and something else about running the air conditioner through an extention cord in the upstairs bathroom until the electrician can get here and something about that will be $650 please.
So you will probably get a little wigged out that your house may catch on fire during the night while you sleep.
And you will worry that you never really practiced home fire escape drills with your children.
But at least your air conditioner is fixed.
Or so you think.
Until you get up the next day and find out that it still isn't working.
And in the meantime, you will discover a cache of mayonnaise packets in your son's backpack.
And you will hear The Weather Man say something like "today will be another warm and muggy day".
And you will just drink your coffee.
And look out the window at the baby doves in the nest on your porch.
And be thankful that your whole family didn't perish in an overnight house fire.
And wipe your glistening brow.
And say oh well....
Yesterday I was at the dentist with Cooper where he was getting a very stubborn baby tooth pulled.
I got a call that a TV station was interested in covering a pitch I had made. Hooray!
They wanted to interview the physician about his upcoming medical mission trip to Haiti. Yippee!
In the next hour. Challenge.
That was about the time Cooper reappeared in the waiting room with his poor little swollen gauze-packed mouth and post-nitrous eyes.
As best I can remember, the convo went something like this....
"Hi Dr. A. ...Yes they want to do a story about your Haiti trip.....Keep the gauze in there please baby....They would send a crew in about an hour....I know it hurts. It will feel better soon....They are interested in how many of your partners are going there and what you'll be doing....Yes the Tooth Fairy will come tonight....I appreciate your doing this on such short notice.....No sweetie, that's not blood, it's just drool...."
Later Cooper tells me his heart was hurting and beating very fast. Great, my kid is having a heart attack from having a tooth pulled. (No worries there though people. I called the dentist back and got an explanation about that.)
Oh and go ahead and factor in some other stuff too...
Like a family situation involving my 96 year old great aunt who was suddenly hospitalized this week. Yes, Monday during the snow storm. Remember that? Where we got 6" of "no accumulations expected"? Yeah, that day. It involved 6 very smart, calm, handsome EMTs who can drive an ambulance through a sleet storm. It also involved my little great aunt who was trying to drink hot tea from her pulse oximeter and was also seeing kittens on the ceiling. That was an emotionally exhausting day. Plus, the ER is an incredibly nasty place. I later took (as Connie put it) a scalding "Silkwood Shower" and burned my clothes.
Jordan needs to dress up like a medieval character, a super hero and a nerdy school kid this week. Cooper is supposed to dress like a detective today.
I've been helping Connie do some brainstorming as she ramps up her own business. Very exciting stuff here people.
Then there's just the other stuff that I can't seem to get away from....Like feeding my family and washing their laundry. They have grown accustomed to food and clean clothes apparently. The nerve.
I just read where Captain Phil from Deadliest Catch died. Hate that.
And I'm totally missing my daddy these days.
But -- guess what?! The Olympics start this weekend and I'm. Totally. Psyched.
It appears the Tooth Fairy did make an appearance.
Both of my kids emptied their piggy banks (their own, unprompted decision) for the school Haiti fundraiser projects. *sniff*
And they are finally going back to school today.
So see....it's all good. It's life. And that's how it rolls. And think how boring this blog would be without all these exciting stories.
Peace out people. Thanks for hitting my blog today!
Yeah, so the dryer did bite the dust.
But the Captain tried valiantly to fix it.
He took it all apart. Did you know a dryer can sit in 354,981 pieces in your garage? Yes, it can.
He went to get a new part. And then put it all back together. But it still didn't work.
So I put all our wet clothes outside on the patio furniture to dry in the sun. Just call me Ma Ingalls. Later I churned some butter and took the wagon up to Olson's Mercantile for provisions.
The Captain went to buy a new dryer.
In the middle of all this, we had a small amount of teenage girl drama since we had four teenage girls in the house for a "We don't have school on Monday can everybody in the universe spend the night with me?" party.
While the Captain was going to return the part that didn't work and then pick up the new dryer, I got a call from Jordan who was crying hysterically a little upset because she thought somebody was trying to break in the house.
She had also called Connie who was on her way over. And who actually thought she was being set up for a surprise party. Even though it wasn't her birthday. Or nowhere near her birthday. So why would we have a surprise birthday party for her at 3pm on a Monday 13 weeks away from her birthday. Guess it would really be a surprise.
Anyhoo, it wasn't any sort of home invasion. It was my neighbor checking on Jordan and trying to let us know about this...
Which is also called "Two neighborhood boys playing golf in their backyard using a real golf ball which met Cooper's bedroom window with incredible speed."
FORE!!
And yes, it's a double paned window. And yes, glass goes everywhere when something like that happens. Everywhere.
So I spent my evening cleaning up teeny tiny glass shards out of pirate ships and dump trucks.
And the Captain went to his mother's house to wash & dry school uniforms and police uniforms. Cause she is still in the hospital. Oh I forgot to tell you. Her appendix ruptured two weeks ago. But she didn't go to the hospital until last week. Yeah, you read that right. That's another blog post all together.
My grand plans of cooking a nice Monday night dinner turned into "There's frozen pizza in the oven." and "Please don't walk in Cooper's room barefooted."
But today I should have a working dryer. Hooray!
And soon I'll have a brand new window. But I hope it's real soon since I actually just heard The Weather Guy use the words "There's a rain maker moving in." and "Tomorrow will be a soggy day." *sigh*
So, how was your Monday?
