The Year the Appliances Revolted

Two posts inside of a month, I must be feeling spunky. lol I’ve been working on getting the house back in shape after my being too sick to do anything with it for years. How many years I don’t want to try and figure out. *sigh* Anyway, the last week or so I’ve been focusing on laundry and the living room.

In the living room I’ve mostly just cleaned, straightened, blahblah. Only exciting (read: different) things were I had Matthew move one of the DVD racks from one wall to another, I changed out some old, yellowed artificial daisies for fresh, crisp, white artificial daisies, and I added two collage frames of pictures.

The laundry had been moving steadily along, but is now at a standstill. Why? Because we are nearing the end of … The Year the Appliances Revolted. I know we are nearing the end of it because we are nearing the end of the list of appliances! Since last spring we have seen the revolt of almost every single appliance we own. In order (at least to the best of my recollection…):

My computer- working fine one day, wouldn’t power up the next
Printer- after installing about a dozen copies of itself on the computer it refused to print again
Dishwasher- put its foot down (or whatever it is that makes it go!) after being slammed one too many times
Camera- *barely* survived our vacation, guess it decided I worked it too hard in AR
DVD player- died, just died
Oven- decided it would no longer heat…at all
Milkshake maker- the mixer bit busted off and stayed off
Hot water heater- rusted plumb through
Microwave- death by fire when I attempted to bake potatoes (hey, the oven was dead remember?)
TV- went kinda funny about powering on for a couple of weeks, then peacefully went to sleep…forever
Heater- developed a leak between the intake and the pilot light, so we had 2 pilot lights for awhile
Washer- death by electrocution; power cord/extension cord connection was laying on the floor (WHY?!?!) and got wet. Fizzle, sizzle, smoke, pop!

Interestingly enough, they have all (but my computer, I believe) gone out since my deciding/starting taking bible classes through F.B.I. I’m no dummy, but the devil is! He must think that I’m gonna get irritated enough to quit school. Ain’t gonna happen, though. =) Joke’s on him. It was through class that the Lord provided a replacement for one of those appliances. HAHA

I just ordered new parts for the oven and washer today. They should be here inside of a week, so I should be able to get back to baking again soon. =) Matthew has been patiently waiting for brownies for about 6mo now.

In the meantime, I will focus on catching the dishes up (by hand, obviously, since the dishwasher revolted), and rearranging and straightening the dining room, kitchen, and master bath.

Lingering projects are something else I’ve been trying to attack. I had some stickers for the tiles in the bathroom sitting on the counter for about 6 years. They are actually on the tiles now! woohoo! Also tonight I went through a bunch of pictures and put together several collage frames, and then filled 3 albums with loose pics. Only one was arranged, though. A small one entitled FRIENDS!!! with pics of the kids and some of their friends, of course. The others were just randomly inserted, not even arranged by date or occasion. lol Hey, after sitting in a box for ten years (give or take a couple) I figure in the album in any order is better than the way they were!

Oh, and as for the rest of the appliances (besides the oven and washer, that is)… For Christmas we replaced the TV, DVD player, camera, heater, and printer with some $$ that my SILs sent us. Unfortunately I’m still without a printer. I sent the new one back, got a replacement, sent THAT one back, and got another replacement, and this one doesn’t work either! Grrr. The microwave was replaced by a friend of mine from class (take that, devil!) and my mom fixed my computer. The hot water heater we replaced over the summer with the $ that would have gone to my doctor for my monthly appointment had he not retired the month before. Talk about providential timing, huh?! That just leaves the dishwasher and the milkshake maker. The former Mike does not want to replace until certain young people around here learn to do the dishes PROPERLY by hand, and the latter is not really a big deal anyhow. It was a novelty/decorative thing to begin with. No worries. I’ve just been making my strawberry-banana milkshakes in the blender the old-fashioned way instead. haha

UPDATE 2/19: I placed the order for the parts for the oven and washing machine yesterday afternoon, and they came in by FedEx this morning. My mom came over this evening and by 10pm had them both fixed!! Praise the Lord! It was so funny… while Mom sat and took a break with a cup of coffee after checking to see that the oven actually worked before putting it completely back together, Dad sat beside her complaining about breaking 2 fingernails today! LOL *note: Mom fixed both appliances single-handedly while Dad ate Taco Bell and watched a movie. haha

Melted Plastic for dinner, anyone?

Ever had one of those weeks?

I found a good deal on ground beef last week. $1.25/lb. I bought 20lb. This afternoon, Mike and I divided it up into 1 1/4 lb packages and put all but 2 in the freezer. Those two were destined for hamburgers for dinner!

I peeled and cut up a bunch of potatoes, while fighting off our youngest kitty, Freckles. He absolutely loves standing up, peering into the trash can, and pulling out the potato peels. He eats them, but never eats as many as he pulls out. Typical kid, eyes bigger than the stomach.

I set out to fry the french fries in the fry daddy, while the burgers were frying in the skillet on the stove. In between checking on each, I was chopping up and freezing some bell peppers and roma tomatoes I’d bought on sale a couple of weeks ago. (3 for $1 on the bell peppers, and 68 cents/lb on the maters)

I had the last batch of fries in the fryer, and the burgers were just about done. I finished chopping the pepper I was working on and went to check on the fries. They looked funny. My first thought was the fry daddy had finally given up the ghost and the bottom or lining or something had come off and was fryin along with the fries. Then I realized the plastic coffee can lid to the grease ‘can’ was missing. Apparently it stuck to the bottom of the fry daddy lid when I set it down and didn’t unstuck until I’d covered the fryer back up. Then it went splooshing into the grease and french fries.

Guess that means I need to add cooking oil to the shopping list. I don’t much think I want to cook anything else in the oil in there now!

Other highlights of this week: major explosions of rage and destruction, the news that Mike will get to work 1 or 2 of the Thanksgiving holidays after all, a trip to the dollar store on Veterans Day where I got 10% my whole purchase ’cause my daddy’s a vet, an allergy shot fot Matt, and the terrifying wait to see whether or not Matthew was going to be killed by the bite of peanut cookie he ate at Masters Club Sunday. (Thank the Lord he only suffered stomachache and nausea, no throat swelling, lack of consciousness, etc! I kept him doped up REAL good on Benadryl for several hours while we waited to see whether we’d have to use the Epi and call 911.)

Tomorrow Matthew is scheduled for another allergy shot, and Mom is expecting us over for Game Night again. Who knows if we’ll be able to go. The way this week has been going it could go either way. We’ve had a good mix of good/bad things happen, so I can’t possibly guess. lol I do know the kids need to get all the dishes caught up and their room clean before we go. That may be the deciding factor.

Putting off “Finally Loving Yourself”, oh the irony!

I discovered FlyLady about 4 years ago, and I’m ashamed to say I STILL haven’t gotten my wings yet.

I did really good the first go around for about 2mo. I even rewarded myself for my first month of shiny sinks with a new bible.

Then my folks and brothers moved back in and well, let’s just say FLYing is near impossible with 4 extras (and all their belongings) sitting around the house.

I know, I know. All the more reason to FLY with FlyLady. Easy to say (and totally true), but extremely hard to do.

Things got so bad that I was actually planning to start FLYing again at a specific future date. No, this wasn’t procrastination per se (which, as a SHE I am very prone to do). It was more like I can’t wait until they move out, the first thing I’m going to do is can start back up with FlyLady!

When my folks did get their own place just over a year ago, I did join back up to the FlyLady’s mailing list.  I started out a little wonky, though. I didn’t practice the babysteps, even though I knew I should. Instead I decided my way would be just as good and just picked the pieces I liked and ignored the rest. I was really good at swishing-and-swiping every morning and I pulled off my very first Thanksgiving meal solo with her Holiday Cruising emails. I put together a Holiday Control Journal and a Home Maintenance Control Journal to go with the main Control Journal I had made years before (but hadn’t opened in almost as long!).

I’m sure you can guess what happened. It crumbled is what happened. Between being totally unrealistic and in some major denial over just how sick I was (and therefore what I was truly capable of doing) and trying to clip corners and skim over the boring bits, I got totally discouraged and burned out.

That was almost a year ago. I’m pretty sure when I started this blog (like 4 blog moves ago, how unsettled am I?) I mentioned FLYing in one of my first posts. That was pretty much the end of it.

I didn’t stop the emails, I just stopped reading (and doing) them.

To be fair, I do have to admit that there were quite a few days when I would not have been able to read and/or do even a portion of the tasks. There were plenty of other days, though, that I could have, but didn’t.

New year, new start and all that good jazz, right?

Sorta.

Thing is I really just determined (it is too a verb!) to quit the procrastinatin’ already and just get started again on the first of Jan. It wasn’t that it was the new year that made me decide/resolve to start over… I’d been thinking about it and “meaning to” for a good two months or so prior to that. Around Halloween I was feeling back to semi-human-enough again that I decided I needed to start over with the FLY system and that I needed to do it right this time.

I then proceeded to procrastinate quite nicely for the next two months.

All through the holidays I told myself, “I’ll just do the swish-and-swipe for this week because I just cleaned. I’ll get started with the rest next week.” Or  “The sink is the least of my worries right now, I just have too much to do. I don’t have the time to start FLYing again yet.”

I know! That makes absolutely no sense considering what the FLY system is and what it’s all about. Totally ridiculus, but there ya go.

Now I am feeling really stupid about it because now I’m really wishing I had just started over with babystep 1 back in Oct when I first started thinking about it. Why? Because now all those excuses I made to myself for the last 2mo have come back to bite me in the behind in the most ironic way. Now those excuses are no longer excuses they really are true now.

See, my sister-in-law is coming to town. In one week. Actually less than. She’ll be here Saturday. It’s the wee hours of Sunday morning, so less than a week. The house is (not surprisingly considering the lack of FLYing and the extremely recent holidays) a major disaster. I truly do not have the time to take one little babystep a day to get my house in order. It’s gotta be clean by Saturday morning. If I hold to the babysteps I will be at most up to shining my sink, laying my clothes out for the next day, 4min of clearing hotspots, and 5min of picking up one room.

Yeah. That’s TOTALLY not gonna cut it!

Plus, truth be told? I didn’t shine my sink until about 2hr ago, so really if I actually followed the babysteps properly? I’d only be up to shining my sink and two measly minutes of house-cleaning.

If I could go back and talk to myself 2mo ago I would say “HEY! GET UP OFF YOUR DUFF AND JUST DO IT ALREADY! If you start now you will have a wonderful surprise after the first of the year!” (The surprise being that when told SIL will be here in just 6 days, I could look around and say, “Oh! That’ll be nice. Guess I might better re-organize the bathroom drawers for her visit.” or some such trivial thing. I’d be able to say that because the house would, by-and-large, already BE clean and ready for visitors!)

FlyLady warns us that this will happen. I’ve heard it dozens of times. WHY oh WHY didn’t I pay attention?

The only consolation I have for myself is that Monday when our friends brought over our new fridge I did a real quick clean-up and was able to get most of the house ‘in order’. The kids just got through spending two nights with my brother. Those two things add up to the (albeit small) reassurance that it hasn’t been that long since the house was mostly ‘in order’ and so it won’t take too long or be too hard to get it back in that shape.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself. To tell myself anything else would be pure cruelty and that goes contrary to the whole Finally Loving Yourself system, now doesn’t it?

Daydreaming of projects

I know, I know. This blog would be so much better with pictures. Maybe with pictures it would advance past the boring-avoid-at-all-costs level. Sorry bout that. I truly DO have lots of wonderful ideas for posts… complete with pretty pictures to look at… the problem comes in the execution of said ideas. In part because of the vast array of health oddities that have befallen me in the last year and a half. Basically I have no energy or clarity to even think most of the time, and only just enough to THINK about doing stuff the rest of the time… not enough to actually do.

I really hope this will change soon, and so… (as I always seem to do)… and daydream about what I’ll do when I feel up to it. My list of “want-to-dos” is HUGE. Think Santa’s Nice list from the movie The Santa Clause. Totally that long.

Since I’m not there yet, I guess I’ll continue the old, boring ‘format’ for now. At least today I have a sorta kinda funny (or two) that relates.

The first one-

I saw my doc again Wednesday. He wasn’t as frustrated with me this time. I think mostly cuz Mom once again went with and this time she piped up and said a whole lot. Stuff about symptoms I’d had in the last few weeks and stuff about how paranoia is the name of the game for me. How I’m scared to tell him anything for fear he’ll quit believing me or seeing me. (Actually the comment I’d made was closer to “He’s about 3mo past due for no longer believing me”… I started seeing him in June, you do the math.)

Anyhow. I’ve been having a real rough couple of weeks and so he decided to change my meds all up. I’m now on Zithromax (more about that later) and Flagyl, and 2, count them TWO anti-depressants. Oy vey! While Mom was writing down the instructions on how much and when and when to increase and so forth (cause I could never remember otherwise), doc had me stand up to do the whole stand-with-your-eyes-closed test. “Did you just tip?” he asked as I stood up out of the chair. Ummm, that would be a yes. (I’ve been WAY off-balance the last couple of weeks.)

I barely got my eyes closed when he decided that was enough… on to the grab-my-fingers-as-hard-as-you-can test. Flunked that one again, of course. “Still weak” he said. He doesn’t know it but I would have flunked that test 15 years ago! lol I commented that after last month’s visit my mom discovered (and declared) that my son had the same strength I did. (The more amazing thing is my daughter has way more! but I didn’t think of that at the time.) The funny is my doc’s response to that. He said “I bet your son likes that. He can arm wrestle Mom.”

Ok. Maybe you just had to be there, but I thought it was pretty funny. My doc also told me I was a real piece of work at this visit. I’m not sure how to take that. =/

The second funny I have for you deals with a new Olympic sport. Last night I stretched a little sitting here at the computer and when I was through I had a couple of muscles start twitching. Now the twitching is nothing new. I have dozens and dozens of muscle twitches all over all day long. I’ve even had my tongue twitch! This was a new thing, though. Synchronized muscle twitching. I had a twitch in each buttock in matching areas! Never had synchronized twitches before. It should totally be an Olympian event, I could so TOTALLY compete! LOL

On the ‘plan’ for this coming week??

Well, if I can manage to grab enough ‘feel ok’ time, I want to get started on Matthew’s western shirt. He was so excited to learn Mom could make western shirts with real honest-to-goodness pearl snaps! He picked out the fabric he wanted and is just giddy with anticipation. Me? Not so much. I can’t help it! I love making the western shirts, I do, but see, the thing is I kinda have in mind that they will look like… oh I don’t know… a western shirt?!?! when they are done. Not like something you’d see Bozo wearing. The fabric he picked out is a little bold and a little Oriental. Not exactly your typical western shirt fare. Ah well.

Also I’d like to get a t-shirt appliqued for Meagan to wear with her favorite pair of (new) culottes. Bright, bold lime green with frogs. She wants a shirt with one of each of the different frogs on it.

After that I want to get the DVD racks wrapped in denim and hung.

Then there are the pillows out of bandanas to make. And the curtains for the kitchen, laundry room, and linen closet. And then there’s the 3 different quilts I have started that I need to be working on…

Of course, chances of me getting even the first one done this coming week are slim. Still. I can dream.