Everything Is Broken...

I love my house.

But it is broken.

Our shower is broken.

Our refrigerator is still broken.

That won't be fixed until next Friday.

Even our kitchen is broken.

I hate chaos. I hate things broken.

Here are the fixes.

The shower is being retiled and made much bigger.

The kitchen is getting new granite counters and a bigger island with more cabinet space.

The refrigerator is still a mystery.

No one is quite sure what will fix it.

Thank goodness for the basement refrigerator.

Last night we had salads from the Fresh Market.

Lunch was a chicken sandwich from Jake's.

Tonight is sushi.

We will make a better plan for food as soon as we can see straight.

I think putting a cooler upstairs for water and juice and half and half for our coffees would help...the basement is really far away...almost in another town.

Here is our tentative plan of attack.

Bathroom will be torn apart and put back together in a few weeks because the tile guy is on vacation...I hope he has a good time.

We shower in guest bathrooms.

Kitchen...August...another week without cooking...how sad...

Refrigerator this Friday...the part will be here soon...the repairman won't.

Understaffed...everyone away on vacation...I hope they are having a lovely time.

I spent most of my day listening to the description of the demolition and the rest of my day in my bed with a headache.  Lucy helped me feel better.

I called my sister Paula so many times I irritated her...

This summer is not going as I planned...we do not deal well with chaos...we move before this happens...usually.

My husband says we are not moving.  He says I can learn to deal with this.  He called me a baby.

When will I get my life back?

Refrigerator Rant!!!

I can make list after list of bad things that happen to me when my husband is out of town. 

A squirrel was in the basement.

A bird flew down the chimney.

I crashed the car on ice.

Another bird flew into the sunroom.

Another ( or the same ) squirrel found its way into the sunroom.

Someone left two tame geese on our doorstep and I put them in our basement and bought them a swimming pool.

I found a horse in our backyard.  Dennis would not let me keep it!!!

Another cat that we had killed a snake in our basement and brought it upstairs to me.

I rescued a zebra finch from school and now he has a companion, a huge cage and we have more trouble finding a sitter for him than for our cat.

These things have happened all over the country...the geese here, the horse when we lived in St. Louis...for some odd reason the snake was in St. Louis, too.

So of course when something breaks I am on my own.

Yesterday the refrigerator said that its inside temperature was 6o degrees.

I called a repairman.

He fixed it. I paid him $300.00

Today the refrigerator inside temperature is 6o degrees.

Again.

I called again.

We have a warranty for the refrigerator that we didn't even know we had.

A repairman is coming again tomorrow to fix my fixed refrigerator.

I wonder if I will get my $300.00 back.

Have you ever been frustrated when things break for no apparent reason?



Thank You, Claire Cook...A Review...

I just finished reading Claire Cook's Best Staged Plans and I loved it...it was funny and witty and clever and delightful.  But...the best parts of the book were the tips about decluttering your house.  I have been on a whirlwind cyclonic cleansing fury ever since I finished it yesterday.  The book is a novel but sort of strewn within the story are amazing tips...again...I loved it!!! 

Quick story overview...Sandra wants to sell her home and lead a simpler life with her husband.  She is a stager...she helps people set up their houses in order to sell them.  She can walk into any house and know what to do to get it to sell.  Now she wants to do this to her own life.  Her husband and grown son ( finished with college but living in his parents' basement ) are not as "into" this as Sandra is.  There are glitches in Sandra's life...her best friend, her married daughter, a homeless woman, her husband's attitude and Sandra's own dissatisfaction with this part of her life.  She wants change and more dynamics.  She wants to be free and unfettered.  She wants a new life.

So far here is what I have learned.

Toss out stuff you don't use or haven't used in years.  Label boxes with the words Crazy, Donate and Trash...and start pitching.  An item for the crazy box might be the keys to a car you no longer own...

Invest in tons of Lysol Linen Scent Spray and travel with it...spray shoes and bedding at all hotels.  I have been searching all over for this and so far can't find it.

Pack your suitcase as if it were a cigarette box...roll and stack clothes upright!!!

Trader Joe's is your friend...any meal can look and taste homemade if you know what to buy there.

Always arrange things in a grouping of three...no matter what it is...if you don't have three of something go to the next odd number.

I love Claire Cook...I loved this book!!!

Tomorrow I attack the bookshelves!!!

I Amazed MySelf Today...

I have ARCs from GalleyGrab and NetGalley and I wanted to read them on my new iPAD2...for ARCS in this ebook format I much prefer reading them on my iPAD2...the formatting seems to be so much better.  GalleyGrab mentioned Adobe Digital Reader so I downloaded that and then I found out about an iPAD2 app called Bluefire Reader.  With this app I can download ebooks directly to my iPAD2 directly from NetGalley.

I actually installed everything in minutes and it works!!!

That is my reason for amazing myself!!!

Do you ever amaze yourself when you can perform a feat of technology without a single hitch?

Sorry for the overuse of the word amazing...but I just couldn't help myself!!!

The only minor hitch is that I can't figure out how to get ebooks from GalleyGrab on my iPAD2...

Oh well...