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...

I Think My Brother Is Coming To VIsit!!!

This is a belated post...I forgot to post it on my brother's birthday.  It was a few weeks ago!!!

I have two brothers…both of them engineers…both of them cute and funny.

My brother John’s birthday is today. Normally my mom would have called him to wish him a Happy Birthday…she would have sent him a dozen flowery cards and she would have cried and called him “my Johnny”. She might even have sung Happy Birthday to him over the phone and she probably would have had a tear in her eye because he was not at home for her to fuss over. When we were little and had birthdays tons of my aunts and uncles lived in the town that we grew up in. It was called McDonald…now older and smartier…we call it McDonaldland.

But…everyone would have been at our house for our birthdays. There would have been tons of stuff to eat…and a huge home made birthday cake with this white whipped kind of icing that I crave to this day. The cake would be in the middle of the dining room table and my dad would turn the lights off, the candles on the cake would be gleaming and everyone would sing. We would have birthday cards with money in them from all of our relatives and my Uncle Frank would always say it was his birthday, too, even though it wasn’t. That would be the way we would celebrate my brother John’s birthday. My siblings and I always told my mom that he was her favorite and it would make her so mad…not mad mad just funny mad. But I really think he was. He was very sick when he was born and I remember my mom just holding him and rocking him to make him feel better. He has a tiny little scar on his ankle from a blood transfusion that saved his life. My mom would do anything for him…she loved him so much. She always made extra meatballs when she was making her yummy pasta sauce because she knew he would eat 5 or 6 before we had dinner. And anything he did for her, she cherished. They had a very special sort of relationship.

My brother John was the sort of kid who was smart, funny and prone to injuries…many many injuries. He chipped his tooth when he was a crossing guard…we called them patrol boys at our school because he was playing around with the flag pole thing that he used to stop traffic. He was riding an antique bike that he was told not to ride and fell into our neighbors stucco house and had to have stitches…I found him crying in our garage with his hand on his head…he looked up at me and asked me to look at his head to see if it was “blooding” and I nearly fainted…he needed ten stitches to close the gash. He broke his arm when he fell off of his new two wheeler and I think he broke something else playing baseball. He ate spaghetti sandwiches on either white or Italian bread….OMG!!! My dad was always calm and cool and collected as he took my brother to various doctors and emergency rooms. My mom was the freak out kind of mom…tears first, admonitions that he was careless and then a race to the hospital. My dad was the one who removed the fishhooks from my brother’s fingers and the splinters from his bare feet and put ice on him when he got burned from caps and sparkliers…



My brother John was amazing when my parents both became ill. He would fly into town to give my sister a much needed rest from the responsibility of my parents. When they were still at home he would sit with them and cook for them and take care of the things they needed. He was patient and loving as my mom slowly grew more and more detached from us. When my parents could no longer stay at home and were in an assisted living home he would again fly into town and then visit them no less than three times a day. He would time it so that he would be there in the morning and then would sit with my dad for lunch and then help him back to his room. Then he would go back again for dinner…

It was almost unbearable seeing my mom and dad not in their beloved home but he did it for them. And again unbearable when my mom did not always know who he was…but he was always there.



My brother John was always my protector…he helped me buy my first car but then we had a huge fight when he thought he could drive it whenever he wanted. My dad was mad at me for staying out late with friends. My brother John snuck me into the house in spite of how mad my dad was at me. When I was in college and worked at a summer camp in the mountains of North Carolina my first summer, he gave me my favorite James Taylor album on a cassette to take with me. I still have a little wooden log cabin that he brought me from a fishing trip.



So…there always are so many things that make up the life of a family…we lived in a small town, went to college close by and grew up very protected. My brother John was the first of us to leave home…his first job was in Michigan and I still remember him sitting at the wheel of a huge UHaul van, with his furniture and possessions, ready to leave McDonaldland for his first adventure. My mom and I waved him off until we couldn’t see him any more and then we cried and cried. From that moment on he was always “ my John…the engineer”. They would save and savor and share his successes with all of their family and friends.



So…I am not with my brother for his birthday but my heart is. I know my mom and dad are thinking of their wonderful smart son who fulfilled all of their dreams for him.



Happy Birthday, John!!!