Ok, so you know how every household has a Laundry Gremlin who will steal socks right out of the washing machine or dryer and replace them with something weird like a pair of XXXL tighty whitey underpants or a purple sparkly jockstrap? Well, lately my clothes have started to disappear but they aren't being replaced with unfamiliar garments. Yet.
What MY Laundry Gremlin seems to have a fondness for and is taking for their own use is my sweatpants. Yeah, yeah, I'm a fashion plate slash athlete (ok, not really) but at the end of the day, I like to put on what we in my family call "soft pants." Some of mine are old-fashioned gray fleece sweatpants, others are the velour "Juicy Couture" type although I buy knockoffs at that bastion of swank, Tar-zhay which actually has some nice and stylish clothes for very affordable prices and I do love me the 'Zhay and can drop easily drop $$$ in one outing on anything from groceries to household items to new chonies to magazines and once again I've gotten off my subject at hand which is my missing sweatpants.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed I couldn't find my pair of light blue velour, let's call them "lounge pants" because that sounds a tad more nice than "sweatspants" am I right? So I start digging through my drawers and then the laundry hampers and then the washer and dryer and nothing. I look under the bed, in the closet, in suitcases, the kids rooms, the linen closet, the coat closet and nope, nada. I can't find them anywhere.
Then this weekend, which was pretty grueling for me, I just wanted to lounge around in my lounge pants and went to put on my gray fleece lounge pants which are super soft and comforting and guess what? They're gone, too!
I am completely baffled by this. I can understand the Laundry Gremlin stealing socks although I so don't get the items that show up as replacements but why would the Laundry Gremlins be stealing my lounge pants?
I know some of my readers of this blog are so not believing me on this. Not that there's a Laundry Gremlin, that's believable, but that I actually do laundry. Yeah, I'm full of surprises.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
A Good Run of Bad Luck
I always start each new year with antici (pause pause pause) PAYSHUN because it's a fresh start with good intentions. You know, lose weight, exercise more, reduce spending and everything will be hunky dory.
Yeah, about that reduce spending thing. That's pretty much just flown right out the window and it's only February. So far, we've had a good run of bad luck and this bad luck has not been cheap.
Let's see, on only the 2nd day of the new year, Thing 1 hurt his knee. Two misdiagnoses, 1 unnecessary and excruciatingly painful procedure to drain non-existent water from his knee and a total of 3 weeks of hobbling around in pain before we realized the first doctor was an idiot and we went to a specialist , Thing 1 went Under the Knife to repair a knee cap that was broken in half. Our insurance deductible for this was in the low 4 figures. We told ourselves it was better than having to pay the whole amount. Oh, and we have Anthem Blue Cross who has informed us that our Individual Plan rate is going to be jacked up a whopping 39% in a few months. We had switched our medical insurance because our monthly premium with our old carrier was a couple of hundred dollars MORE than our monthly mortgage payment.
Ironically, the weekend Thing 1 was injured we had made a nice investment into Thing 1's now on hold racing career by purchasing a new (for us) race bike and having his old race bike completely rebuilt as he was supposed to race his old bike in some races and the new bike in other races. Yeah, that's not happening for a couple of months now but can I just say how pretty and sparkling and clean both bikes look sitting in the garage?
Then this past Friday, my Lucy left us. And we were left with a bit of a large vet bill. I told myself our luck HAS to change. And it did. But not for the better because for some reason, fate has decided to kick me/us in the teeth while we're down.
I woke up Saturday morning, still worn out from the events of the day before and discovered that my 3 year old laptop, the laptop that I have to have for business purposes since the programs that are required for both construction bids and my District officer job are not Mac compatible, up and died on me without any sort of warning whatsoever. It was working fine and dandy Friday night, we shut it down at bedtime and somehow in the middle of the night it died. With all my files trapped inside. I found this out when I went to fire it up and got a blue screen telling me of some sort of error and when I consulted with people who are much more computer literate than I am, they told me my hard drive is dead and good luck with that. So now I have to spend more $$$ to replace the hard drive and hope that the files can be recovered and if so to fork out more $$ for a backup hard drive so that if this happens again, and you know it will, I will have all my needed files safe and sound.
I've had my iMac for about 6 or 7 years now and yeah it's slower than molasses in a New England winter and the disk player hasn't worked in about 2 years and I'm still on OS 10.3.9 and not able to upgrade even to the 10.4's but unlike my 3 year old Gateway laptop turned paperweight, my old Mac just keeps going and going. I love my poor old Mac.
Oh, and I found out the hard way that my paper shredder that claims to also shred credit cards lied. Oh, it shredded the card all right but the plastic from the cards fused the blades of the shredder together and now it won't work.
And, last night I was informed that I had screwed up someone's points last year because I completely misunderstood how a scoring procedure was supposed to work and while it would have been nice if this had been brought to my attention before the 2009 racing year's points were finalized instead of waiting to speak up 6 weeks into the new racing year at which point there's nothing I can do about it especially since my laptop with the scoring program is dead but I still feel like a complete idiot and really, can I just start this year over?
And if you've made it all the way to the end of my whiny kvetch, you deserve sainthood.
Yeah, about that reduce spending thing. That's pretty much just flown right out the window and it's only February. So far, we've had a good run of bad luck and this bad luck has not been cheap.
Let's see, on only the 2nd day of the new year, Thing 1 hurt his knee. Two misdiagnoses, 1 unnecessary and excruciatingly painful procedure to drain non-existent water from his knee and a total of 3 weeks of hobbling around in pain before we realized the first doctor was an idiot and we went to a specialist , Thing 1 went Under the Knife to repair a knee cap that was broken in half. Our insurance deductible for this was in the low 4 figures. We told ourselves it was better than having to pay the whole amount. Oh, and we have Anthem Blue Cross who has informed us that our Individual Plan rate is going to be jacked up a whopping 39% in a few months. We had switched our medical insurance because our monthly premium with our old carrier was a couple of hundred dollars MORE than our monthly mortgage payment.
Ironically, the weekend Thing 1 was injured we had made a nice investment into Thing 1's now on hold racing career by purchasing a new (for us) race bike and having his old race bike completely rebuilt as he was supposed to race his old bike in some races and the new bike in other races. Yeah, that's not happening for a couple of months now but can I just say how pretty and sparkling and clean both bikes look sitting in the garage?
Then this past Friday, my Lucy left us. And we were left with a bit of a large vet bill. I told myself our luck HAS to change. And it did. But not for the better because for some reason, fate has decided to kick me/us in the teeth while we're down.
I woke up Saturday morning, still worn out from the events of the day before and discovered that my 3 year old laptop, the laptop that I have to have for business purposes since the programs that are required for both construction bids and my District officer job are not Mac compatible, up and died on me without any sort of warning whatsoever. It was working fine and dandy Friday night, we shut it down at bedtime and somehow in the middle of the night it died. With all my files trapped inside. I found this out when I went to fire it up and got a blue screen telling me of some sort of error and when I consulted with people who are much more computer literate than I am, they told me my hard drive is dead and good luck with that. So now I have to spend more $$$ to replace the hard drive and hope that the files can be recovered and if so to fork out more $$ for a backup hard drive so that if this happens again, and you know it will, I will have all my needed files safe and sound.
I've had my iMac for about 6 or 7 years now and yeah it's slower than molasses in a New England winter and the disk player hasn't worked in about 2 years and I'm still on OS 10.3.9 and not able to upgrade even to the 10.4's but unlike my 3 year old Gateway laptop turned paperweight, my old Mac just keeps going and going. I love my poor old Mac.
Oh, and I found out the hard way that my paper shredder that claims to also shred credit cards lied. Oh, it shredded the card all right but the plastic from the cards fused the blades of the shredder together and now it won't work.
And, last night I was informed that I had screwed up someone's points last year because I completely misunderstood how a scoring procedure was supposed to work and while it would have been nice if this had been brought to my attention before the 2009 racing year's points were finalized instead of waiting to speak up 6 weeks into the new racing year at which point there's nothing I can do about it especially since my laptop with the scoring program is dead but I still feel like a complete idiot and really, can I just start this year over?
And if you've made it all the way to the end of my whiny kvetch, you deserve sainthood.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Thank you
Thank you, everyone, for your comments and sympathy over the loss of my best friend, my constant companion of the last 11 years, my Lucy.
Friday night and Saturday morning were absolutely brutal and I was unprepared for the overwhelming feelings of grief. Family and friends have been so supportive and even Thing 1's cronies came to spend time with Lucy on her last day and pay their respects. One at a time, they knelt down and hugged her and petted her and told her what a good girl she was.
So last night, Thing 2 and I were watching TV, the menfolk had gone racing, and all of a sudden she grabs the remote, hits the Mute button and says, "Listen!" Coming from Lucy's favorite napping spot in the dining room was the familiar sound of a dog snoring, breathing and shifting its body against the baseboards. We just sat there staring at each other, listening all wide eyed with disbelief although I don't know why we'd be shocked because we're kind of used to hearing and seeing deceased family members hanging around but I guess we just weren't expecting this so soon.
And then at 4:24am this morning (I checked the time) I was woken up by the familiar sound of a dog coming through the dog door, which is interesting since the security cover has been on since Friday night, and quietly walking down the hall toward the bedroom. We have hardwood floors so the clack of claws is very distinctive and the floorboards squeak. The sounds stopped before reaching the turn toward my room, which is not surprising because nocturnal footsteps always stop before the turn toward my room. I lay there listening and, I'll admit, a little bit unnerved. I didn't hear anything else and went back to sleep.
I may not SEE Lucy anymore but she's still here with me.
Friday night and Saturday morning were absolutely brutal and I was unprepared for the overwhelming feelings of grief. Family and friends have been so supportive and even Thing 1's cronies came to spend time with Lucy on her last day and pay their respects. One at a time, they knelt down and hugged her and petted her and told her what a good girl she was.
So last night, Thing 2 and I were watching TV, the menfolk had gone racing, and all of a sudden she grabs the remote, hits the Mute button and says, "Listen!" Coming from Lucy's favorite napping spot in the dining room was the familiar sound of a dog snoring, breathing and shifting its body against the baseboards. We just sat there staring at each other, listening all wide eyed with disbelief although I don't know why we'd be shocked because we're kind of used to hearing and seeing deceased family members hanging around but I guess we just weren't expecting this so soon.
And then at 4:24am this morning (I checked the time) I was woken up by the familiar sound of a dog coming through the dog door, which is interesting since the security cover has been on since Friday night, and quietly walking down the hall toward the bedroom. We have hardwood floors so the clack of claws is very distinctive and the floorboards squeak. The sounds stopped before reaching the turn toward my room, which is not surprising because nocturnal footsteps always stop before the turn toward my room. I lay there listening and, I'll admit, a little bit unnerved. I didn't hear anything else and went back to sleep.
I may not SEE Lucy anymore but she's still here with me.
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