Garage Door

Several years ago the garage door decided that it didn't like cold weather.  It just stopped opening and we would have to disconnect it and open it ourselves.  Leaving wasn't so bad, it was the getting home part that was horrible.  Last year about this time we went out and bought a strong, powerful garage door.  I really think BJ was getting sick of me calling him and complaining about the thing.  The rest of last winter was beautiful, I was able to pull up to the house and pull right into the garage.  I was only recently reminded of this event due to Timehop reminding me about my Facebook excitement.

Tonight coming home from work, I have both kids in the car, it is a scorching 2 degrees outside, and the garage doesn't open.  I figure I must have hit the wrong button, so I hit it again.  Still nothing.  I hit it again, I see the light on in the garage and I quickly remember how we almost started a fire in our old opener when it froze shut.  I park, and run in the front door to check the garage from the inside.  Well low and behold, I found the problem, the doohickey that connected the motor to the door was not attached.  Don't worry, I got this, I can dead lift a door, easy peasy.  I mean I did it a bunch of times while pregnant, I got this now.  I fling the door open, and it flew up hitting the arm and hearing pieces falling off.  I look around the garage and hope to find the screws that just fell off.  I found A screw and put it aside, then bring in the car and the kids.  When BJ got home he found the problem and the real screw.  After several moments in the cold garage and a run to Home Depot, the garage is fixed again.

P.S. We are not billionaires, we did not win the Powerball.  Guess I will head to work tomorrow, and all my lofty dreams of what good I could do with the money will go to the back of my mind.  

We've moved!!

Surprise! We have decided to move.  Not really sure when it was all made final, or even when it happened exactly, but it did.  You may be asking where we moved to, or how we sold our house, or even what did we buy? Truth is we were able to move our whole house, yard and all.  We moved our town and our state.  We are somewhere in the arctic circle.  I am still waiting to see my first polar bear but we are getting another 18 inches of snow between now and Wednesday. Awesome!

Expiration dates are just suggestions... Right???

Let me tell you something about me...wait this is my blog it's all about me!  But here is another little bit about me.  

Several years ago we changed our spending habits and the way we view our  finances.  Around that time we really cut back on our non-essential spending.  That unfortunately took away a lot of my shop for fun time.  Because that was gone I strongly looked forward to grocery shopping every week.  It was something that had to get done and I was spending cold hard cash.  I was getting great at finding "deals" to save the money I needed while still getting all that we wanted.  I admit we did get some odd things bit all was good.  It was also good that we have income extra storage space in our kitchen because I became queen of the after holiday sales and storing things for the following year.  For example, I have the die to make Easter eggs, a ginger bread house and two boxes of candy canes all in the cupboard right now.  I do admit I TRY to buy things that won't go bad, but some times I forget we have that thing until it's too late.  I didn't mention that I have had that ginger bread house since the Christmas before last due to me forgetting about it twice.

 

Now unintentionally this forgetfulness has impacted parish able food as well.  But some of the things I completely disregard the expiration date.  Like a bottle of Italian dressing as long as there is not mold in the bottle, I think it is still edible.  If cereal is past it's date, it's okay.  I have however, come to find out that sometimes that date may be for your overall safety.  I recently (as in 3 months ago) I found a can of crescent rolls in the fridge. I typically buy these when they are on sale because we have so many quick dinner ideas for them.  So this day when I found them they were the only ones in the fridge.  No biggy, I peeled back the label and BAM! The can explodes.  So much so that I was now standing at the counter with my hand throbbing, the can across the island and crescent roll dough on me, BJ, the counter, and I'm sure the floor.  I the. Hear from upstairs, "Whatw as that?" Ooh thing dear, just your lunch.  BJ was floored about to get really made and contact the company.  He grabs the can, looks a t the expiration date...oh you know only Oct of 2006!  Yeah that is a six.  As in before we even moved into this house... Wow!  They still tasted fine, just a bit flat not very puffy.

BJ however, does not share my disregard of experation dates.  I came home last night to a pile of candy, and some other stuff on the counter that were past the expiration dates.  He even threw my jar of crushed garlic (I don't use it much so it has taken while to use.  Apparently he tasted it and said it tasted funny.  It'ts straight garlic, of course it tastes funny.  It's raw garlic.  Alright I'll clean up a bit, but every time I throw away food that was past it's date I have a sad moment knowing that the money and time put into (fill the blank).

Therefore, if we ever all die or get sick, you may just want to jump to the conclusion that is was because of bad food.

Happy day off!

What did I do all day you ask? Lay around? Sleep? Fun stuff?

Nope! I cleaned my whole house.  I always hate cleaning the house.  I know it is a 5-6+ hour activity and physically exhausting at that.  I actually haven't deep cleaned the house since around Thanksgiving and I found some gross stuff.  During that time I moved things in our house that have been in place since we moved in.  Yeah that was bad.  

This time I started last night and did some of the "easy" rooms. I typically have only about 5 hours of attention/energy to clean the house so by starting the night before I figured I could get everything done.  I did real well today I even Cinderella style cleaned the floor, although I didn't talk to any mice while I was doing it.  The only room that didn't get done was the master bedroom. But I hate doing that room myself.  I ALWAYS come across stuff that has come from my huaband's pocket and I never know how important it is or what it is half the time.  So that room is still blah but the rest of the house looks great! 

Now I need to have company over so people can see my beautiful house, before Fridays because I am anticipating the house to barf again.  

P.S. Thanks to my family for taking my boy for the night and day so I could get this all done! It was greatly appreciated.

Just a Taste

Yesterday BJ fixed the garage door!  It opened and closed all by itself! It was wonderful I didn't have to get out of my car I even stayed warming. Then the temp dropped again and the door refused to open grr. I do, however, have the world's best husband that came out and opened the door for me.  Come on warm weather, I need my garage to open.  

Dear Garage Door,

Dear Garage Door,

You are a key part of our home.  You keep our home protected and more importantly our stuff protected.  When we moved in we even upgraded you to have the motor out on so, so we wouldn't have to do any of the hard stuff ourselves.  However, I have a bit of a beef that we need to discuss, your function is to open and close to let us out and in.  When you decide it is too hot and don't want to close all the way and you make us sit outside playing "hit my button as fast as you can" it's not fun.  It actually makes us late for work and crabby.  And when you decide it's to cold to open and need us to physically get out of the car to encourage you to open that too makes us crabby.  The cherry on the top of this wonderful Sunday though is that now you are refusing to close.  Come on!!!!! It really is obnoxious. I realize that you have the upper hand in this deal because you know we won't get rid of you but this is a plea to work with the rest of the house.

Sincerely,

The home owners.

Wendesday

Many of you must wonder what the heck I do Wendesday and Friday.  Well let me just tell you.  Wendesday is cleaning day.  I try to deep clean for 2-3 hours before I have to go to work.  The problem I run into is our dog.  She is black and sheds all year round.  So everywhere you go there is dog hair, and it sticks around for ever.  Takes so much time, I usually get half of what I want to done because I have to clean and reclean areas because of her.  I'm trying to set up some sort of cycle so I can deep clean each area of the house once every few weeks.  Hopefully that will shorten the amount of time I spend cleaning each area. 

Friday is shopping day.  After dropping Elijah off at school and I get breakfast then head to get food.  Once I get home and put away the food if there is any time left I can run the vaccume threw a room or two before I have to leave for work. 

What I did this weekend.

I should have taken before and after pictures, however, I was just too ashamed about what the before looked like.  As far as the after picture is concerned, I'm too sleepy to do that right now.  So let me just tell you.  First of in three weeks time we will be participating in a community garage sale.  BJ and I spent a while last week starting to organize things around the house.  On Saturday night we spent from 5 until 11:30 moving things, deciding to get things out of the house, and organizing.  We now have half of our old Crap room in the garage ready for pricing and organizing for the garage sale and a semi-craft room upstairs.  Then we went through our third closet and emptied out the random stuff in there into the loft.  Now we need to figure out how to organize our billion rolls of wrapping paper, ribbons, tissue paper, bags and all that other stuff used to gift wrap.  Then we spent most of Sunday cleaning and let me just tell you how lovely half of our house looks.  Maybe the rest of the week we will get to the rest of the house. 

Mission for next weekend: Sort, and Price all the stuff for the garage sale.  Therefore, if you have some free time come on down and join in the fun.

Community Watch

For those of you that don't live in our neighborhood I'll get you up to speed on things that happen around her.  We are a townhouse in the middle of a bunch of homes.  Things happen, just like in all neighborhoods.  Last year we had a drug bust in November after an entire summer of stake outs in front of our house.  This whole summer has been real quiet, not a lot of cop activity going on.  However, after dinner today we noticed a weird car parked behind our house on the construction road.  Hmmmm, more drug activity?  What's going on? What do we do?  Call the cops!! Duh.  Out came the cops and it was all good.  They were there for legal reasons and it was all good.  Then the cop got to come to our house and let us know.  But just an FYI: if you are parked on a road behind my house that is not really a road I will call the cops on you just to make sure your not up to no good. 

Guess What?

The housing market is horrible.  I just wanted to let you all know in case you have been living under a rock over the past few years.  However, if you live under a rock, it probably couldn't depreciate in value.  I mean it was probably dirt cheep.  Get it "dirt" because it's covered in dirt.  HAHA so funny.

Anyway, BJ and I tried to refinance our house but we knew we had lost value in our home because we built when the housing market was at it's peak.  Right after we closed on the house the market crashed and has continued over the past 4 years.  Well today we found out just exactly how large the crash was.  We lost $65,000 from then until now.  So refinancing is out.  Unless, as the mortgage guy said, we could bring 12,000 to the closing.  Yeah if we had that kind of money we wouldn't be looking to refi.  Just awesome. 

Spoke to soon

Remember my dishwasher?  Remember the only thing wrong with it was that it was leaking a little bit?  Yeah...About that...Does not draining count as something not good?  I mean does that really matter?  It drained after the first load...what more can you ask.  So after we stood around looking at if for a while here is what we did.

JON HELP!  In comes Jon.  he stands and looks at it, scratches his head and says,  What's different since it drained.  BJ, Elijah and I all look at each other and shrug our shoulders, then scratch our head some more.  Jon then says, "something has changed."  Finally BJ remembers he put in foot boards...WITH A HAMMER.  Probably moved the dishwasher enough to kink the hose.  At this point Jon lays down on our floor and takes a nap.  I continue to make our dinner by stepping over him, Elijah climbs on him and BJ follows suit and lays down too.  Elijah feeling left out lays down.  However, now that I think of it they may have been looking under the dishwasher to see if it was still leaking.  But I don't really know. 

We will see if the slight move forward helps the drain tomorrow.  Let's all hope for dry.

I got a new...

DISHWASHER!!!!

Remember BJ broke mine last May.  Well we went out on Saturday to "look around" and get prices to start watching for sales and what not.  What did you find you ask?  Well first BJ found that dishwashers were more than a couple of hundred bucks.  Second we found a really big sale with an additional 10% off.  After an hour or so at the store completely looking at every part of the dishwasher, then several more hours at home researching it and calling other stores to get their opinion on the price.  BJ and then decided to go and get it, drive it home in our not so Semi Useless Vehicle (SUV).  On Sunday BJ and Jon installed it and now we have a new dishwasher.  It's quiet, it cleans dishes, and it only leaks a little bit.  It's wonderful.

During and After

I always think about taking before and after pictures after I have already started a project.  Just like our yard work, I didn't take a picture of the ugly plants in the ground.  Just after they had come out.  Tonight was another moment like that.  I went to clean the kitchen at 10:00 at night and I got a bit side tracked.  As I began cleaning I saw the giant box of fruit snacks I had hidden from Elijah (on top of the fridge, I know not a good spot) and thought I needed to find a new spot for them.  That lead me to wanting them to go up above in the pantry, but having to make space for them.  I started clearing out the shelves that had held all of the toddler dishes until we needed them (about 14 months ago).  I had been meaning to find them a new place for them but that was put on the back burner.  Once I cleared out all the dishes and found a new place for them I had two open shelves.  Wahoo!  Then it was to the food.  I emptied out all the food and as I turned my back it reproduced.  I was stunned how much food we had in our pantry. 

Please note the 3 bags of marshmallows (one bag has jumbo mellows I can't wait to put them on the fire), the bag of candy canes, the bags of the melted freezer pops, and random pieces of candy. 

After finding all the food a home and not really getting rid of much I still have a ton of room on my shelves for more food.  At 11:00 I had finished the cabinet but the kitchen looked the same as when I had started the cleaning.  Oh well, tomorrow is another day. 

Oops!

Making dinner tonight I dropped the 26 oz container of graded parmesan cheese on the floor.  It hit the floor and exploded!  Elijah and I spend the next 5 minutes cleaning it up and keeping the dog from eating it.  Later I realized I broke the top of the container.  I see lots of cheese being used in the near future.  Anyone need parmesan cheese? 

Spring part II

As our grass is turning green I am noticing there are LARGE areas of our yard that have never in the course of 4 years been green.  BJ and I pay a boat load for our association but every year our crappy yard looks the same.  Dead.  Now there are areas of our yard that are dead due to our dog.  Those I fix every year.  However, the front yard has never been touched.  Every summer I love to walk around barefoot, however, those spots feel horrible on bare feet.  Plus since I am an end unit, my house is the one I see and the one everyone of my neighbors see as we pull into the driveway.  I have a strict rule that when I buy my next home the curb apple has to be there, it's not currently here.  I ended up thinking I needed to rip up all the sod and just replant seed.  BJ convinced me that we didn't need to do that, we just needed to ruff up the old stuff, and just rip up the really really bad parts.  We then mixed two whole bags of dirt with seed and placed it on all the bad parts.  Now every time we drive by the yard we give the grass seeds good mojo and tell them to grow, grow, grow.  Now we have to pray that they don't blow away tonight in the crazy wind storm.

Is my house on fire?

I left work today to go deliver some marketing things for my job.  I have been a little low on my caseload and as the weather is getting nicer (sunnier, not warmer) I wanted to get out and enjoy it a bit.  I headed out and headed East, then turned around to head West.  After a couple of miles I look up in the direction of my house and see billowing black smoke.  I start to think, "well my house isn't really that far South, but it's probably close."  I keep on driving, head to a new location then get deeply lost in Oswego.  I finally figure out where I am and find a couple more doctors.  I then turn around and realize that the fire is still going and I'm real sure now it is close to my house.  I was only a couple minutes away so I decided to drive by house.  I mean I was worried especially with the house close to us burning down almost 2 years ago.  As I get closer to the house the smoke is getting larger, and darker.  I turn down the road that runs behind my house and I realize the smoke is close but not as close as my house.  I drive by and see that the house is still standing, the wet lands in the backyard however, were very black.  CONTROL BURN!  I think next time they need to warn the neighborhood before they try to burn down our house.  I'm just saying.

I can't sleep

The new bedroom plan is really throwing me off.  I can't sleep.  I don't know if it is because I now look directly into our crazy blah closets.  I started planning out the new closet system and I am now crazy about it.  Every hour that I don't have something to do, I am thinking about the way I want my closets to look.  So now I'm obsessing over it to the quarter of an inch. 

The other problem I seem to be having, after 2-3 days of organizing and reorganizing the stuff in drawers and in closets, I now cannot find any of my clothing.  GRRR.  It takes me a bit longer to get dressed now. 

Always expect the unexpected

After a fun family day to our 3rd annual Valentine's Day weekend Chicago Auto show (blog to follow) we come home and have a bit of chaos.  I am not one that likes to live on the edge.  My son takes after me and loves predictability and masters routines and schedules quickly.  As I'm about to begin our evening routine to get him to bed I look up and notice a spot on the ceiling.  That wasn't there before, at least I don't think it was.  I frantically call BJ in to take a peak and realize there are two other spots smaller and not as dark on either side of the one I had found.  Then I see the bubble, no bigger than a grape on the opposite wall but in the same line as the first three spots, of sagging paint/drywall.  NOT GOOD.  It is never good to see the ceiling (that leads to your attic) wet.  Especially when you were present at the time of building and know with 100% certainty that there are no pipes in the ceiling.  We then climb up to the attic and find several cups of snow mixed in with our installation.  HMMM, wonder how long that has been there.  After removing as much snow as possible and poking a hole in the ceiling we called our association, which again, am really happy I pay them large amounts of money every month to deal with things that our not our problem.  Now someone will come out take a look at our attic and our ceiling and fix  the 4 areas (meaning cut out the drywall and patch it) but not paint.  We just had all of our ceiling's painted 2 years ago and now we get to have that one done again.  BOOOOOO!!!

Snow Day

It all started Tuesday afternoon.  The snow started falling and the wind started blowing.  By the end of the night it was crazy outside.  It made some crazy awesome designs on the doors and windows.

 Wednesday morning we decided that it was to dangerous for BJ to head to work and it was decided the night before that I wouldn't have to go to work until at least 12.  So we stayed in bed until the little guy woke us up at 7:30.  I took the dog out to pee because the snow in the backyard was up to her ears.  We went for our walk and stayed in the middle of the street because there were no cars or anything out there.  It was fun! Then we had breakfast in our PJs.

 After breakfast we got our snow gear on and went out so Elijah could experience "the snow of the century!"  Daddy even blew up Elijah's sled and he thought he would help and blow up his sippy cup.  It was funny to watch the little man copy his daddy.

 

 

Once we had all our snow gear on we took the little man out in the snow.  He was not happy about it AT ALL!  he cried for the majority of the time.  But I still took a few pictures.  If you look closely in one of the pictures you can see the 40 MPH winds.  Yes, I am such a great parent I took my child out in crazy wind chill.

 Once Elijah had had enough we took a couple of pictures on what it looked like around.  Our poor neighbor put off clearing out their garage and look what happened to her car.  It took BJ and Tristan only about 15 min to dig the poor car out.  And yes the snow bank really is taller than me, and this was one of the smallest ones around, just the only one we could take a picture of from our front door.

 

 

 We went inside and quickly took off our snow gear.  Elijah decided that his new sled would make a great chair.  He also decided that he wanted to be pulled around the house.  Really?  We couldn't do this outside?  That lasted about 10 minutes before I was done.  Then he just sat there.

 

Then it was time for lunch. Elijah wanted to save some on his face. 

 When we were done eating BJ decided it was time to did the dog a path.  As he was making his way from the front door to the back I watched a cop drive into a snow pile.  I told BJ to go help him so off he went to dig out the cop.  We have to suck up to them as much as possible since summer is just around the corner and we probably will be calling them A LOT! Right behind the cop was the snow plow.  Great timing!

 

 Once BJ had a good path for the dog out they went.  I took some good action pictures of Rescue.  We almost lost her once or twice in the snow drifts. 

 

Then the entire house took a 2-3 hour nap.  Very productive day.  By the time we woke up we needed to get out of the house, however, the options were very limited so we ended up at Wally world. Apparently, every one and their cousin were there.  But the parking lot had some good pictures.



Stinky

The other day I was minding my own business and sleeping.  I mean what else is there to do at 2:00 am.  Well prior to that day BJ had been stinking up the house with some horrible farts.  I mean, they were bad.  Green gas was coming out of his but and he was trying to kill the rest of the house.  So fast forward to 2:00 am and he let one rip while he was sleeping.  It was silent though so that wasn't what woke me up, but yet the need to roll over.  So over I go and a sniff, sniff, stinkyness creeps out of the nicely sealed sheets and into my noses.  And right there at 2:03 am it hits me, "I wonder how much that stink eater blanket costs?" YES, someone out there made a blanket that absorbs stinky farts so this does not happen to you.  Then a couple of nights later it happened again.  Now I'm seriously look into this blanket.  Something needs to be done BEFORE I DIE!!!!

It's called the Better marriage blanket.  Are you kidding me?  You have to check this out.  https://bettermarriageblanket.com/