Hubby just detected that Daniel’s car has a leak in the exhaust system. Not the greatest news for a struggling student who is about to embark on a life of independence, eh? My concern is that he will ignore this as long as he possibly can and then only fix it when he has to and it has gotten really bad. Maybe I need to send him here to look at some of these Mopar performance parts and then he and his Dad can fix his car before it gets too bad.

The upcoming wedding of Daniel and Jessica. You might say we are approaching this with guarded enthusiasm. They are very much in love and very happy…but also very young. Life will be filled with lots of responsibilities for their young shoulders and we are so hoping that school does not get pushed onto the back burner when “real life” gets tough…

In the meantime, though…trying to support them and help them begin their married life with all of the happiness and hope for the future that any young couple deserves.

December 10…three weeks away!

I had no idea that those new fangled cash registers are called “point of sale” systems…or POS systems for short. Who knew? I know they are everywhere now and they seem to operate much like a computer. I’d probably be lost if I were a cashier somewhere. Then again…maybe it would be fun.

‘course I couldn’t imagine having to actually LEAVE MY HOME to work! How spoiled am I?????

Have you done this? Are you considering it?

Personally…I’m more than a little miffed that they are changing formats YET AGAIN. We still have bins of video cassettes and audio cassettes for crying out loud! We now have fully committed to DVDs and they are now mixing it up again. Maybe instead of following the pack, we’ll stage a protest and refuse to buy a bluray player. Of course…we all know that we’d cave eventually…

So…is it worth it?

Isaiah was bundled tonight in his footie pajamas, slippers and robe. I hadn’t realized how cumbersome he must have felt his pajamas were until I heard him mutter to himself, “I’m fat!” Soon, he was shedding his robe and then he said, “There, that’s better!” If only it were that easy to burn belly fat, eh? The things a three-year-old will come up with and actually say!

I went downstairs Wednesday morning with some fresh milk to rotate up some older milk and put the newest milk downstairs in the fridge. Next to our extra fridge, stands an upright freezer that is full to the brim of meat, bread, summer vegetables and baked goods. I happened to notice a small puddle on the floor in front of the freezer.

I hastily put the milk away and stepped over to see what was up. To my horror, I noticed the door ajar about an inch. I opened the freezer and was dismayed to see a things in various stages of thaw.

I quickly shut the door and tried to figure out how long it had been open. My best guess is it was open for about 36 hours…when I sent the kids down to get a jug of cider. I got a thermometer to see what the temperature inside the freezer was and was glad to see that it was about 40 degrees. The meat that was inside was still safe.

I assessed the freezer over the rest of the day and was a little nervous about how the freezer seemed to be recovering…the food was not refreezing as I had anticipated it would.
Before I went to bed last night I checked the temperature again and it was 30…but the food was still not refreezing quickly.

NO change today…so I called Frigidaire finally and talked to a service rep. She told me that we had to manually reset the the defrost mechanism in the back of the freezer before it would cool properly. This was certainly an obscure bit of information…I did not find anything suggesting this would be necessary in either the owners manual or the multiple internet searches I did about this situation.

Anyway…we reset the freezer…and while it was manually defrosting we used to time to give it a good cleaning out inside.

I just came back upstairs from checking on it again and the temp has fallen down to about 15…so it is cranking once again.

One of my worst nightmares (as far as food storage is concerned) almost came true this week. Disaster averted, though! Oh, and I’ve already told the kids that no one under the age of 21 is allowed to ever open that freezer again!

They are working for most of us! At this writing, all but Sarah and hubby are on the mend. Daniel never even caught it, so we are very happy about that, too.

I will say, though…that I am somewhat concerned about Sarah. We thought she was getting better. Both she and David caught it on the same day (Saturday). David is now completely better except for his cough. On Tuesday, it appeared that Sarah was getting better and she had a little more zip to her. Tuesday evening, however, the zip was gone and she went to bed very early.

Yesterday and today…the fever has returned and she has spent almost the entire day sleeping. She is also not eating. I wish I knew what her secret best appetite suppressant is because it sure seems to be a doozy.

As I write this, she has been up in bed for several hours already. If she is not better by tomorrow, I may take her back to the DR.

After a quick trip to the doctor this morning…face masks and all…we have had h1n1 confirmed.

As of today, everyone but hubby and Daniel have it. This is one NASTY bug, people. If you get it, be prepared to hunker down and kiss good bye at least a week of your life.

Each day, I have been waking up to something new and painful. Today it is my ears.

Prayers appreciated.

As some readers undoubtedly remember, this blog has been the target of several attacks over the last few months. The first one kept returning and returning and finally I traced it to originating somewhere in Siberia! Finally my host helped me stop that attach from continuing. Most recently, the entire blog was brought down and I had to wipe the whole thing clean and start over from scratch. That was very scary…but I learned a lot in the process. That is why services such as free online backup get my attention. Anyone who values what they have online might consider something like this to preserve websites.

I fully admit, the only thought I have put into tiles lately is the though that the tiles I have in my upstairs bathroom on the vanity back splash are needing some serious elbow grease. I think teenage boys are the biggest source of tile abuse. They seem to splatter EVERYwhere. Love them to pieces…but they sure are messy! Thankfully, hubby seems to have a thing for clean bathrooms for some reason…so I can usually count on him getting to this lovely task before I do.