Holidaze

I'm writing the following blog post as if I were writing it to ... well, you. 
This is how an e-mail from me might look should you ever get one that is this lengthy. 

For the record?
I pretty much talk like this in real life. (WYSiWYG)


Hey! How are you? It's been a while - it's been a crazy couple of weeks. I've missed you and have been thinking about you...which is one reason I'm finally sitting down to write. I didn't want you to think I was avoiding you. Or had forgotten about you.

You're rather impossible to forget. ^_^

I'm sorry we couldn't get together before the holidays. Mini-E was not feeling well and then the rest of us fell like dominoes. The weekend before Thanksgiving I did not much more than sleep and sniffle. I got to the Doctor to see if I had bronchitis. 

I did. 

Then I got worse instead of better but that's the way it often goes with me and bronchitis. At least I caught it before I got really bad. My white count was 11k.  When I asked him, jokingly, "is that good"

The doc laughed and said, "Well, if you're bacteria."

After making QUITE certain I wasn't pregnant (I didn't have to write out an oath, but it was close) he put me on Levaquin and sent me on my way. Blech..

The Professor went to the store Saturday. He's nice like that. 

I felt fine on Sunday. We went to church. Monday passed without incident - mostly because we didn't do a whole lot. I still wasn't feeling the snazziest and it was a holiday weekend. Tuesday.


Ah. Tuesday.


Mini-E (Bubbles) went out to the garage and came back. "Mama! I'm playing in the water!!!"


"That's nice." I said, thinking of what needed to happen next.


Wait. 


We only get water near the garage door when it rains. It hasn't rained. So there should be NO water in the garage. I head out to investigate to make certain that she hasn't done anything silly. Or obnoxious.


Nope. Sure enough. There's water trailing from the utility closet that holds the furnace and the hot water tank. Sigh.


I open it up and we've got a slow drip coming from the tank to the stand to the floor and it's apparently been there since...perhaps sunday??. Dripping. And collecting water.. Enough that it has created a rivulet of water through the garage. It's puddled under the Professor's wood pile. Praise God his really cool purple wood was off the floor. 


UGH.


I called the Professor...my knowledge of water tanks would probably fill a cup. A small one. I was feeling the need for back up. 


He told me  he would do what he could and I start cleaning up water. Mini-E manages to slip and fall in the puddle near the garage door. Ice is administered and I start cleaning up water. Shooing children from the garage. Clean the water first and pick up stuff later. That was what I was thinking.


As I cleaned up water, I discovered that the insulation is dripping wet. Which explains why there was no flood. The insulation is saturated indicating a tank rupture. The Professor does come home and also discovers that we've got a turn off valve leak.


Sigh. 


So. 


We call around. L*we's can come NEXT week. A local plumber can come Wednesday. 
YAY. PLEASE come.

Meanwhile, Did I tell you that our main computer blue screened and I could not save it?
So, thinking our hard drive had crashed we took the system to a local repair place. 
I called them Monday. 
"Oh, yeah. They wanted to talk to you. Do you want us to save any information?"
Only read that REALLY fast. All one word. 
"ummm. yeah. Please."
okay. Click. They're gone and I'm left wondering what just happened.


I SHOULD have called back but ... didn't. I'll blame the kids. I think it was their fault. It often is.


They called on Tuesday to tell me I could pick up my computer.



The plumber comes on Wednesday. He's in an interesting mood.
The office was closed for Thanksgiving but the people answering the phones keep scheduling appointments. So if they didn't get all the jobs finished on Wednesday "I'll have to work on Friday and there will be a whole bunch of people made at me - the biggest one will be my wife!"

I don't know if he got Friday off but he finished our water tank and left us at noon. I round the children together to go get the computer - promising them food from the drive-thru. 

We get to the computer place and found that apparently we had some viruses....and our video card is bad. 


The video card is taped to the top of the computer case.


"Um." says I, not feeling very assertive in the midst of this tornado of a fast talking woman. Her eyelashes were silver. Very distracting. "I need a video card in my computer. Do you have one I can buy to put in?"


"Oh, sure." She finds one - and then sends it back for them to install while I wait. "It won't take long." I plant myself by the door because the kids are in the van eating lunch. Thirty minutes later. 


I have a computer and three kids who need a potty. 


If they had called me to TELL me that I had a bad card, I'd have TOLD Them to put in another one and I'd just pay for it when I picked it up. 


I was a little disgruntled with them. With the whole day. 


That night - we had AWANA. I'm secretary for J-man's group. I'd missed last week because I was sick. I needed to be there tonight. I was glad that I was. ... but it made for a very long -- force the smile kind of day. 


Thanksgiving came and went. We had fun. We had turkey.


I think I'm going to collaborate with a friend of my brother's to write a comic book. (Probably more l ike a graphic novel) and  .. 


Friday we went to see the movie "Tangled". I loved it. 
I really, really loved it. 



Thinking I was done with shopping, we ended up at the local hobby store to search ideas for my mother who wants me to paint her something for Christmas. (We drew names and set the limit to $30). I found wrapping paper for half off. ^_^ 


G-man wasn't feeling well on Sunday and he wasn't feeling the best today either. I could just tell. He and I stayed home from Church. 


Today I got boxes mailed to family. I stuffed christmas cards into their envelopes...and they looked bare. We had all the kids sign the cards to help make them Special ... but I usually send a picture. Or a note. 


I had neither this year.
It didn't sound like a very cheery idea to write, "2010 sucked, we can't wait for 2011". 
Maybe I'll catch up on the pictures in 2011. ^_^


Maybe.


So that was our holiday. 
How was yours? 


Missing you,


Comfy