The Burlap Soulmate

Can someone tell me what the &^%$ is going on lately? There must be something in the air. Which of these things did NOT happen this past month?

a) My future mother-in-law had knee replacement surgery, followed by a tumble down a flight of stairs, which fractured the skull around her eye socket and requires reconstructive surgery

b) Guinness, our spunkiest, loudest, and probably my most favoritist cat, died quickly and unexpectedly

c) My aunt went to the hospital with a bowel obstruction

d) My sister-in-law's best friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer

Answer. None of the above. That is, they ALL happened this month.

Say a prayer of thanks for your good health if you have it. If you don't, then you'll get one from me.

This is to be a trivial and overly technical entry , but if anyone out there googles 'dryer tripping breaker', or 'replacing dryer motor,' or 'dryer too much current' like I have in the past week, I want them to find this page. Save yourself the heartache and frustration of dissasembling your clothes dryer into 2 dozen pieces only to find NOTHING wrong, as everything I found online told me to check the motor bearings, the heating element, the blower wheel, and everything else buried inside. Instead, check the breaker itself. Turns out THEY DO GO BAD. And for no other reason than they feel like going bad. A week long, $200.00 project can quickly become a five minute $13.00 project.

A very productive weekend finally brought this issue to a close. On to the next home project...tomorrow.

I'm feeling better about our new residence. All of the big stuff has been taken care of and it looks much more like a place of residence. We can pretty much do everything we need to do in a real house: wake up, shower, cook, do laundry, store food, blog, sleep. It's still butt ugly in places, and rotted and moldy in others, but I don't feel nearly so overwhhelmed and am beginning to feel thankful that we bought it. It help that ttwo places down the street are for sale and the asking price is about a third more than what we paid, so there is a good chance we'll make our investment back.

I didn't always feel like this. For a long time I was thinking we had made a colossal mistake. A basement full of water will do that to you. Then Guinness passing, Staz's mom going through so many injuries and so much pain, it all seemed like too much to take. Plus, to fix everything thats gone wrong, we've had to divert so much money from the wedding. It is a constant worry that we'll be able to pay for everything in time.

My muffler fell off my truck the other day. I've had to drive it mufflerless to work for two days. Not fun. I thought sure I'd get pulled over for a noise violation. It's since been replaced, at a really great price, at a place I would definitely use again, but thats still more money away from the wedding. I knew it was getting ready to fall apart but I was hoping it would be further down the road, no pun intended.

So where was I going with this? Oh yeah, I'm still glad we bought it, not overjoyed, but still very glad. Ask me again after I dispose of the birds nest under the eaves...