Welcome Baby Abigail!!  I’m so happy for all of you!

Or, when My Head Explodes - Blame Plumbing, Part 2

When Michael says this, I’m usually in trouble.  Big trouble.  Huge trouble.  My day was going pretty great.  Madeline and I had made playdough from scratch (even put in holiday scents!); and the three of us had been playing with it.  I sent the kids to wash their hands.  In a couple of minutes, Madeline came to tell me that Michael had pushed her off the stool, so she was going into another bathroom.  I naively continued to clean up.  Pretty soon, “Hey Mom, look!  Look at the sink!”  Again, naively, I walked (not ran) to the bathroom.  Well, you’d be surprised at how much water is on the floor when you turn the faucets on full blast and plug the drain for a couple of minutes. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Olivia has decided that she wants to go to public school, after being homeschooled for the last three years.  She wants to be ‘normal’ and go to school, plus she can be with her friends all day.  I am just a mixed up mess of emotions:  worried, disappointed, anxious, relieved, and a little bit sad.  We’ve really been struggling with homeschooling over the last month, and last week was so awful that we decided that we needed a change.  After realizing that she can’t go just for one day, we agreed that she would go for the entire year, but if it was really, really, unbearable, she could come back home.  Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the faucet on our big whirlpool tub broke.  The water could be heard running, but no water came out of the faucet.  Now, that’s a lovely situation to be in - where is all that water going???  I called my favorite plumber, trusty Jason.  He crawled around, brought a helper into the works (I’m not kidding - ‘Boo’), and finally figured out that the parts that mix the water and lead up to the spout had ‘blown off’ and were no where to be found.  (Of course, this was installed by the infamous Steve the World’s Most Incompetent Plumber, which is a whole entire series of posts!)  So, easy enough, order the required parts and he’ll put it back together.  Oh, no - not so easy.  Did you know that most manufacturers do NOT mark their faucets with either their name or a model number?? Anywhere??

I thought it was an American Standard Jasmine but wasn’t positive.   Again, easy enough - hop on the web and find it. Oh no.  I could find a similar faucet, but it was only available as a sink faucet, so I couldn’t find the parts that we needed.  Ah ha!  Customer service. Oh no. It was 4:35; they closed at 4.  So, first thing Monday morning I called.  The ‘customer service rep’ was absolutely no help.  ‘Ma’am, I can’t help you if you don’t have the part number.’  ‘How can I give you the part number, IF IT’S NOT MARKED ON THE FAUCET?’  She kept insisting that the faucet would be on the website if they still manufactured it; but if I really couldn’t find it, she referred me to their sanctioned parts company (not actually part of American Standard).  I even asked if I could e-mail a digital picture and they could help me identify it.  The last thing I wanted to do was spend $100 on parts to the wrong faucet or from the wrong company.  Because apparently, ‘Standard’ does not refer to using standard parts - different faucets, even though they are for the same tub, use different works. Huh?  Back to the rep - she couldn’t help me with that.  So, I call this parts guy, he CAN identify it from a digital picture.  WooHoo!  “Nope, I don’t know what it is, but it’s not American Standard.”  Great.

Read the rest of this entry »

These college freshmen are just too, too young.  Until this year, we have been old enough, theoretically, to be their parents.  But, this year’s kids were born in 1989 when we were 23.   Out of college, engaged, living on our own; which, is a little more conceivable age wise.  Now, what has me upset and feeling old?  Don was talking to a few of them, and two girls had never even heard of Tom Petty!  Huh?  I know he wasn’t Britney huge, but come on!  (By the way, I’m quite proud of the fact that I had to look up the spelling of her name, thank you very much.) 

This is like Kim never hearing of Elton John.  Or me, having never heard of The Beach Boys.  (Kim, they were a group of boys who sang songs about surfing.)  I love Tom Petty - from ‘American Girl’ to ‘Don’t Do me like that’ to ‘It’s Good to be King’ and one of my absolute favorite songs ‘Free Fallin”.  Not to mention the Traveling Wilbury stuff.  Take a look at Wikipedia’s discography, and you’ll be surprised at how many songs will pop into your head. 

“She’s a good girl, loves her momma, loves Jesus, and America too.”