An Inconvenient Flakey-ness

Gotta love these three-day weekends!

I don’t know where Al Gore is getting this warming crap, but we just had a massive snowstorm that kept me from work today (boo-hoo). Great chance to catch up on the blog!

How bad was it? Let’s put it this way: Mr. Right was supposed to be out shooting those furry terrorists, but canceled. Around here, missing deer hunting season is like saying “Who really cares which football team is the best? That whole Super Bowl thing is over rated.”

I quickly discovered that keeping loaded shotguns around wasn’t such a hot idea – as having Mr. Right underfoot all day is a challenge. I mean, daytime TV sucks, but The Price is Right? What’s his fascination with the dumb game shows? As a kid I watched nothing but, so I guess I got it all out of my system years ago.

I caught some Oprah show on how people who get huge windfalls of money are frequently broke and miserable a few years later. They gave a statistic of 70% of people blow the whole amount in two years or something…

This would NOT happen to me. I think windfalls are just magnifiers: If you are good with money now, you would be with more. If not…

They showed some woman who won $15 million in a lottery and blew it all on trips, boats, cars, etc. She spoke about how much she gave to family and how now two of her brothers don’t speak to her anymore (despite giving them $30K each right off the bat). Her friends turned out to be opportunists only interested in the dollars. She said there are times she wishes the win had never happened.

Then a financial adviser came on to give suggestions, and they were all obvious common sense items I would put into practice. I would have no problems with a windfall. I’m not generous now, and I sure wouldn’t be with more money. I have no credit card debt now, and I would not incur any. I’d just be a lot happier and more secure. I’d like to ‘not work’ and have a bigger piece of property. Better house, better cars, better teeth, better internet connection, you know; the basics. Oh, yeah, two TVs. Definitely.

The most upsetting segment (to me) was the one where they showed this woman who had some kind of fashion boutique or something, and made tons of money. Fabulous homes, trips, parties, etc. But she felt like a phony, so she turned to drugs. Lost her husband, house, children, everything. Ended up living on the street addicted to cocaine. Now she has learned money doesn’t make the man, the man makes the money… Sob! How beautiful (not). This woman made me sick. To have all that and lose it is much more upsetting to me than the ones who won some money and gave it away or mismanaged it. This woman let a whole business go down the drain because she couldn’t budget or stay away from drugs. Apparently there’s something wrong with me in that I can’t amass such a fortune, but these idiots can do it with out trying and then whimper over how they felt unworthy and had such low self-esteem they were afraid of being ‘found out’ as frauds…Guess good self esteem won’t get you anywhere in life. Especially not a book contract.

So I’m taking these great pictures of birds at our feeder during the snowstorm, and Al says “Take that one…” I turn to him and say he can have ONE electronic device at a time: the remote or the camera. Men. He also thinks the cardinals are too fat, and he needs to stop feeding them so much…Funny. He never tells me to buy fewer groceries.

We’ve been measuring our snow, and it ranges from 9”-16” in various (not obviously drifted) spots. This whole new world of weather forecasting and information-share is unfamiliar to me. Area schools began announcing closings at 6 p.m. last night! Back in my day, they waited until almost 6:30 a.m. and if the school superintendent couldn’t make it to the office, they maybe called it off. O’Hare Airport cancelled flights the night before as well. Chicago TV stations were showing pictures (just like mine) and snow measurements from listeners around the state who emailed them in. They would show the actual browser window on screen and click on people’s attachments! They encouraged participation in the whole human interest angle and kept interviewing IDOT officials, airport officials, etc. I found it rather entertaining.


So if Al didn’t have enough to do with the shoveling, putting up with me, etc. around here, the washing machine just decided to break. Suddenly the spin cycle was not removing the water, leaving me with a sopping wet mess of permanent press.

Now, you may recall the last little household fix-it incident of the leaky kitchen sink pipe. Seems these new houses with plastic pipe leave a little something to be desired in the ability to tighten and keep a seal. I reported water under the sink by shouting ‘emergency!’ to Al. Al came in and began assessing the situation. He pulled the items under the sink out and began muttering about too much crap kept under the sink. Oh, so suddenly it’s my fault for not leaving stuff laying about in full view as he is fond of doing. I like to pile stuff in closets and drawers and slam them shut, hoping for the best. That’s my idea of ‘tidy’. Once every so often I organize things and they look fantastic – for about a month. Then I won’t do it again for a year.

Anyhoo, when he tried to tighten the pipe, the whole thing came off in his hand. I said, Oh, now there’s an emergency…

Great. So this took many an hour to rectify, after which I had to find new hiding places for 55% of the items formerly stored under the sink to mollify Mr. Too Much Clutter on the Right. (Now this was the same man who made the rule “no items on top of the chest freezer”. Makes sense. Can’t open the freezer if it’s being used as a junk table. I changed my ways. Didn’t use it as a garage dumping ground. Can we open the freezer? Nope. His tools are all over it. 24-7.)

As I’m deciding what to throw away, I hand Al a grimy trigger bottle that says window cleaner. Why did you put this under here? I accuse. I didn’t, he says. I thought you did. We laugh, and I tell him to throw it out. Obviously it’s old and not needed. I found it in the garage three weeks later. On the freezer.

So now after having established the floor-cleaner-causes-leaky-pipes correlation, I am anxiously awaiting his latest postulate on ‘buying too many clothes causes washing machine failure’.

Nice try, engineering geek, but your theory is all wet. The repairman is scheduled for tomorrow. $$$$$ Great. Just Great.