Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope your days are full of fun and, well, full, period. 🙂
We’re not celebrating Thanksgiving today. Our Thanksgiving has been pushed back to Saturday. Kevin’s parents went to Texas last week to attend a Reliv meeting (which by the way, I’ve been drinking a Reliv shake every day for a while now and though I can’t tell a HUGE difference, I do think all of the extra vitamins ARE helping with my energy levels), and while on the way back, Kevin’s father felt so run down and weak, he couldn’t even walk.
They stopped at a hotel and when my father-in-law (FIL) didn’t feel any better, my mother-in-law (MIL) took him to the hospital.
He had pneumonia and his blood sugar levels were in the 700’s – which I’ve since learned is BAD. As in, the man had to have insulin shots bad. *zoink!*
To my knowledge, my FIL has never had sugar problems before, but I found out that his brother died of diabetes so now I’m a little spooked – will Kevin inherit the same problem when he gets older? We’ll have to keep an eye on that. At any rate, my FIL was in the hospital until yesterday. They discharged my FIL and my in-laws went to a hotel to get a good night’s sleep before hitting the road for home today.
So of course, today is the day that Mother Nature decides to be a bitch and spit ice and snow at us. In fact, looking at radar? My in-laws are in for a real driving treat all the way home today as the bad weather extends their entire route. My brothers-in-law are driving to meet them in Arkansas so that when they meet up, they can take over the driving and let them relax the rest of the way home.
My in-laws are in their 70’s and the family hasn’t been happy with their business trip excursions for quite some time. I wonder if they will stop driving all over the countryside now that this happened. Though I don’t wish them to just sit at home and do nothing, driving cross country is probably not the best thing for two mature adults to do on their own.
We talked to our family on Tuesday and everyone decided that it would be better for everyone if we postponed Thanksgiving until Saturday – so, that’s what we’re doing. I turned the fridge down to a colder setting in the hopes of thawing our turkey out a little slower – I certainly don’t want to serve turkey that tastes like the inside of our refrigerator, you know? I think we’re going to have to cook the turkey tomorrow though – and that will save us some time Saturday morning.
We already have our ham, but it’s precooked and is supposed to last in the fridge for 10 days, so we should be okay with that.
Kevin and I have been super busy getting the house under control. We’ve done a lot of deep cleaning, and he spent an entire morning getting Jazz’s room under control. We went through his “toys” and got rid of a bunch of stuff – stuff that he’s outgrown and never even looks at anymore. We also rearranged his furniture so that now his room seems bigger and you can actually walk into it without having to navigate an obstacle course.
In the middle of cleaning, organizing, and shopping in preparation for Thanksgiving dinner, we got a new roof. We actually hadn’t planned on getting the ball rolling on a new roof until spring, but this guy knocked on our door and offered to do a roof inspection for us and in the process (i.e. we actually paid attention), we noticed that we did indeed have four separate leaks: Kevin’s office, Jazz’s closet, above our bed and the fireplace.
In other words? It was bad. Our insurance company came out, agreed, and gave us an estimate – we were getting a new roof.
The roofers came out Tuesday and worked like dogs the entire day and almost finished the entire thing – the only part they had left to do was over our garage. They came back out Wednesday morning and finished the job – in the rain.
In fact, that’s how all of us woke up Wednesday morning, to the sounds of men walking on our roof – at 6:30 in the morning!! It was still dark out!
That was a little irritating. And I was a bit annoyed, and a little worried, that they were working in the rain, but they completed the job at 9:30 in the morning and I must admit, it looks great …
(It was a dark, industrialized gray color before).
… even it DOES leak.
*SIGH*
I know!
We had a cold front move in last night and it brought a lot of rain and wind. I had a sinus headache (which I normally get when the weather drastically changes like it did last night) and I was sleeping in the recliner (because the combination of sleeping sitting up and putting in nose spray works for me nearly every time), when I heard what sounded like tapping. I thought at first Jazz was tapping on his desk. But the tapping sounded weird and the tempo changed and I suddenly knew, our house was leaking somewhere.
I shot out of my chair and followed the sound to the hot water heater closet. It was dripping around the pipe leading into the hot water tank. GRRRR. I put a pot under the drips (because yes, it was dripping that fast), put down some towels and went back to bed. When we looked at it this morning, it looks like the leak must have plugged itself somehow because there really wasn’t that much water in the pot. Nevertheless, we will be calling the roofing company to come back out and fix it tomorrow.
GRRRRR.
But it looks like the leak around our fireplace is fixed because it DIDN’T leak there, so that’s good, I suppose.
This roof is supposed to last us 30 years, but we are only expecting it to last around 20 years. Missouri gets a lot of extreme weather (hot/cold temps, hail, high winds) so I’m sure that will take a toll on it. At any rate, getting a new roof is yet another thing we can cross off our to-do list.
*****
Dude has developed some weird gum thing. It’s like a blood blister and is located just off a front tooth. He popped it the other night. I did a little research online (which you always have to take with a grain of salt because it’s pretty easy to veer off a dangerous path and think you’re dying or something) and I think he just got something caught under his gum thereby irritating it. His tooth doesn’t hurt and he says it’s not really even that tender when you press on it, so I’m not too concerned at this time, though I did notice that it’s puffing back up again today. He flossed yesterday, just to make sure nothing was caught in there, but I suppose something could still be caught in his gum somewhere. Kevin said he used to get the same things whenever he got a piece of popcorn kernel stuck and doesn’t act like he’s too worried about it.
I’ll give it another week and if it doesn’t look like it’s healing up, I’ll take him in for a teeth cleaning.
*****
I’ve given up on this year’s NaNoWriMo.
*SIGH*
I know!
I never, ever thought I would say those words out loud, or that it would ever happen, but yep, it happened.
I just can’t get excited about the challenge this year. I think, in large part, because my story just sucks. And I’ve been super distracted this year (which really isn’t an excuse, except it IS).
No really, we can be honest.
I don’t care about it. I wrote a little over 16,000 words of crap.
No really, we can be honest.
However, one bright spot in this confession is that I DID come up with better story idea. One that DOES excite me and one that I think definitely warrants an entire novel. I haven’t started on it yet, but I intend to very soon.
In the meantime? I FAILED.
I can’t believe how incredibly hard it is for me to admit that to you. I guess, after participating in NaNoWriMo for the past five years, I’m a bit burned out on the whole concept. I mean, I CAN do it. I’ve proven it to myself time and time again and when I put my mind to it, I can EASILY crank out 2,000 words in a few hours so I know I’m capable of producing quantity when I have to. (Notice I didn’t say anything about the quality).
I’m disappointed in myself, but not AS disappointed as I thought I would be. Again, I just think I’m burned out on the challenge and I have had absolutely NO desire to … get involved in any way this year.
I do plan on trying the challenge again in January though working with my new idea. Let’s see how far THAT goes.
*****
I haven’t started my Christmas shopping yet, though I have about five things in my Amazon.com cart that I will probably order today.
I don’t participate in Black Friday in any way. I think the whole concept is ludicrous – stand in line and save a few bucks? No thanks, my time is worth more than that. But no offense to anyone who does!! I just don’t have the patience, or the desire, to go through all of that. And it seems like stores are opening sooner and the chaos gets worse each year.
Nothing about Black Friday tempts me in any way.
Now Cyber Monday, on the other hand …
We plan on putting our Christmas tree up on Sunday. We usually put it up the day after Thanksgiving, but since Thanksgiving has been postponed this year, putting our tree up has been postponed, too.
*****
I finally set up my new computer. I’m now running Windows 7 and I must confess, IT ROCKS. I’m also working with a dual processor and OMG, I can’t believe how quiet, and FAST, this thing is!! I’m used to working alongside a jet engine so the fact that I can’t hear this machine at all is a little disconcerting.
I have one program that looks like it won’t run on Windows 7 – bummer. BUT, Kevin thought ahead and actually bought me a machine that has XP partitioned on the hard drive, so SCORE!
Now, if I could only figure out how to access it …
I was reading Emily’s 100 More Things: Thanksgiving Edition today when I thought, “Hey self, you should make a list, too!”
Write From Karen 
