Man it has been a hot minute hasn't it?
It has been so crazy around here I've felt like I haven't had a chance to breathe, let alone do anything else. I know that is an over exaggeration, but it sure does feel that way.
December, after my last blog post, was busy and not in a good way. Alvah came down with a nasty cold-like virus that had him congested and not being able to breathe out his nose for a while and he'd run a fever on and off. We finally broke down and made an appointment at the doctor's and, of course, the day of the appointment, he woke up feeling fine and got a clean bill of health from the doctor. Sometimes you just need to make the appointment to motivate a kid, you know?
Luckily, he got better right before the Christmas holidays, so we were able to have a nice, peaceful, Christmas at home for the most part. My husband took a week off and this year, for the first time in it seems forever, no one got sick through the holidays and we were able to have a good time without nursing ourselves back from the flu or something. Definitely an improvement over the year before. I was even able to adapt a recipe to make it sourdough and I was able to gift some loaves of 7-Grain-Maple-Honey-Whole-Wheat-Sourdough-Bread to some people (the recipe turned out really good and I am proud of it...a couple of the loaves are up top there...I forgot to put the split in them before baking and that's why the one went crazy on the side). We celebrated New Years and my birthday without incident, which was also a nice change of pace.
Then the new Year rolls around and yeah. First our garage door opener broke its gears which had stripped out from age, it looked like, so we had to order a replacement kit of those and my husband was able to install them. The garage door acts a bit clunkier than it used to, but it does work (new garage doors are definitely becoming a more and more urgent need, though).
Then Alvah's mood has just been...ugh. I was warned years ago from people that autistic kids and puberty are just a bad combo. I always hoped that Alvah would go through it okay, but nope...it's been a heck of a struggle the last few years. His mood this winter has been awful and he's had a couple of severe meltdowns that really worried my husband and I. I have started to up his meds and give them to him at regular intervals throughout the day, and that helps, but it still is not easy by any stretch.
We got the schedule and details on high school graduation for Armina at the beginning of the year (I'm still in shock that I have a graduating senior this year) and so excitement kicked in for the daughter. We got her cap and gown in the mail (it fits!) and we ordered her class ring and got it in the mail. We had budgeted for it, but not enough it turns out, but I got it sorted and we paid off the difference this month (I'd go on a rant about how everything costs and arm and a leg, but I'd be preaching to the choir so what is the point?). She loves her ring and it will be a keepsake for her, so I'm glad we were able to do that for her.
And then the bigger costs kicked in as first my phone decided to not hold a charge anymore and I had to purchase a new one. I got the cheapest phone that would meet my needs for a smartphone and was able to just pay for it out of the bank account, which was way better than having to finance one. Not a super fancy phone by any means, but it works fine for what I need a phone for. Still expensive (over double the price of what I paid for my last phone), but at least it was doable.
And then the fridge decided to die. Luckily, I was able to catch that it was running warm first thing in the morning and I had gone to bed late (for once Alvah's not sleeping schedule had worked out in our favor). I turned the fridge to it's coldest setting and put a remote probe thermometer in it to watch the temperature and we were able to keep the fridge at about 39 degrees for a few days until we could find a new fridge. I looked online and found one that was in stock that would meet our space needs. It is an interesting design for a fridge. The bottom two cabinets that left is a freezer compartment that is fixed, but the right hand lower compartment can be set to different temperatures...anything from a wine fridge, to a regular fridge, to a freezer compartment. We decided to go with the smaller freezer and use our other freezers to make up for the lack of space and use the flexible compartment as a fridge compartment.
I really wanted to get the fridge delivered, but no one could deliver right away (we were looking at four days at least before we could get one), so we found that Lowes had it in stock and we could pick it up that night. So, I signed up for a Lowes card to get the 12 month interest free payments (so I can pay it off without the 30+ percent interest on a credit card hitting me every month) and we went to pick it up that night. The fridge ended up being a multiple day affair. The first night we got it out of the truck and into the garage (thank God my husband didn't get hurt during this entire ordeal as I was scared to death for his safety). The second night my husband and I worked together to get the fridge up the front door steps and up the stairs and into the kitchen. There my husband put the doors back on the fridge (it was to heavy to get up the stairs with the doors on) and we set it to cool for the 24 hour period they told you to do in the instructions. The third day we got the food into the new fridge, forced the old fridge out the deck door and onto the deck until Spring (my husband is going to try and fix it to sell it for cheap) and started the process to get the ice maker cycled and working properly. So, the fourth day we had ice.
I ended up taking the middle shelf out of the fridge so we'd have room for more than one gallon of milk as it just made life too difficult. It was a "flex shelf" where you could move a panel back or forward to open up space for larger items, but it just didn't let us have a good set up that way. So, after removing one shelf and using the flexible compartment we got it working good for our needs (we just got groceries last week and was able to fit everything in the fridge, so I'm happy with that). The fridge was too tall when I measured it originally and I was panicking that we'd have to cut the shelf above the fridge, but my husband looked at me like I'd lost my mind when he got home from work and simply screwed the fridge feet in a bit and it slid right into place (oops on my part for not thinking of that lol). The new fridge is actually slimmer (less deep) than our old one so we gained some floor space with the replacement, which was a nice find and with the lack of handles on this one we can actually open the fridge when the dishwasher is open and still be able to remove things from the bottom compartment of the fridge.
Some things to top off the craziness that has happened of late. I opened my door one day to find lynx prints EVERYWHERE. They were all over our driveway, all over our front and back yard, side yard, you name it. The part that blew my mind, though, was the sun was just rising when I found them and there were paw prints on my front porch and around my front windows, right up against the house. And the paw prints on the porch were still WET! I was cautiously looking around when I went to dump the garbage in the can for sure. I took a picture of a paw print that was kind of jammed together (normally they are more spread out since the lynx have built in snow shoes) but was super duper clean in the snow. I know it doesn't translate on the camera how big these paw prints were, but trust me...they are impressive. We have a lynx that has come around every year for years and stays through the mating season and has its cubs. I've only seen it rolling around on top of my storage van once and seen its cubs running across the road really early in the morning one day when we had a really late Spring, it was icy, and the cub slid a bit as it was trying to cross on some glare ice. I slowed down to be sure it would be safe, but it got out of the way and disappeared into the ditch QUICK. Other than those two sightings, all we ever see are paw prints. Not so many at one time, though.
Then one day last week I got to dial 911...not something you really ever have to do. I heard a crashing sound while I was inside the house and it sounded like a car crash (we live near a major road, so we do get them in by the house every once in a while). I looked out at the major road, though, and the traffic was running smoothly, so I thought maybe the building next door just got its dumpster picked up (it was like -13F out, so sound travels different in those temps). Then, suddenly, I saw a garbage truck that had turned down our road backing up it and turning around. That confused me as they pick up the garbage on this road that day, so I thought maybe the truck had issues. Then I saw the smoke. I put my jacket super quick to go and see what was going on as the fire was right near my house (like RIGHT near it) and I was worried about something being wrong. I walked outside to get a better look and realized that what I was looking at was a vehicle on fire!
I ran back inside and called 911, reported what was going on and once the call was over ran back outside with my fire extinguisher worried someone might be in the car. By the time I got to the end of my driveway (total I was in the house like 3 minutes) the car was completely engulfed in flames and I realized that my fire extinguisher was going to do nothing. Luckily my nearest neighbors were there and saw the accident right after it happened and watched the three, well-known, drug addicts, grab as many small propane tanks as they could from the car and run for their lives toward the neighborhood drug house (this seems so common for people to talk about the neighborhood drug house in their selective neighborhoods anymore anytime I bring ours up to people). The fact that they ran off of a straight road, that wasn't super slick, at high speed, on a bright and sunny day, on a low speed road, kind of tells you something in itself, but fleeing from the accident is another layer of bad all together. As we waited for first responders a bunch of small camp propane tanks exploded and zoomed off into the woods in either direction, which was loud and scary I gotta say. It wasn't long (thank you first responders) and the fire department had the fire under control in record time. My neighbors and I were asked to stick around to give statements on what we'd seen and we waited, in the cold, for quite a while, as the cops checked out the scene with the firemen. I kept running into the house to check on Alvah, but did stick around until the cold really started to get to me and my elderly neighbor. We told a fireman where we'd be and went into our heated dwellings. My driveway became home base for the first responders and they left just enough room at the end so people could turn around and go the other way if they needed to turn around. Finally after a few hours, once they were sure everything was out, the cops got a tow truck in and hauled the car away under police escort.
Anyway, it was an interesting afternoon to be sure.
I nearly posted up a picture of what happened, but I was worried it might be traumatic to some who might have experienced a vehicle fire or had a loved one be involved in one, so I decided to just not show it. I know no one was hurt in this incident, but either way...I decided to not include the photo.
When it comes to the year in review and other frugal things, I haven't had a chance to work on all of that. Alvah picked up a stomach bug when we were out running around all over the place and I've been taking care of him this week. Lately it just seems like one thing or another happens all the time. I have plans to work on a pantry challenge if I can ever get things started around here and got a few blog posts I want to do as well, but I'll see if God has any other curve balls to chuck my way in the meantime.
I hope you are all having a relaxing, not stressful at all, start to the year and I'll hopefully talk at you soon.