Monday Ramble

Warning - this post is long and I ramble a lot.


If you knew me in real life, you'd know that I stress about things - sometimes even the small stuff.  So, life presented me several opportunities to improve how I react to stress this weekend -- and I PASSED (kinda).  Here's the story...

Saturday morning I decided I needed to be productive, so I got up and started putting away all of our purchases from Sam's the night before. One of those items.. light bulbs. The energy efficient ones.  Rather than shove them in a drawer, I reminded myself that I needed to be productive.  So, I went through the house and evaluated what I was up against. The light bulbs that needed replaced were not the easy to reach, simple swap out ones. They were the ones that required a ladder and removal of globes from the ceiling.   Typical Jessica would have waited for James to wake up so I could whine until he did it. I ultimately decided it would be easier to do it myself.

Not only did I remove all the globes, I washed ALL of them, inside and out.  Then, it was time to swap the burned out bulbs. I opened the package and one of the bulbs came flying out of the package, landed on the table, then dropped in slow motion to the wood floor.... and shattered. Ugh - my motivation was deteriorating.  After I got that mess picked up, I finally completed my light bulb exchange.  I'm pretty sure I was sweating by the end of all that.

Then, I thought, I should wash our new sheets. We bought sheets for our wedding anniversary gift and hadn't used them yet - you can read about our anniversary here. While the sheets were in the washing machine, I was cleaning some dishes and noticed water coming up both of my sinks from the drain.

Isn't that gross?! When I went to rotate my sheets to the drier, my garage was flooded!  Hang on... let's let that soak in.  My. Garage. Was. Flooded!  Ohmygosh.  Some of my Black Friday purchases were wet too, but fortunately, very little was ruined.  I called immediately and put in a service request with my home warranty company.  Good news: they immediately processed my request.  Bad news: I wouldn't see a plumber until at least Monday. This is where I typically stress out and make customer service talk to me until they are convinced that my emergency is their emergency and not give up until I get what I want.   This is where I surprised myself.  I did not give "Alicia" a hard time at all. I just took what they offered and waited my turn during normal business hours. This is a big step for me :)  This meant I would be at least 2 days without my washing machine, kitchen sink and dishwasher...

Let me give you some background on this home warranty.  I purchased this service when I bought my house - it has an annual fee, then a service call fee per incident.  It has been beneficial a couple of times, particularly when my air conditioner went out last summer!  The concept is really great, but I'm always worried that they will find a way to not cover the service I need.  One time I had a leak under my sink- so the husband put some plumber's putty on the pipe.  It didn't help, so we moved forward with my warranty company sending a plumber.  The plumber showed up and left, citing that we'd made improper repairs (plumbers putty) so my warranty was void and I still owed him $60 for the service call.  What?!   How is a small amount of plumbers putty an improper repair?  All we did was pull it right off once he left and called another plumber.  So, needless to say, when we called about this issue, I was afraid they'd void my warranty - so James was not allowed to touch anything!

Then there's Sunday. I was eating some buffalo wings and needed to step out of the room - less than 3 minutes later, I come back and Oliver had jumped on the table and ate 3 huge buffalo wings, bones and all!  OMG - this time I freaked out.  Dogs aren't supposed to eat chicken bones!  And I don't recommend google at a time like this... I was convinced Oliver would get sick and may need to go to the emergency room.  Someone recommended to give a dog rice to help expand their stomach until the bones pass through.  So, I went to make some rice that we had in a microwavable package.  I was caught up in conversation and forgot to open a part of it to allow it to vent.  ONE second left on the microwave and BAM! the bag explodes - rice goes everywhere!  That was it.  I fed Oliver some of the rice I could salvage and went to bed.  I had all of the weekend I could take!

I knew if I rode out these events, something good would have to happen... and it did. The plumber came today and confirmed it was just my drain was clogged.  They used a really loud machine that vibrated 1/2 my house and before I knew it - it was fixed!

And the best part - my bill was cheap.  $75 - I'll take that!!

And tonight was great too!  Oliver seems to be just fine after eating those bones, so I'm happy about that.  Here he is in his brand new Christmas pajamas!

I normally don't put clothes on Oliver, but isn't he handsome?!

Fingers crossed for more good events this week :)  Thank you for listening to me ramble.