What Struck Me

I had an amazing time at WDW with my fellow pirates. I only wish I could see these people more often. If you knew the history (much too long & sordid a tale to blog here) - let’s just say this is the nicest, warmest group of haters and felons you’ll ever meet.

So, there was a little rain. And a bit of wind. But that lightened the crowds- we practically had the Magic Kingdom to ourselves on Sunday night, and we took full advantage. All you need is a rain poncho and a little something to spike your Sprite.

(photo (c) Coastalwader)

Yeah, so… read my last post, substitute the words “xray for possibly broken index finger” in there somewhere… Andy tried to catch a football in gym Monday and by yesterday afternoon it was a lovely shade of bloated purple. Two hours of waiting and it’s not broken- but he gets out of gym for the rest of the week. And I never ever want to see that medical place again…

Tomorrow my sister and I fly down to Florida. Also, there’s this:

Disney World is not the worst place to go through a hurricane, so we’re goin’. Plus I’m finally getting to meet a bunch of online friends and since they’re perfectly happy to sit in a bar and hang out, we’ll be entertained no matter what (unless, of course, they shut the bars, so I guess I should stock the hotel fridge just in case, huh?) My main concern is getting home Monday- especially if the storm tracks north and does any damage to Orlando International. But again, there are worse places to be stranded than WDW…

I’m going to miss Pat (awww.) No, really. I hope next time I do this (and it probably won’t be during hurricane season) he’ll come along. But I’m excited to go with Kathi, we really hardly see each other. We’ll see a lot of each other if they close the parks and we’re stuck in the room!

Had to take number one son to the local family care place for a simple test. This is one of those places that you can just walk in, no appointments necessary, but in this case we had an appointment. The test was done quickly, great.

But they also wanted to draw some blood to double check the results of a test he had last week. Just one little blood test. So we went into an examining room to wait for the tech to take his blood.

1.5 hours later, we were finally out of there. I don’t care how bad a day at work my husband has, being stuck waiting in an examining room with a 7 year old and a 16 year old while also dealing with a nasty headache and cold is worse. I win.

The boy is fine, by the way.

The new washer and dryer showed up around 3. They didn’t install them because Pat wanted to redo the dryer vent and washer hookups. He got started on it last night but isn’t done yet, so they’re unusable. But purty.

We were seriously limited in what we could buy. When we moved in here we found that they had installed a front-loading washer & dryer in the kitchen, under a countertop. Very convenient! And back then (9 years ago) front-loading washers were a rarety. In fact I really don’t know how old they were. But there were drawbacks- at the time there was no such thing as “HE” detergent so it was very hard to use the right amount of regular- too much and it would be too many suds, too little and the clothes weren’t clean. Plus any loose change would get caught in the drum and make a racket during the spin cycle. More than once Pat had to take it apart and gather coins, etc (we have some interesting coins now- including a quarter that was reduced to the diameter of a penny from spinning in the drum…) And the dials were always breaking…

But since front-loaders, once they became more available, were ridiculously expensive, we made the best of what we had. But finally, the water level got stuck at low and I had to manually add water for each wash and rinse- it was time to buy new. I was having dreams of
and
but then reality struck when we measured and found there was no way a super-sized washer & dryer were going to fit in the space we had. So we went to sears.com and found exactly one front-loader that would work. Fortunately, it’s only .2 cu feet smaller capacity than the mega machines, and better yet- about $800 cheaper! So we got this set:

But without the pedestal, since we have the countertop.

Never thought I’d say this, but I’m looking forward to doing laundry. Once.

But that’s not all I got yesterday. My new all-in-one arrived!

A Canon Pixma MP780.
Don’t bother getting me anything for Christmas this year…

Sears has 2 minutes to get here with my new washer & dryer or they will be LATE! Grrr

I just deleted a big ‘ol rant about a person I can’t stand yet have to deal with regularly (no one you know).

You’re welcome.

Things are definitely getting lighter around here. I know that because I was able to take the time to put up those Disney photos yesterday without feeling like there was something else I should be doing. (There were, in fact, a number of things I should have been doing, but I’ll get to them, and I needed the break.)

I even decided I wanted to see a movie this weekend. We rarely go to the movies but I’d seen a few ads and blurbs for films I might enjoy. But, of course, two are films that only opened in NYC (Good Night, and Good Luck and Capote) and the other two aren’t even open yet (Domino and Elizabethtown.) I was tempted to see Wallace & Grommit, since we’ve been fans for years, but then the kids would insist on coming along and date night just isn’t the same when the kids come along.

So instead we hung out and watched baseball, read the paper… today Pat took Tim & Nick to my nephew’s birthday party, while Andy is doing homework watching baseball & football. I’m looking through catalogs for a new vanity for our bathroom (not the master bath!) The rain is still coming down now and then. And I’m relaxed.