Back from Vacation

Let me just throw some pics at ya tonight. I'm tired....

This was Kevin's first time running through sprinklers/fountains and one of my favorite memories. He absolutely loved it. I have video that I'll post at another time...

My two favorite rides at Universal:

Now for some Disney magic...the Christmas party. There is nothing, to me, that compares to being in WDW to see the Christmas decorations. We only got to see MK decked out because we were there too early, but I love, love, love Epcot's decorations also. Check out the castle...I also videotaped the holiday version of Wishes....which I'll upload when I have some more time.

Because she must have a portable outlet, or something

So Katie calls a few minutes ago from trick-or-treating. At 15, but whatever. She asks if she can come in the house to get her phone charger (she stays at her dad's on the weekends) because she forgot it. Now, normally this wouldn't be an issue, but the boy just got done screaming crying fighting going to sleep and ain't nobody going up those stairs before morning and taking the chance of waking him now. Especially since it's a Friday night. Eh-hem.

She has to be at her dad's house by 9:30. It's already after 9. She's bitching that her phone is going to go dead before she gets there. Uh-not if you get off the phone now and quit wasting the battery on this lost cause. So she says, "Now I'm going to be on the streets without a phone." My eyes are just about stuck up under my eyelids from not being able to stop rolling them over this one. How about the 87 friends that you're with that all have cell phones? And, even more curiously, how the hell did she think she was going to charge it while roaming the streets?

Just pick it up in the morning, kid.

I'm still marveling that I ever survived childhood without all the things that kids have now-a-days. I also marvel that said kids feel that it's their God given right to have them to begin with.

Not a drop of snow at my house....

....but check out this video from just a few minutes north of me! Whoa.

Wait. What?

A snow storm tomorrow? You've got to be kidding! If this really happens, I'll post pics. It seems a bit early to me....

Update on Mom

Mom finally got her type of leukemia diagnosed. She has CLL...which I think is a good thing. Well, as good as it can be when you are diagnosed with, you know, cancer. *shudder & wince* She hasn't seen the specialist yet. Her appointment is at the end of the month, but her family doctor cannot feel any swollen lymph nodes. With her blood count being normal except for the WBCs, it sounds like she'll be staged low. The usual prognosis is 10-20 years. She's 70. Looking at it logically, and not emotionally, her lifespan really shouldn't be affected too much. Does that sound callous? I don't mean it to. It's just the way my brain works. Of course, things could change at any time and it could accelerate tomorrow. I pray she continues with her life which is filled with vitality. She puts most 70 year olds to shame. Hell, she puts me to shame. I can't imagine her any other way. I don't want to.

New thingy in my sidebar...

OK, I had no idea this thing existed. I was on my dashboard page and saw someone was listed as a follower of my blog. (Thanks, Janet ) I was, like, WTF is this? I'm still trying to figure the thing out because I'm not sure what all it involves...

I will tell you this much...if nobody else clicks on that thing, it'll be off my sidebar in no time flat because, you know, advertising that one person follows my blog is not exactly good for the ol' self esteem. You know?

No pressure, though.

Why me? Sigh.

I swear. It's always some damn thing that goes wrong for me in any plan.

I, being the kind soul that I am, decided to make things as easy as possible for the delivery guys today. Besides, it was the perfect chance to wash the walls in the laundry room. As I mentioned, I took the washer and dryer outside last night. Today, I washed the walls where they were because, I don't know about y'all, but I don't move out my washer and dryer to clean behind them on a regular basis. Maybe I should. Then I cleared all the furniture out of the way between the front door and my kitchen for the stove. My house looked like it had been tilted on its side.

As a side note, I decided I'd love to downsize my furniture. It's amazing how big the rooms look when all that big ol' furniture is out of the way. The furniture never looks that big in the furniture store until it gets home and then it's, like, huge.

Anyway.

First of all, these guys were nice enough, but I'm sure glad I wasn't paying them by the hour because they took 3 times as long as I would have if I did it my damn self. Honestly. I was just about to hip-check the stereotypicalfatbellyheavybreathingasscrackshowing one guy the hell out of my way and say, "Just let me do it, already!" It took about an hour just to take the old stove out and bring the new stove in! WTF?! It took Katie and I 10 minutes to take the washer and dryer outside last night. A fifteen year old girly-girl and a 5'1" woman.

After I rolled my eyes through this, while all the while being as sweet as could be, they went back out to the truck. They were gone about 20 minutes. You really have no idea how irritating this was for me. Finally, dude #1 comes back to the door and tells me that they didn't notice at the store, but there's a dent in the dryer on the side and they can knock 10% off if I wanted to take it and, if not, they can bring me another one back tomorrow. I asked which side of the dryer. He tells me the right side. Figures. The right side is the side that would be showing. He asked if I wanted to see it. Yes, I did. I went out to the truck and it was a pretty big dent. I said, "You can only take 10% off for that? Because that's pretty big." He said he could call in to the manager and I told him to do just that. The manager, after yelling at the guy for not noticing the dent and me looking around like I couldn't hear him blaring out of the 2-way, said to offer $150 off. I was cool with that 'cause I'm all about saving money. They finally bring it in, lose one of the screws to hook the plug up to, spent at least 20 minutes looking for it, until I went to my toolbox to see what I had available. I had one. They tell me they can't hook the vent up to it because it's a plastic one...I know that's not their fault so I kicked them out of my way and did it mydamnself. Then they tested it....THUNK...THUNK...THUNK...THUNK and it got HOT. Sigh. Disconnect and take back outside.

Bring in washer. I had left the hoses from the old washer hooked up to the water source because I had no idea if new hoses would come with the new washer, or not. Now, this is very important...the old hoses were hooked up to the water source. The other end of each were not hooked up to anything. Dude #2 wasn't sure if the water was turned off before he was going to remove them...Do you see where this is going? He turned the fucking water on. I about bit my entire face off to not scream, "YOUSTUPIDFUCK,IFTHEWATERWASONITWOULDBEFLOWINGOUTOFTHEENDOFTHEHOSEALREADY!!!

Sigh.

Now I have no dryer until tomorrow. I work 16 hour shifts on the weekend. They are not allowed to hook up the vent hose. Roni can't do it. Ergo, I have to wait until Monday to move the dryer back out, to hook up the vent and do some laundry. Laundry that is really piling up, BTW.