What Else Will Break Around Here?

A strange phenomenon started happening recently at our house - it seems that whenever my hubby is away on business, something breaks.

First it was the tv set. When my husband and I put our fake Christmas tree away this year, we decided to rearrange our living room in order to make it look bigger. During that process we needed to move the television set and the entertainment center, and because we are not on the “cutting edge” of technology (in fact, we aren’t on the cutting-edge of anything except going to the poorhouse) our tv is old, big and weighs a ton; meaning we had to take it out of the entertainment center in order to move that piece of furniture. In doing so, the wire that attaches the tv to our satellite dish came out of the back of the tv. It seems that a piece of solder on an internal attachment broke, thereby rendering the tv useless.

Great, I thought sarcastically, who has money for a new tv after Christmas????

Luckily, we remembered that we have a new television in “The Black Pearl” (our newly purchased used 5th-wheel that is a whole ‘nother story in itself.) So, hubby & I temporarily used the tv from the rv until he resoldered the wire attachment on the broken tv and then all was well.

Not quite. Hubby went out of town a few weeks ago and I, in an effort to get the best view of the tv so I could enjoy “Without A Trace”, angled the "fixed" tv toward my chair and POW! - the satellite wire dropped out of the back of the tv, leaving me staring at the black screen of death. Needless to say, that tv hit the skids and we were (and still are) back to watching the smaller one from The Black Pearl.

Last week, when hubby was again out of town for a night, our dryer broke. I had a load of laundry whirling around in the dryer when suddenly there was an ear-splitting, grinding noise coming from the laundry room. What the????!!!!!!!! It seems that the $5 plastic parts inside the dryer that keep the drum spinning, broke. GREAT. Who has money for a new dryer when they don’t even have money for a tv?????

Luckily, my hubby, aside from being handsome and tolerant, is also a jack-of-all-trades. He spent all of last Saturday moving the dryer to the garage (because our laundry room is too tiny to work in), taking it apart, replacing the parts, putting it back together and then moving the dryer back into the house to the laundry room.

“I’m sick and tired of things breaking around here,” hubby said. “All I do is spend my time fixing things.”

That said, you can imagine my anxiety when he was out-of-town Monday night. I spent all Monday chasing my toddler grandson around the house, making sure his inquisitive little mind didn’t get him into anything that he could break. I was aghast when he set his sights on our replacement tv - he was enthralled with pushing the tv’s buttons, turning it off and on at a rapid pace and then changing channels, which resulted in a blue or black blank screen. Hubby would have a stroke if he came home to find our second tv broken! (Not to mention the lecturing and outrage I’d have to withstand.) The quick fix, much to the dismay of our grandson, was that I moved the tv to the top of the entertainment center. HA! I was so proud of myself because I knew my hubby would come home and be able to relax - nothing broke and needed fixing.

Wrong! I spoke too soon. As I walked between our living room and front hallway, the last two toes on my left foot never made it around the corner with the rest of my foot. Suddenly, there was a loud snapping sound and intense pain shot across the ball of my foot. As I doubled-over and nearly fell onto the floor, I think I heard an impulsive “expletive deleted” come from my mouth, along with some moaning and whimpering. Because I have a high threshold for pain, I didn’t cry (although I sure felt like crying.) I did, however, get some sympathy crying from my stunned grandson. He couldn’t understand why grandma was suddenly bent over, hopping and flopping around in the hallway - not paying any attention to him.

So, when hubby arrived home last night, he was met at the door by a limping but smiling wife who told him that while he was away, nothing broke that he needed to (or could) fix!

Cadillacs Hold Heat Pretty Well

Sleep problems in my house are as abundant as pine nuggets in my flower bed.

The first thing I usually ask my hubby each morning is "How'd you sleep?" His answers range from "The dogs' barking kept me awake all night" (which I don't understand because we sleep with a fan running and our door closed) or "I was cold/too hot" or "I woke up at 4:30a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep" and so on. Then there's me. I never get a full night's sleep and often am sure I've been awake half the night. So, given this, there was no way the following situation should have EVER happened at our house.

One Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m., Hubby jolted me awake when he leapt out of bed and ran to the living room saying, "I heard the doorbell!"

What the heck????

When he didn't come right back, I got out of bed and went to the front door. There stood our bleary-eyed teenage son, shivering. He had gone to his girlfriend's house Friday night and came home at midnight. Unfortunately, he said he was locked out of the house so he slept in his car.

What! Are you kidding????

We never lock our doors, so whatever possessed me to lock them before going to bed that night is beyond me. I didn't remember locking the doors - but that's not unusual - my short-term memory is nonexistent.

"Why didn't you ring the doorbell?" Hubby and I asked together.

"I did," our son answered. "I rang the bell for 5 minutes. Then I tried to break-in through the front windows, but they were locked, so I knocked on the windows for a few minutes. When you still didn't answer, I drove to the supermarket and called mom's cell phone from a payphone." (Our son had lost his cell phone and his replacement hadn't arrived in the mail yet. The grocery store is 3 miles from our house and they close at 11:30p.m.)

My husband looked at me questioningly.

"My cell phone is out in my truck," I said sheepishly. I had forgotten to take it into the house after running some errands on Friday.

"I ran out of change and the store was closed," our son continued, "so I came back home here and slept in my car."

"We never heard you," I said, feeling a tad guilty. "Were the dogs barking? Usually the dogs bark at everything and wake dad up."

"Yeah, they were barking," our son said emphatically. "They barked the whole time. They were going crazy for about a half hour."

I gave my husband an accusing look for not waking up. The barking dogs always wake him up. Or so he says.

So, as our poor, shivering son marched off to bed thanking God his ancient Cadillac is well-insulated because it holds heat for a long time, hubby and I played the blame game; it was my fault that our son would probably catch pneumonia because I locked the doors and it was his fault because he didn't hear the barking dogs.

The one thing we did agree on - we need to have house keys made.