I promise didn't inhale...

Payge likes to crawl around with crayons, pencils, and Popsicle sticks in her mouth. Here reaction when we say "Payge, what are you doing????" is usually comical, but at times resembles Bill's response.

Home Ownership, and We're Baaa-ack!

So, we finally arrived home late last night. (If you didn't know, we've been playing around in the Idaho/Utah area--I didn't blog about it before we left, because the month long trip was a surprise to the family there, and the screaming/tears/laughter was totally worth keeping it a secret from September til December!)

Due to the fact that I didn't turn my cell phone on after our flight to Chicago, we arrived home to many surprises. First, our good friend Nadine was there waiting for us. At first, I thought it was just a pleasant surprise, until she said, "Oh, didn't you get the message?"
Turns out that our other friend had been calling us, trying to tell us that our van wouldn't start, so he couldn't get it from our house to the parking lot for us. Oh, and the garage door wouldn't open, either.

So, we get home, and think, "OK, we know that we can't fix that problem til morning, we'll just make some dinner and get to bed (it was about 10PM)." So, I opened the fridge and almost gagged to death. Oh!! The smell!! The root vegetables we'd put in there had gone bad. Odd, I thought, as in the cold, the root vegetables and apples should have been fine.

Then, I opened the freezer. Everything that was once stacked nicely was in one mushy heap. Yes, the entire unit had failed while we were gone. AND, it seems (warning, the following paragraph is gross, do not read if weak stomached!), that it must have been closer to the beginning of our trip that the failure occured, because the meats were moldy, the blood that had leaked had coagulated as it mixed with the berry juices (I'll spare you the photos, but if you want them, you can see them--but be warned), and the frozen (now thawed) collard greens were just black. I was saddened, as my raspberry freezer jam (made with berries I picked myself!), dried-frozen cherries (I don't think they'd gone bad, but the bag was sitting in blood, sooooo, also sad, as these were also from U pick--think 2 quarts of dried cherries=lots of picked fresh ones), home made pasta sauces, pork chops, pounds of ground turkey, cheeses...AARRGH!!

But, surprisingly, I was very calm. No real tears were shed, I just cleaned up the mess (gagged a few times) and went to bed. I'm surprised at the emotions I've had. I expected to be upset, worried, and snippy. BUT, on the contrary, I feel almost energetic, happy, and have an "all's-well-that-ends-well" attitude. I suppose that is a good thing, perhaps my striving to become more optimistic really is paying off. YAY! And, if this was my test from God to see how'd I do in that area, I'd say I passed. Whew. Let's just hope the tests don't get harder. ha ha.

This morning was better. We woke up, called the garage door fixer people, and they repaired the door (for a price, but still, it's fixed!). The van was jumped by a good neighbor, and so it's up and running again. We called around and found different ideas on how to fix the fridge ourselves. It's now up & running again (without paying Sears a $65 diagnostic fee, before they even try to fix the thing). Now, to fix the smell. We've run vinegar thru the entire automatic defrost system (since a lot of those yummy fluids I mentioned earlier had seeped through.), then rubbed the thing down with a chemical mixture (some corrosive stuff with chlorine in it), rinsed it, then rubbed it down with vanilla extract, rinsed it, and now have baking powder in it. It IS smelling better, my next step will be to put the lemon peels in my fridge (from the three lemons I'll be blending up tomorrow, as I follow some advice from another friend--more on that later*).

The really good news is that while we were fixing the fridge, we also figured out what was wrong with the ice maker, and now we have ice again. We've put a few things in the fridge, to see how they fare (you know, to see if they absorb that wonderful smell), and if all is well, we'll start using the fridge again. If not, well...we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

*My dear friend Lindsay told me that after a long trip home, where inevitably you will eat horribly, if you peel (not JUICE)three lemons (but leave as much white as possible) and blend them in the blender, and mix them with two quarts of water, then drink it all (over the course of a day), it'll clean you out so that you are at least back to where you started before the trip. She got the info from a personal trainer that she was using after beautiful baby #1. AND I must add that her hard work paid off. ;)

Remember that Law I told you about?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-thrift2-2009jan02,0,2083247.story

New Years' Resolutions

Well, given that I'm not in complete control of my environment at the moment (ahhh, travel--done cheaply--puts you at everyone else's schedule's whim), I haven't really started my resolutions yet BUT, the nice thing about being here has been that I have had a lot of time to think about my goals, and a lot of time to WISH I were working on them. I figure if I start to yearn for the goal, I'm more likely to work on it when I get the chance. SO, here goes:

#1: I set up my deck of chore cards (See book: Side-tracked Home Executives) last year. I did well for a few months, and everything fell apart when Payge was born. I still kept things tidy, but I was really on a roll before. SO, my first goal is to be more diligent in following my own plans.

#2: Feeding my family (and myself) more whole foods. I know that it is not always possible to be completely locavore , but at least getting rid of foods whose ingredients I cannot pronounce should be a good start. I will still eat foreign foods whose ingredients I merely cannot pronounce due to culture differences, but, I would like to stick to as local as possible. I do this mainly because I feel so disconnected from my food sometimes, and I think it'll improve the health of our whole family if we work for and appreciate the effort that goes into the food we eat. So, once again, I believe we'll be working on the farm co-op! I'm excited.

#3: More action, less research. I've been reading a lot lately. Sometimes I think I read and read and read, to the point of inaction. The first time this was pointed out to me was when my sweet, sweet husband said, "You read Runner's World, but you don't run, why?" That's when I realized that I thought I didn't have the time, but really, the time I was spending reading about running I could have been running. So, I started. Now, I'm off to start acting on some of the things I keep reading about!

Breakfast Misunderstanding

Kids. The breakfast option this morning: Shredded Wheat. Chayce's translation: trick-or-treat-meat. Don't ask, I don't know how that came to be. I suppose she just misheard me. ;)

Food for Medical Cost Thought

First, I must write down what I've been talking to my Aunt about. She works as quality control for IHC hospitals, and has to implement government guidelines & such. We discussed her opinion on the cost of healthcare, and she stated that in all honesty, the stuff the insurance companies do to the hospitals comes in a far second to the costly requirements the government puts upon the hospitals. In fact, she says that the guidelines that Medicaid & Medicare put on hospitals to stay accredited is what usually drives up the cost of running the hospital, but that's not something advertised in the Media.

For example, it used to be there only had to be 30 checkpoints (ONLY) along the way, each of which require a person to be working there (adding more salaries needing to be paid, which drives up the cost of healthcare), but now, with the new laws taking effect, the government programs want to more than DOUBLE the number of checkpoints, which according to her (she's quality control, remember?) doesn't really increase the level of safety at the hospital, it just makes it harder for the hospital to get paid (each checkpoint must be satisfied for the hospital to stay accedited, or else the government programs don't have to pay out, but the hospital still has to provide the service). Basically, it's running hospitals out of business, unless they charge exhorbant amounts--and we want the government to fix the problem of rising healthcare? Hmmm. Maybe Universal Healthcare isn't such a good idea?

Another point: my aunt stated that most times, when an insurace company won't cover something, it's because Medicaid or Medicare made the exclusion first, and insurance companies just follow suit. USUALLY, she says that they jump through more government hoops than insurance company hoops.

Just food for thought.

And the winner is....

OK, so, using RANDOM.ORG as a number generator, our winner was comment #3:
Dominoe said...

The huckleberry soap sounds good enough to eat!

December 24, 2008 6:47 AM

YAY!!


Dom, send me your address via email, and I'll send that box. Congrats!