Just Simply Holly

Yes, I admit that I’m TOTALLY behind on this…LOL! But with as late in the year as the cold weather lasted, I also was not going to rush into getting this stuff packed up either! Personally, I’d rather dress warmer or snuggle down under extra blankets at night rather than turn the heat up!

Since my trip to California is in a week I plan on spending the bulk of this week getting things around and ready for my trip! And while I’m digging through the totes trying to find my warmer weather clothes I figured I might as well get everyone’s warm weather clothes out as well as the lighter bed spreads and quilts. That way I can get everything washed up and then pack up the heavy clothes, blankets and down comforters and get them put away before I leave!

So, if you don’t hear from me much this next week, you now know what I’ll be doing…LOL! I will be sure to stop by before I leave and let you know that I’m outta here!!!

Between the puppy deciding that 4:25 AM was a good time to wake up and getting my son up and around for a program that he’s going to this week the morning was rough. But when you add the fact that we’re still having massive internet problems it makes things even rougher! This morning between 5:00 and 6:00 our internet worked for a total of about 15 minutes, if that. My husband once again called tech support, they walked him through a couple of different things that the tech support guy last night didn’t have him do, and it seems to have done the trick. But the guy this morning restated what the one last night said. There is something wrong with our line, our speed has maxed out at 2/3 of what it’s supposed to be and averages about half of the max speed they registered. They apologized for the fact that Monday is the earliest they can get a technician out here, but said that when he comes on Monday they are going to have him run a deidcated line directly to the phone jack that the modem is plugged into.

We’ve been dealing with problems with our DSL since the day we moved in here, it’s been one problem after another! If I had the option to go elsewhere for my internet service, I’d do it in a heartbeat! But out here in the sticks, my only other option would be to go with Satellite internet and the starting costs are just too high considering that it’s not known to be the most stable internet. Yes, sometimes I do think anyting would be better than what we have, but it’s another one of those things where you just cannot justify the extreme expense of the initial set up!

I feel bad for the kids though! They’re both on their Spring Break this week and with everything that has happened it hasn’t been the best of vacations for them! The week started off with my having a broken tooth and my son having the worst cold I think he’s ever had in his life and now mid week we’re having strangers on the property and major internet problems. At this rate I can see myself checking into drug rehabilitation in the near future! Hopefully things will chill out for the rest of the week and we can just enjoy our time!

I got an amazing card in the mail today! In January I wrote this post about an accident that my husband and I had witnessed on our drive home from campus one morning. To be honest, I had totally forgotten about the accident, until today. In the mail was a card from the woman that was involved in the accident thanking us for stopping that morning to help her and make sure that she was OK. She let us know that she did end up being fine other than the air bag burns that we had seen, which I was very glad to hear! She also let us know that although she was OK, her van wasn’t as lucky and the insurance company ended up totalling it. But it made me feel good to hear from her and know that everything turned out OK for her. We stopped that day because it’s just who we are, and I would like to think that if I were ever in that same situation, someone whom I’ve never met in my life would do the same thing.

But seriously, I am glad to know that she ended up not being more injured than what she appeared to be that day! With has bad as her vehicle was damaged, I honestly pictured her having injuries that weren’t obvious and lying up in one of those adjustable beds in the hospital for a while. I thought it was sweet that she wrote a note after her signature that her husband and children also said thank you to us for stopping and helping her.

Part of my is glad tomorrow is Monday! Monday is MY day, the day I treat myself to some R&R. The kids leave for school and the hubby goes to work and it’s’ just me and the dogs for the day. But, as much as I look forward to Mondays, I’m kind of iffy about looking forward to tomorrow…LOL!

The day will start with my hubby waking up at 3:30 AM to be ready for his boss to pick him up at 4:30. This means that I’ll have to be up by 4:15 AM because if I’m not awake before he leaves I’ll be in trouble because for some reason I do not hear the alarm clock when I’m sleeping. Then I’ll make sure the kids are up by 6:00 AM, take my daughter to the bus at 7:00 AM and be back here before my son gets on the bus between 7:20 and 7:30 AM.

After the kids are gone to school I have several things to get done around here. At some point tomorrow I’ll need to go into the crawl space and move the extra Cat 5 cable from the living room to back here in the family room so that my hubby can run his new laptop and his old one at the same time. I also need to tear apart my daughters computer, take down the table that she’s currently using for a desk, set up her new desk and then set up my old computer for her.

On top of all of that my old boss is supposed to stop by tomorrow and drop off the paper work from his businesses so that I can organize the paperwork for him to take to his accountant so he can get his taxes done. I’ve done this every year for him for the past few years and was glad when he called me and asked me if I’d do it for him this year.

The past couple of days have just been SOOOOOOOOOOO stressed out! The migraine I had Thursday really messed me up and just threw my whole week off, it also caused me to miss two classes, which REALLY stinks!

Yesterday my plan was to get things around to start getting our income taxes ready. No, I can’t quite do them yet because I’m waiting on some 1099’s as well as the statements for hubby and I from school. But with what I had, and guesstimating the numbers from the things I’m waiting on, it looks like we’re not going to be getting the refund we were hoping for this year.

At one point yesterday I was on a website with a flashing ad for Vegas hotel rates and all I could think about was just running away from everything that was stressing me out! But, I know things will be OK, they might not be what we hoped they would, but I have no doubt we’ll be fine! Or at least they will be if I stop playing on the puter and get my homework done…LOL

I tell you, time is seriously flying lately!  It was just Christmas and now we’re only 2 days away from New Years Eve?  Somehow it seems that I’ve lost a few days this week because it sure doesn’t feel like Saturday!

There hasn’t been too much going on this week.  The kids have just kind of chilled out for the most part, except for when I ask them to help me with something.  They’ve been awesome about helping me, I haven’t gotten a single argument from them for a change!  I finally managed to get the Christmas tree down yesterday…YAY!  I don’t think I’m going to have a real tree again, I just don’t feel comfortable with them and worry that if I have the lights on too much it will dry it out faster and/or cause it to catch on fire.

I also managed to get a good part of my room organized and cleaned this week.  It’s been a nightmare trying to find things in the mess in there!  I’ve come to the conclusion that we simply have too many clothes and the ones that we no longer wear MUST GO!  I have some of them bagged up to give to the local homeless shelters, and hope to get through the last of them here within the next week or so.

I have a fairly big project for my hubby’s next day off work, “IF” he gets another one…LOL!  He’s worked every day since Wednesday and will be working again tomorrow.  Fortunately today and tomorrow are only 8 hour days, Wednesday and Thursday were 16 hour days for him and yesterday was a 12 hour day.  It will make for a very nice check, but he sure is tired!  But he was tickled to get home tonight while it was still daylight out, and he’ll be even more happy to get a full nights sleep tonight!

I hate getting sick! And when I get sick this time of year, for some reason I keep at least part of it through most of the winter, which means these past couple of days are just the beginning! It started last week with my husband, he was so worn out after being awake for 2 days straight and working almost 24 hours straight. By the end of the week he was not feeling well at all, but kept telling me that it was just a sinus infection. I kept telling him he was wrong, and that he’d better NOT get me sick, and he kept trying to reassure me that he wouldn’t. Well, guess who’s sick now? My cold kicked in late Sunday evening with some sneezing and coughing. By early evening yesterday, I was sicker than I’ve been in quite some time. Now I’m sitting here with my eyes and nose running like brand new Delta faucets do and driving me NUTS! The cold meds that I have in the house dn’t seem to be helping any and with all of the coughing and sneezing I’m doing, it’s near impossible to sleep. I’m trying my hardest to rest because we have my husbands company Christmas party Saturday night and Christmas with my mom on Sunday and I don’t want to be sick for those!

Since yesterday ended better than it started, today is off to a better start.  Yes, I’m talking about the water situation.  As you know from last nights post, the landlord came over with a truck carrying a 350 gallon water tank and hooked that up to the pump in the basement.  Since hooking it up, we haven’t had a single problem, other than water pressure that is a little lower than what we’re used to.  But it’s not low enough to make a huge difference, so I’m definitely not going to complain.

Although we do have a fix to the water problem, this fix proves that it is a problem with the well and not the pump.  That in itself is NOT good!  That means that we’re either going to have a new point put in the current well, or have a whole new well drilled.  Either are major and costly problems!  I guess only time will tell as to which one we end up having to do!

On a different note, after living here for 6 weeks and my son being picked up by the bus for 5 of those, for some reason or another his being picked up here in the morning was kicked out of their system.  And they printed out new route sheets yesterday.  Add to that the fact that he’s had a substitute driver for the past week and you get a kid standing outside waiting for the bus only to see it FLY by on it’s way down the road.  It didn’t slow down, attempt to stop or anything, it flat out just flew by the house.  I got on the phone with the bus dispatcher and she wasn’t able to get the driver on the radio at all.  That’s when she discovered that his morning bus pick up had been changed back over to our old address, almost 2 miles away.  Fortunately for them, they were able to send another bus that was in the area to pick him up because I would have had their butts on a platter if they would have told him there was no bus to pick him up this morning!  I don’t understand how a computer system can change someones address!  Over five weeks ago the computer said for him to be picked up here in the mornings, as of yesterday it said for him to be picked up here in the morning, so how did that change over  night?  Oh the joys!

So, since we have sufficient water, today will be spent cleaning, doing laundry and finishing up my painting!  Too bad I have so much work to do because it is absolutely GORGEOUS outside weather wise!  At 6:00 AM this morning the temp was in the low 50’s!  WOW!!!!  But that won’t last long, they’re calling for cold and snow by Thursday…LOL!  That’s Ohio for ya, if you don’t like the weather, wait a few hours and it will change!

The water problems that started yesterday morning are far from over!  We had water early last night, but by bed time we were having problems again.  We got it “temporarily” fixed, enough to do showers, but that was it.  We ran over to the landlords house and grabbed 2 five gallon buckets and a five gallon jug of water so that we could at least use one toilet and have water for cooking and coffee.

Hubby headed off to work this morning and before he left he told me that I could use the water, to just be careful.  (Meaning the water from the faucets)  But I was scared that I’d do something and end up burning up another water pump, so I used the water out of the buckets and jugs instead.  When he got home this afternoon he checked everything, ran the water in 2 faucets for what seemed to be an hour, and it seemed to be working good, so we went ahead and started some laundry and stuff.   That lasted a couple of hours and we were back to no water again, so he headed back down to the crawl space, shut the pump off for a few minutes, turned it back on and everything was OK again.

He called the landlord to let him know what was going on and he said he’d be over later.  When he showed up he came with 3 cases of water and 3 one gallon jugs so that we would have plenty of water to drink and cook with.  He also brought a truck with 350 gallons of water in a tank.  They hooked it up so that the pump would draw water from the tank rather than the well and so far, things are running OK.  We don’t have but maybe 2/3 of the pressure we had, but it’s definitely better than nothing and works fine for showers and laundry.

The landlord is going to get the papers from the county to find out 100% for sure where the well is on the property.  Then he is going to bring someone over to see what needs to be done, whether it be a new point put in or a deeper well drilled.  So, although we currently don’t have a permanent solution, we do at least have a temporary one and we do have running water in the house.

It’s frustrating though!  I see what my hubby is going through knowing that he’s not working the hours he was and the fact that they’ve talked about a layoff.  Add to that the stress and frustration of the water situation and he’s not in good shape!  I was talking to my best friend on the phone tonight and told her that he’s getting to the point that it worries me, that he’s almost to the point of being so depressed and stressed that he belongs in a hospital.  So please, keep him in your thoughts, prayers, etc, because I am truly worried about him and the effect that all of this is having on him!

My husband isn’t working out of town this week. As a matter of fact, he’s only worked one day this week which means he’s been here at home, driving me CRAZY! I’ve discovered that I’m so used to him being gone during the day and when he’s home he interferes with my TV “routine”. I like watching shows that are totally different from what he likes. For instance, right now I’m on a kick where I enjoy watching shows that showcase luxury homes, more specifically the type of luxury homes that will always be WAAAAAAAAY out of my price range. Hey, a girl can dream, right?