Something's Gotta Give - Part 2

What do Milk Duds have to do with this?
Read on - you'll see!

When it rains, it pours, they say.

After last week's ordeal (exactly one week ago!) I thought maybe I was over the hump.  Hmmmm...  Guess not.

I've been having some niggling car issues that I've put off a few weeks - after all, I'm not driving much.  I fill up the gas tank about once a month, compared to once a week when I was working!  So I wasn't in a HUGE hurry when the oil change notification popped up on the dashboard display.  I mean, it comes up when the oil life is still supposedly at 20 percent.  Well, I'm not getting it changed until it's a LOT closer to ZERO!

And for a couple of months, when I turn the car, there has been this subtle "thump" from the right rear quarter of the car.  I suspected something in the rear suspension.  Oh, goody.

In the past two weeks, when the car's not moving, the dash display has started showing TWO new notifications:  "Traction Contol Off" and "Service Brake System."  Plus the red idiot light "BRAKES" came on at the same time.  Oh, GOODY.

Yesterday, while I was running some errands, I flipped on my right turn signal, and it started blinking like crazy.  Heavy sigh.  One of the bulbs had burned out.  Good grief. What next???

I'd planned to take the car to the shop this week anyway, so I called and made an appointment to have it looked at today.  By gosh, I was going to remove these low-level automotive anxieties from my brain!

And here's where the
Milk Duds come in.

Then last night, while I was watching an old movie and munching Milk Duds, I lost a crown.  Oh.  My.  Gosh.  Are you kidding me???  Of course, I had to extract the crown from a caramel-y Milk Dud - FUN.  So I called the dentist.  Because it was late at night (well, honestly, early this morning!), I left a message.

This morning, I took the car to the shop, and That Man followed me to take me back home.  Shortly after gingerly eating a bagel for breakfast, I got The Call - come to the dentist's office at 9:00 - ohyespleaseandthankyou!!!

So here's the status as it stands right now!  The dentist cemented the crown back on.  (That Man told me it probably popped off from all the recent stress - HA!)  I was in and out of there in 30 minutes, and it feels fine - like nothing had happened at all.  

I was right about the car's suspension.  The rear shocks were leaking, the right sway bar link was broken, and the control arms were loose.  All those repairs require an alignment, too.  For the brakes, the master cylinder was leaking into the vacuum booster, and that affects the anti-lock brakes and traction control.  The bad turn signal bulb was the right rear, and the oil and filter have been already been changed.  Whew!!!

I'll get the car back tomorrow, and I'll be some mega-bucks poorer, but it's all necessary stuff if I intend to keep the car - and I DO.  

The car only has 201,000 miles on it.  After all this, I should be able to squeeze another 100,000 out of it, don'tcha think?

It's Magnetic!

It's Back-to-School time - one of my favorite seasons!  It's a dangerous time for me to go into nearly any store.  All those pens, mechanical pencils, notebooks, rulers, erasers, and graph paper do something to me.  I want them all!!!

So far, I've shown great restraint.  I've bought only one mechanical pencil, one package of gel pens (10 assorted colors), one 3-subject spiral notebook, three packages of magnets, a box of 96 Crayola crayons, and 3 slap bracelets/rulers.  I rationalized buying the crayons and slap bracelets by telling myself they are for The Grands, then I went back and bought another slap bracelet for myself.  I couldn't resist - it has sharks on it!  And The Grands will never see those crayons.

The "worst" things I bought, though, were the magnets!  For some reason, they just CALLED to me.  I have plenty of magnets on my refrigerator, but when I see one/some I like, that's immaterial.  Here is a selection of SOME of the magnets on my fridge:

 

It's a disease.

MUST.  HAVE.  MORE.  MAGNETS.

Something's Gotta Give

As if all the STUFF going on in the world weren't enough.

The coronavirus is starting to surge again, and things like toilet paper, paper towels, and cleaning supplies are becoming scarce, and my foraging trips are getting longer and longer.  Protests over social justice have been ongoing for over two months now and the social media are uglier and uglier.  The church denomination I belong to is getting ready to split, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that.  The economy is unsettled.  There is so much uncertainty in all facets of life that we're all kind of walking on the edge.

So I've had a frustrating week.  After days of rain, the weather has finally cleared up, but then That Man and I had a "discussion" about the financials of removing the buckeye tree that snapped off.  And the next day, his cell phone bit the dust - the battery wouldn't hold a charge more than a couple of hours on standby, and it's a phone with a battery that couldn't be replaced, of course.  He's been back at work for nearly three weeks, and working third shift, he sleeps during the day so I was left with the fabulous job of securing a new phone.  When That Girl was here at the beginning of July, we drove to the Verizon store where she stood in line outside and waited her turn to buy a new phone.  It took some time, but she got it done. 

Well, things have changed since then!

You can't just show up and buy a phone anymore.  I had to go online, figure out what phones were acceptable, then figure out what phones were actually available nearby (he wanted it ASAP), then order one and pick it up curbside.

Easy, right?

Well, it SHOULD have been, but...!  When I'd click on a specific phone, a different one would come up.  When I finally got a phone and a case into the online shopping cart and agreed to this that and the other, I clicked on "Proceed to Secure Checkout," and wound up on the same page.  I checked and checked, but I hadn't missed filling in any fields or checking any boxes.  So how come I couldn't Proceed to the Secure Checkout? 

I started working on this project at 9:00 in the morning.  By noon, I hadn't been able to even get a phone into the cart!  I was working on a laptop, and I was to the point of pounding the keyboard with my fist (NOT my typical solution to computer troubles) and almost throwing it across the room and against the wall.  I was so frustrated and angry I couldn't stop tears from coming.

Finally, I gave up and called Verizon.  The nice lady on the phone said three-quarters of the calls she'd gotten that day were about trouble with the website.  She placed my order and we crossed our fingers - it went through!

The hard part was over!  HA.

 In about an hour, the email arrived - come get the phone.  I drove to the store, got the phone, drove home, and started activating the beast.  During the activation, you can copy your setting and apps just by having the old phone and the new phone next to each other.  Things were going according to plan, but then the new phone tried to pull the settings and apps from MY phone!  GREAT.  More frustration and tears until I figured out how to back out of the activation mode and start over. 

When it was all over, it was 5:00, and I was mentally and emotionally exhausted.  The next day, I felt like I had a hangover!  I was completely worthless.

So why did it affect me so strongly? 

Well, like I said at the beginning of this post, we're all walking on the edge. The stress that's become the white-noise background of our lives and keeps us on the edge.  I'd found a precarious balance on the tightrope, and the phone fiasco was just enough to push me over that edge. 

Oh, it was definitely annoying and way too time consuming, but was it something to cry over?  No, but when you're overwhelmed,something's gotta give, and it did.

The Mid-Summer Yard and Garden Tour - Something's Growing! (Part 2)

The garden, which had an inauspicious start and was so sparse just a few weeks ago, is starting to really look like something's happening!  The peppers are peppering and the tomatoes are tomato-ing!

The garden has nearly exploded with growth!  There are tomatoes and peppers all over the plants.  I'm looking forward to the harvest!