The puddlement

The fridge and backups

Somehow I foolishly expect appliances and techie devices to live forever.
It always surprises me when they wear out, break down or simply stop working. I somehow expect more from machines with wires and chrome.
So when we came home from the movie Friday to find a puddle of water beneath the fridge door, I was dismayed.
I was also a little panicked because it was the weekend, everything would be closing or closed, and everybody who could possibly help us would soon be home in bed.
I tried hard to believe that maybe we'd just left the door ajar or maybe overfilled the freezer so it couldn't circulate properly.
I mopped up and waited only to find water drip-drip-dripping in a continous stream.
The freezer definitely had a problem though I couldn't for the life of me figure out how water was coming from the door.
I check the ice cream I'd just bought and it literally sloshed in the box.
So we started bailing, tossing what was old, liquified and not worth saving like a bag of popsicle juice.
We put all the newly purchased 2-packs of chicken and the pork roasts and bacon and fishsticks into a picnic cooler.
We put the cans of juice and the mushy frozen vegetables in another.
I called a repair service at 7:30 a.m. and left a tearful message.
Still hoping for the best, we vacuumed the back of the fridge, thought positive, maybe that would fix it.
Fortunately the repair guy picked up his voicemail and came out around noon, cluck-clucking as he checked things out.
The good news was he knew what was wrong. The bad news was it was the compressor and he couldn't get the one he wanted until Monday which meant he couldn't put things right until Tuesday.
Meanwhile I had all this frozen and semi-frozen stuff melting at my feet.
I emailed ward members who offered freezer and fridge space.
We bought ice to put in the freezer area so cold air would keep blowing into the fridge area.
I crossed my fingers harder.
It's not a biggie kind of crisis. We can eat other places and buy new food. I know we can even repair the bank account but I keep looking at this pretty, black fridge we bought new only eight years ago.
How can it be broken? It still looks new.

The email I can't get

So I've been trying to sort out this problem with my email account that comes with the city Internet service.
I have it as sort of a backup so when my account with The Deseret News goes kablonk, I still have a window on the virtual world.
More than once, it's saved me to be able to transfer clients and sources to my backup account.
This time, however, it was the problem.
I'd been sailing along just fine when all of a sudden it asked for my email account and password.
I tried the password I'm currently using and the one before that. (I find if I keep it simple and basically use the same password for everything, I have less trouble. You identity thieves, rejoice. I make it easy.)
It didn't like anything I submitted so I changed tactics and tried some variations.
It didn't budge.
Since it didn't offer any options, I went to my Deseret News account administrator and bothered him. He couldn't find a solution and in fact, didn't know what the heck I was talking about.
I wrote to the city service on their website and explained my dilemma.
I heard nothing.
It's now been over a week and I know there are emails piling up and things to tend to.
I gathered up the strength to make a phone call (which requires sitting around and waiting for the next customer service representative, etc.) and explained my plight.
The nice young man promptly gave me my password, an ancient one I haven't used in 20 years.
It works.
The logjam is cleared and I'm going through my 142 emails only to find one from them.
"Your password is incorrect," it says. "Please call our office for additional assistance."
Wait a minute....
I haven't been getting any email but they send an email to tell me what to do about not getting any email?
What am I missing here?

Sick, sick, sick

My husband gave me a gift which I don't appreciate at all.
All night Thursday and all day Friday he was sick in bed, so much so that I was quite irritated with him.
He begged off going with me to doing a review in Springville so I went alone.
I knew he didn't really want to go anyway so his motives were suspect.
Then about 1 a.m. Saturday morning, it hit me.
It was awful and still is although it's now Monday afternoon.
I have no appetite.
I have no enthusiasm for anything.
Even during my favorite show Sunday night, I was watching the clock to see how soon I could go back to be bed.
Ice chips became my food of choice.
Everything else was too sugary, too salty or took too much chewing.
I'm hoping by tomorrow I can regain some hope.
There's nothing to do but wait.
In the meantime...bear with me.

Paintin' Place

My daughter is living a life under wraps these days.
While her husband toils away trying to paint the whole house, she and the kids are living with furniture covered with tarps and disarray and frustration.
Painting, for some reason, is never as easy as it appears it should be.
You look at these wide open walls and think, "How hard can it be?"

You imagine a roller going up and down and leaving a lovely look behind.
You go to the hardware store and look at the pretty little chips and clean brushes and it really sells itself as a doable task.
Then you realize, before even opening a bucket, that there's a good deal of prep required.
Holes must be spackled and cracks must be filled in.
Outlet covers have to come off and lights must come down.
Every picture on the wall has to be taken off and stored somewhere during the process. Curtains have to come down. Every piece of furniture has to move away from the walls.
The ladder becomes a central piece of interior decoration.
If you're living in the space to be painted, it's like living in a cardboard box on the freeway.
Nothing feels pulled together or serene.
Add three little kids to the mix and it's a major stresser.
Paint gets spilled.
The little drip spots on the tarp covering the carpet get on the bottom of little shoes and tracked through the house.
The baby samples the paint.
I had enough trouble painting one room and made a big mess all by myself during the two weekends Marc was gone to Woodbadge.
I can't imagine adding a 6-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a 9-month-old to the process.
So when Kari talks about the situation she has my complete sympathy.
I'm almost moved to suggest she and the three kids move in while Wade finishes the job.
Almost.

Boxes with holes, funny bags

The missing piece

My granddaughter thinks I can work miracles.
So when I answered the phone the other day to find this breathless little voice asking me if I had any boxtops for her, I couldn't let her down.
Apparently, Adell's kindergarten class was collecting box tops for education from cake mixes, cereal boxes and muffin bags.
She had a little chart where she could paste 30 box tops and she only had a few squares pasted in.
"Can you give me your box tops?" she asked hopefully.
Her mother then came on the line. She needed them for school today so if I could find some, they'd pick them up on the way to school in about an hour.
No pressure there.
"Umm, sure. Let me see what I have," I said.
I grabbed the scissors and went about the house checking boxes and bags.
I found a few in my pantry. Bisquick is always good for a box top. So are some cereals of which we don't have a lot.
I headed down to the food storage shelves.
The cake mixes abounded in box tops. So did the dried potato boxes.
The muffin mixes were a gold mine.

The after-party

I clipped and cut and came up with 19 little cardboard squares which I put in an envelope along with some cookies for Adell and her sister.
Adell was thrilled and she went off happily to school, secure in the knowledge that Grandma could come through for her.
I'm now looking at lots of little boxes and bags with missing pieces.
But that's all right.
Now I know what food storage is for.

Here's Ben the man

The cotton Colonial

Add tights and britches

The buckle shoes

Not a vest, a waistcoat

Wait for it

Ben Franklin Haddock

Getting Ben together

(P.S. Watch for a real picture of this character later today)
Marc loves a chance to act, even if it's for free and for an audience of little boys.
So when he got the call to be Ben Franklin at our ward's Blue and Gold Banquet he didn't hesitate.
"Sure," he said. "When is it?"
I'm a little more gun shy.
As soon as I heard him tell the person on the phone he would be there, I started calculating the costs.
Let's see: he'd need a wig, a greatcoat, a vest, a ruffly shirt, buckled shoes, knee britches, knee sox and maybe a kite with a key hanging off it.
I checked on the web, costumes rented at a starting price of $40.
"Oh," Marc scoffed. "That's too much. We can do it cheaper than that."
I figured we'd be scouring the Deseret Industries stores for costume parts or maybe we could luck into finding someone who had the appropriate clothes.
He called around a bit. He has reading glasses that look like little old-fashioned spectacles already.
Someone knew someone who had been involved in the Colonial Days event in Provo.
Somebody else knew somebody who might have access to the costumes from the production of "1776."
Then, last weekend, when I gently reminded Marc that the gig was only a week way, we started to panic.
Nobody had called him back and we had nothing but a fairly free Saturday.
We started off in the direction of Archive Costumes at Hale Center Theater.
They had all kinds of stuff.
The friendly girl helped him with a "waistcoat" (that's different from an ordinary vest, I was told) and an overcoat without a collar. She found him some britches and a lacey kind of scarf he could tie around his neck.
Everything came in his size and was clean and it seemed silly to spend all kinds of time and gas searching the county for similar things.
"How much?" I sighed.
"It only comes to $33," the girl said. "Course you'll still have to get some nurse's white tights at Walmart."
Marc looked at me hopefully. He so liked the look.
I handed over the credit card and we made the reservation.
Then we started trying to find the tights. Several stores and lingerie sections later, we found a pair in his size for $8 at Target.
So we're up to how much now? And that's before he prints off the papers for his Ben Franklin Jeopardy game and finds a cane and a wig?
I'm not sure Franklin would approve.
Isn't he the "penny saved is a penny earned" guy?