I am not particularly cheerful right now, but I respond well to cheerful things like chickadees.
When I last blogged, I was talking about our plumbing problems. A third plumber came out last Monday, the 13th, and fixed the plumbing. I wish I had the photo he took of the thick, healthy tree roots in the sewer line. Nice to know we're feeding our trees with our sewage. I wish they didn't have to wreck the pipes to get at it, but short of digging an outhouse, I can't figure out how else to do the transfer. Anyway, while the plumber was here, he turned off the cold water to the washing machine. He also left his credit card reader on my counter, which I spotted some time after he left and thought was something the kids had brought home. He called on Wednesday, after I'd done a successful load of laundry (because I used the warm/warm setting) and we figured out that I had his reader; he came by to pick it up and thanked me profusely, telling me to call him directly when we had our next plumbing problem and he would give me a discount. Later that day I did another load of laundry (on the warm/cold setting) and the washer stopped when it hit the rinse cycle. I tried it on permanent press, delicate, regular and the same thing kept happening. And I thought, well, it can't be the nice plumber's fault, since I already did a successful wash (on warm/warm) two days ago! So I called our nice appliance repairman and on Friday he came out and -- for $70 -- turned the cold water back on. See the square behind the washer, with the red (hot) and blue (cold) taps? I had never noticed that before. Sigh. Rocket Boy thinks I should have asked the plumber to pay for the appliance repairman's visit, but it's just too complicated. Sigh.
Nothing else has broken since then, but hey, the year is young. I also have not yet dealt with the broken skylight, and I'm going to be really sorry about that when it snows again. I did, however, drag our big ladder over and climb up it to take this photo of the broken skylight from the top. But I forgot to bring a measuring tape with me -- and the twins were off at their second home, the Teen Lounge at the library, so they couldn't fetch it for me -- and even if I had brought a measuring tape with me, there was absolutely no way I was going to climb onto the roof in order to measure this thing. I left the ladder up so that the TWINS could climb up it to measure, but then I forgot about it, and then we had another windstorm and the ladder blew over (fortunately not with anyone on it). I was at a meeting at their middle school to learn about teen use of marijuana and vaping, and apparently the twins heard the crash when the ladder blew over, but did not go out to investigate, nor did they tell me about it when I got home -- I discovered it the next day. It's still lying on the ground, blocking the path. Did I mention I'm not particularly cheerful right now?
One of my New Year's plans/goals/resolutions was to take the twins on an outing at least twice a month. We went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on January 3rd, so this weekend I decided we would go to the Denver Botanic Gardens. We went fairly early on Sunday morning to miss the crowds. The Gardens aren't crowded this time of year, of course, but they're having their yearly Orchid Show right now, so there are more people there than otherwise would be. All the usual things happened on this trip: (1) Mom forgot to review the directions before leaving and our seriously out-of-date TomTom's instructions confused me, so it took us a while to get there and involved a lot of profanity on my part; (2) Kid A wanted to leave almost as soon as we'd arrived; (3) The boys started begging for food as soon as we got there, around 10:45; (4) The kids fought like wolf pups, nearly knocking down other visitors and coming way too close to breaking some plants; (5) I finally gave in and we had lunch at 11:15; (6) We left sooner than I would have liked.
I did enjoy seeing the orchids, though. Orchids are such luscious things. I found myself wanting to take a bite out of some of them. My favorites were the pale yellow ones, followed by the pale yellow with magenta spots (some are in this picture), followed by, hmm, maybe the creamy pure white ones, followed by the frilly lavender ones, followed by... They're all lovely. I also found myself wanting to get a pale yellow dress to match my favorite orchids. This was a very nice thing to do on the day after the 12th anniversary of my mother's death, since she was fond of orchids and grew so many of them in the back yard.
Monday was Martin Luther King Day and the library was closed, so we just hung around the house all day like slugs. We watched the movie "BookSmart" which baffled the boys (I had to answer a lot of questions), but did hold their attention. Rocket Boy called a few times and the kids skyped with him too. He got both boys electronics sets for Christmas, so he started working with Kid B on his, over skype. I had to help a little, but mostly stayed out of it. It's so nice to let Rocket Boy do something with the kids that doesn't involve me -- such a very rare thing these days. In the photo you can just barely see RB's face on the iPad on the right. This was later, after he and Kid B had done the groundwork and now were trying to make the thing work, with Kid A. I don't know if it ever did work, or even what it was. Not my pigeon!So, that was our week. I only managed to cook a real dinner once -- nacho casserole -- it fed us for a few nights and then we survived on frozen dinners and soup and whatnot. So I'll try to do better this week, but my mood is definitely not optimal. Today I have these things on my list: (1) put away the clean laundry; (2) put away the clean dishes; (3) make banana bread; (4) have coffee with a friend; (5) spend some time cleaning the living room; (6) make dinner. Oh, and (7) blog. One thing on that list is now done, and more soon will be. We're hanging in there.
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