Some things never change.

http://homeschoolhome.blogspot.com/2005/07/red-button.html

First you have to go back and read this post from 2005.  I'll wait.

So, 11 years later, our youngest son (age 18) was up last night, doing laundry or something in the laundry room and started looking at the water heater.  He got curious about one of the valves/safety features on the water heater and, of course, couldn't resist twisting it.  It started dripping, so he put a towel under it and made a note to self to tell his parents about it in the morning.  Unfortunately, he was up late and didn't exactly wake up in the morning.  I got up, went into the laundry room to do some laundry and heard dripping.  At this point, the water had soaked the towel and gotten on the floor a little, thankfully, not too much.  I contacted my husband at work and he had me take a picture of the leaking part and send it to him, stopped by and bought a new valve and came home from work a few hours early.  After he got home, youngest son woke up and came in to tell us about the valve and the curious episode to confess and apologize.

So to sum up.

Cost of valve:  16:00
Other costs:  Half a vacation day.

Son reminding us how some things never change .... priceless.

Some random things since the New Year.

These are in reverse order, because that's where they were on my phone.  The lion is a painting my daughter did in art class.  She just does a good job at everything she sets her mind to do.   I really can't wait until her novel comes out.  :-)  

The next 5 pictures are some of my art.  I've started doing some of it actually in the bible.  Someone put me into the group Illustrated Faith on Facebook and this is what they do, so I'm trying it.

These next 4 pictures have to do with the new homeschool group we joined a couple of years ago after our old one disbanded.  We have board game meetups every other week with them and this is the group of games we took last time, followed by a picture of the game Labyrinth which is one of the games we got for Christmas.  I like it very much, but it makes me feel that everyone else is way smarter than me.   The last picture here is of the huge, ginormous Nerf battle we participated in for New Year's Eve.  That was fun.   It was inside a local high school.

Sadness.

We got bad news over the weekend.  My son's fiancee's goddaughter, who was going to be in their wedding, was killed in a tragic accident.   My son and his fiancee are devastated and we are feeling their sadness here, hundreds of miles away, unable to do much about it.  I know, though, if we were there, there would be little we could do but pray and hug and one of those we can do from here, though it feels hollow, useless.  I just feel so bad for them and for everyone involved.  It makes me sad every time a mom or dad loses a child.  It shouldn't happen that way.  When my parents died, it felt horrible, but there was a sense that this was at least the right order of things.  When a child is taken so young, it's unspeakable and wrong.  

Prayers please for this family and my son and future-daughter-in-law whose lives are irrevocably changed.

My reading blunder.

We started reading as a read-aloud the newest Ranger's Apprentice book, The Battle of Hackham Heath last night and my daughter is reading it.  She didn't make a mistake but at one point, she said that some people crouched in the forest and my son heard it as "crapped in the forest", which was funny.

Then later, we were discussing the snow predictions and I looked up the website and was reading from it.  It said 1-2 inches with 4 inches possible in some areas, but I read it as 4 inches available in some areas, which is a different meaning altogether.  My son just came in here to tease me about it again and said "4 inches available in limited quantities.  Please call now."

So far, we only have about an inch and a half.  :-)

Fun times. :-P

Youngest son said "Oh look, I just found a dog's toenail on your bed ... (he holds it up so I can see it then drops it) ... and I just dropped it in your purse."

Fortunately, the dog in question, Cosmo,  looks okay.  He just broke a nail.  We have had them rip dew claws before and that's very painful for them, so I'm glad it's not that.  I didn't enjoy going into my purse to look for that thing though.

Reality.

We're back to reality, mostly, around here.  Youngest son loves Christmas and our tree is very pretty this year, so he wants to leave it up for the 12 days of Christmas, theoretically taking it down after January 6, the epiphany.  What will likely happen is that is the first day that he will even listen to my asking him to take it down and he will actually take it down several days later.  Whatever.  I don't really care.  I'm busy getting down in the dumps, fed up with my job search.  I do kind of have a job, a freelance independent contractor gig for a transcription company but their pay is abysmal and, contrary to what Joey Tribbiani thinks, that is not a good thing.

I've got a job interview on Friday but I am not very hopeful.  It's a p.r.n. job which means "as needed" and it's far away, so it would be a long drive.  I doubt I can make that work.  We'll see, I could be pleasantly surprised.  I don't really want to do transcription anymore anyway.  I'm tired of it, my arms are tired of it, my back is tired of it ... you get the point, but it's hard to convince the people who hire people that with my bachelor's degree in child development and my transcription diploma, I don't really want to work with children or do transcription.  That's all they can see.  Probably my best hope is to get some kind of transcription job and then move into another position eventually.  I hate the word eventually and I'll be honest, I hate having to start over at this point.   

Welcome to 2017.    Sorry about the whining.  

Good things this week -- we've still got family parties to go to, our internet is back on, we've got wedding plans going on and that's exciting, the fact that its a destination wedding means we get to go on at least a mini-vacation this year and it might snow tomorrow.  I can't help it, I love snow, at least once a winter.