Month: February 2012

I don’t know how much we got, but it was quite a lot. This was before the big mound of snow fell off the roof when I was taking a corner!

We always like to say that it won’t amount to as much as they are predicting, but I think they were right on this time. We did get a huge amount of snow. And heavy… whew. We both worked about an hour to get the driveway shoveled. Snow blowers not working, but if they were, they would probably have broken trying to move this heavy snow. Anyway, Dad is off to work about half an hour late and I’m staying home until I’m sure the roads are plowed. Dad took the Jimmy, so I don’t have 4 wheel drive today. It isn’t very cold, though, so I imagine the main roads will be fine in a couple hours. So I can go in and put in 3 or 4 hours on cleaning and paperwork and the such. No one will be there, so it will be nice and peaceful!  People know that classes are called off at the Center when Chetek schools are called off, which they were. I didn’t hear that meals were cancelled, but I quit listening at about 6:00 when I heard that school was closed, because that was all I was interested in.

Did you Pennsylvania folks get the snow they were predicting the other day?

I’m finally to the part of the weekend when I have a few hours of free time. So nice. I’ll have to make supper in a couple minutes, but for now, I can do what I want.

Yesterday started with tai chi class at 9:00, with just 6 students this week, but I was overjoyed that they came back after the first week. And they even said they enjoyed it!

Then play practice until 3:15. Then Dad drove me over to Shakopee, which was nice. Erica and I practiced the duet music and it went together amazingly well, if I do say so myself. We have one more practice scheduled, so it will be great! Whew. We were both a little concerned, I think. It was also a pleasure to see the two kiddies. Bumpa played “tent” and other games with Chloe while we practiced and we got to see JD almost crawl.

Today started early (after getting home at almost midnight) with church, shopping, another church service. Lunch and run to Bloomer again for play practice, which didn’t get rolling until 25 minutes after I got there. Grrrr….They wanted kids to write their bios, but couldn’t they have just done that during their breaks? Anyway, picked up a few things in Bloomer on sale, then home and that’s it for the weekend.

But the really good news is that there is no play practice tomorrow, so I’m off from the time I leave work until bedtime. Whoopie!

Just talked to Luke and, in case you were wondering like I was, they are still waiting for the closing on their house. No problem, just paperwork that took longer than originally thought and stuff like that. They are really, really hoping to close on this coming Wednesday or, at the latest, Friday. They are in a time-crunch now, because they have guests coming and they had thought they would be in their house long before this. So pray that everything comes together (finally) for them and they get in before next weekend. That way they can get the plumber on the weekend and actually have water in the bathrooms when their company arrives!

I know I haven’t posted for quite a while. Life has been pretty busy, particularly considering this is the slow time of the year. Last Sunday was the benefit concert in which I accompanied the choir director as he sang 5 songs. It went quite well and I got compliments on it this week. But getting ready for that took quite a lot of practicing.

We had a couple of good work days. Last weekend we got the plumbing completely finished. Actually, that was mostly Dad, as I had play practice all day Saturday. Then Dad also took off Wednesday, and I just happened to wake up with hives so bad on my face that I didn’t want to be seen in public, so I called in sick and we worked on the house all day. We got the kitchen cabinets all torn out and the wiring almost done in the kitchen. Hopefully we will complete that this weekend and get back to sheet rocking. There is still a lot to do, but the end is in sight!

I also played for two funerals this week. $50 each, which should nicely cover my gas driving over to Shakopee and back this weekend to practice with Erica. Again, God provides for our needs, sometimes without our even asking!

It still seems like the performances for Grease are a long ways away, but once we hit March, it will seem a lot closer to being done with that. I’ve had a lot of fun, and am making good money, I might add. But it will be nice to have my evenings back, especially when the time changes and it is light in the evening.

So, basically, all is well in New Auburn. Just wish the darn hives would go away!

I loved Amy’s post and I was going to post this as a reply, but it is too long, so I’m posting it here.

I’ve been trying to save a little every month for another car, because both of ours are over 250 thousand miles. But it would take a long time to save enough for a car. But, as I mentioned last post, we had about $2000 to spend, due to the totaling of Dad’s car hitting a deer, the money I’d saved and the unexpected check from Toccoa. So Dad took off with a limit of $2500, since I knew it was expecting a lot to find anything in one day for only $2000 that actually ran! When I got home from play practice at about 4:15, he was back from the hunt and had some possibles. We really wanted a Buick, since we’ve had such good luck with them for quite a while. There was one in Eau Claire, so we called and said we were coming back to look at it. Long story short – it had some problems, but Dad researched them and was pretty sure he could fix them. He wanted $2700, but we held out and he lowered it to $2600 and we took it. I figured that within $100 was close enough. Of course, we forgot about the tax, transfer fees, etc. But still, in this day and age to get a nice looking car that runs for under $3,000 isn’t bad.  On the way home, Dad bought the necessary part and it was easy to install, so he put it in today and it runs fine now. Unfortunately the windshield wiper motor doesn’t work, but if Dad can figure out how to get it out, he thinks the one from the white Buick will work.

My point of all this is that a week and a half ago, if you would have asked me if I thought I would buy a car without taking on a car payment in the next week, I would have said “no way. We only have $400 saved.” So, obviously all the credit goes to God. And that is why there is no reasonable way to live other than to put your complete trust in His ability and desire to provide all you need.  We really don’t need to know how it will work out. We just need to trust that it will, do our part, and let God handle the hard stuff (like money!)

So now I have hives. Turns out I was allergic to the medicine that cured (I think) my ear infection. My ear isn’t totally unplugged yet, but I can hear out of it pretty good and the pitches are the same in both ears, which is a huge (and I mean huge) relief.

But I have hives. It started Sunday on my lip. That went away pretty quickly, but now the itchy red patches are just popping up all over my body. They stay around about a day, then disappear and pop up somewhere else. Very weird. Sometimes I have a bunch on my back. Other times, they will be more on my chest. Sometimes arms, but not as many there. Very rarely legs, but definitely everywhere that is covered with undergarments, to be discrete.

So I remembered that my mom used to get hives. I talked to her today. Turns out she had them for years on end and actually takes a “hives pill” as she calls it. I only thought she got them on her lip, because that was all that I could see. But she said she got them all over and her feet or hands would swell up. Mine don’t swell, so I guess I don’t feel so bad.

So, anyway, if any of you that are direct offspring get hives, be aware that it does run in your family. Sorry. And a possible allergy to pennicilin, since it seems that might have been the cause and Dad’s whole family except him is allergic to penniccillin (how do you spell that word, anyway?)

Hope you have a good weekend! We are going car shopping, since a deer totaled Dad’s car (although it didn’t take much damage to do that – he can still drive it). But we’ll be getting about $1250 from the insurance company (for a car we paid $300 for!) and I have $400 saved and we got an unexpected check for an overpayment in escrow in Georgia for about $400, so we have almost $2000!

I have three days of medicine left and my ear is still slightly plugged. But I can hear some out of it. But I have that annoying 1/4 step higher in my bad ear, so it makes music a lot, and I mean a lot, less enjoyable. But it is slowly improving. I don’t know if it will be gone by the time I see the doctor again on Monday.

I went on line and it turns out other people have had this pitch difference with an ear infection and they said it returned to normal.  So I am hopeful that it will soon be just a very bad memory!