Category Archives: Grown-up Stuff

Domestic Engineer, Family, Funny story, Grown-up Stuff, Stories, Writing

The Walking Washer

Leave a comment

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a woman named Molly. Molly was a wife and a mother, and she took great pride in the work she did to keep her home and everything in it fresh and clean. A good portion of that task involves laundry. Thankfully, Molly had a machine that did all the washing for her, and another machine to dry everything. However, her washing machine was getting up in years and needed to be replaced. Molly and her husband, Marvin, drove over to the local hardware store and looked at all the fancy washing machines for sale. They read reviews of each machine and compared prices and features. After hemming and hawing, they settled on just the right machine for their home. They made their purchase, scheduled the delivery, and went home happy.

When the day of delivery came, Molly and Marvin were ecstatic. It’s new washer day! Hurray! Marvin left for work, and Molly stayed to wait for the delivery truck to arrive with her new washing machine. Soon, the truck arrived. Two lovely gentlemen stepped out of the truck and, after confirming this was indeed what Molly had purchased, they proceeded to remove the old washing machine and replace it with the new one. It was such a quick and easy process, Molly was overjoyed. She sent the delivery men on their merry way and got to working on her inaugural load in the new machine. Since this was a larger model than the previous one, she was very interested to see how it handled washing pillows. She threw a couple in the washer and let it do its work. She was so tired from the excitement of the morning she decided to take a nap. She shut the door to the laundry room and retreated to the living room to rest. 

When Molly woke from her nap she remembered right away that she had a load of laundry in her new machine. It had been about an hour and a half, so she knew it would be done by now. She bounced up the stairs to the laundry room and grabbed hold of the doorknob and turned. She pushed and immediately felt a THUD. Her son was home, he must have heard her coming and hid in the laundry room to play a trick on her. “Leonard, that isn’t funny, let me in.” She pushed on the door again. THUD. There was no give at all when she pushed. Something solid was blocking this door. 

Molly’s mind raced as she contemplated what could be causing her to be locked out of her own laundry room. Panic set in. What if? What if they were never able to access this room? All the towels, bedding, purses, and not to mention the water heater! As she panicked, it dawned on her that the only thing solid enough to block the door from opening was the new washer. The new washing machine must have walked its way forward as it spun dry the pillows, blocking the door from opening inward. 

Molly immediately called Marvin, explaining the predicament and ensuring he would be coming home promptly. Marvin was very handy, he would surely be able to solve this problem. When Marvin arrived home, he wasted no time getting to work. After a complete inspection of what he was dealing with, he went to the garage to grab the necessary tools. Molly stood in the kitchen, washing dishes and fiddling around to keep herself distracted while Marvin worked. He was making a lot of noise! Lots of loud banging, sporadic curses, a few trips back to the garage for tools. It felt just like the scene in A Christmas Story when the father is fixing the furnace. Eventually, Marvin was able to get the machine moved far enough back to open the door, though he had to break the feet of the machine in the process. 

Molly and Marvin stood outside, staring into their laundry room, collectively sighing in relief that it could have been worse. There could have been a flood! (Wink, wink) Seriously though, Molly’s propensity for home disasters is reaching epic proportions. She could benefit from some adult supervision.

The New Washer, still prone to walking when overloaded.

This folks, is a true story, though the names were changed to protect the innocent. Ha. Ha. We went that night to Lowe’s to order a replacement washer, and after a month of waiting, we finally have our new washer. The old one still washed fine with the broken feet, so it was not a hardship at all. However, even the new one has the tendency to walk if its unable to balance the load. The policy in our home is to never close the door when you are running a load in the washer. Maybe someday I’ll have a cute sign made to hang above it, I don’t know.

I hope you’ve enjoyed story time! Stay tuned, because this was fun to write and you may see more from me down the road. Shalom, my people.

Grown-up Stuff, ItWorks, Marriage

Exciting news! (for grown ups maybe)

Leave a comment

>>We paid off our truck! We had been throwing extra money at it when we could and finally with our tax refund and some extra commissions from the hubby we were able to make it happen. We are really hoping that will be the last of car payments forever. Now we are using that money we were spending on payments to save for the next vehicle. Meh. It was actually more exciting in the days leading up to it than after. It very quickly lost it’s luster, but I’m sure I’ll be giddy when it comes time for what would have been the next payment, and instead of sending it to the bank, we’re just gonna tuck it away in its own little savings account.

>>We updated our wills AND got them signed and notarized! I had them printed off a couple weeks ago and they just needed the notarized signatures, so we stopped at the credit union on our way out of town last Friday. It feels good to have that done.

>>After 2 years of using and loving their products, I signed up to be an ItWorks! Distributor. You might hear more about this from me as I’m learning more about the products and the company. I’m not a natural salesperson and this is way out of my comfort zone, but
I’m really excited about it in a timid sort of way.

>>In two days, I will have been married for 20 whole years. Not to mention I am still crazy in love with my husband. We took a trip over the weekend and had such a great time that I can’t wait to tell you all about it. Very soon. Stay tuned!

Coffee, Grown-up Stuff, Health, Kids, Running, Visually Impaired

April Update

Leave a comment

I am running a 5k next week. I haven’t been training for it. Occasionally I’ll get a run in, and I do fine. So I think I’ll do fine on race day. I won’t be breaking any records, but I’m confident I’ll finish on my feet. Which I guess is the most important thing to me. Just keep swimming.

This morning when my son went to pack his lunch, he found a gang of tiny ants in his lunch box. Eww. He freaked out, rightfully so I suppose, but he went a little overboard if you ask me. I mean, they weren’t biting ants, or even the flying kind. But still, what a mess. The kids managed to get out the door to the bus on time, while I did what I could to clean up before my ride came (dermatologist appointment today), but I’m sure there are still creepy crawlies hanging around here and there. I put his backpack in the garage because they were there too. This is per my son of course, because my vision, you know? They are too small for me to see, unless I know where to look. It didn’t help that his backpack is black, so the sneaky ants are camouflaged. 

Ugh. Then my ride came 15 minutes early, and I was still in my pajamas. But the driver was plenty patient, and everything was fine. The day could only go up from there, right?

And it did! The dermatologist seemed to know exactly what is going on with my face, and it turns out it’s not my fault! It broke out again when I was on the prednisonea couple months ago, and just won’t clear up. He said the prednisone was likely just a trigger for the underlying cause, which he believes to be rosacea. Stress is also a trigger, so I think I need less stress in my life. Anyone wanna take my kids for awhile? Or the dog? Or both? Anyway, the doctor called in a script for a cream, and I’ll go back in a few weeks to see if it’s helping. And he was a super nice doctor and didn’t make me feel crazy or neurotic, so I’m feeling better now. Amazing what a difference a kind interaction can do for your mood.

Now I have the whole day ahead of me, and with a positive outlook to boot. I’m thinking a nice cup of coffee and a good book are in my future today…

Daily Snippets, Deafness, Disability, Funny story, Grown-up Stuff, Health, Hearing Loss, Miracles do happen, Multiple Sclerosis, Visually Impaired

The Social Security Office

Leave a comment

I had to visit the Social Security office today. Here’s the long version (because that’s the only way, really):

I’ve been receiving Social Security Disability Income for a full two years now. After you’ve received benefits for two years, they automatically enroll you in Medicare. I have health insurance through my husband’s employer, so I wasn’t real interested in Medicare, but if it’s free, I guess I can’t complain. What I learned, however, is that Medicare comes in different forms, and the two I was enrolled in were Part A (hospital insurance) and Part B (medical insurance). Now Part A is free, but Part B is not.

Now Part B could be advantageous, if it covered what my current health insurance doesn’t, and saved me more than I would be paying for the premium. But I never looked into it, because I learned that my participation in Part B would deem me ineligible for another program I’m part of. I currently receive assistance paying for my monthly Tysabri infusions (for MS, $20,000 before insurance PER infusion), and if I didn’t receive that assistance I would be stuck with about a $5,000 deductible. (I did warn you this was the long version.)

So basically, I could pay $120 per month for Part B Medicare and possibly $0 deductibles OR I could pay $0 premium and definitely $0 deductible. Now I was a straight A student, and I went to college. I chose the latter.

Simple, right? Not so. In March, when they sent me my Medicare welcome packet, I returned the card stating I was opting out of Part B. Then June came, and with it a welcome letter – and a statement of my insurance premium for PART B. I called to say W-T-F and they told me that was just a standard letter and that I would receive another one telling me it had been cancelled. Another month went by and my benefits came, less the $120 for Part B premium. I was not so happy, and I called again. They acted like they knew nothing about my opting out, and told me I needed to sign a form requesting cancellation, and that they would mail it to me.

At this point I didn’t believe a word they said, but I gave it a week to see if the form showed up. It did not. I called once again, but this time made the call to the local office, in case I needed to make an appointment. They said an appointment was not needed, but that I should come down and they would get it all straightened out. They made it sound so easy but I was still doubtful. I made arrangements (thanks Grandpa!) to get to the office today and guess what? It really was easy. The hardest part, literally, was signing myself in at the kiosk to get in line, when they asked me this question:

Are you….
1) Blind/low vision
2) Deaf/hard of hearing
3) (to be honest, I really don’t remember what was after those first two, but I was looking for an “all of the above” option)

I waited for about an hour, which is what they warned me it would be, and when they called my number I had to ask a few of the people waiting where #10 was, but they were all happy to direct the obvious newbie to her station, and I found it just fine. The gentleman was exactly that, a gentleman, and immediately put me at ease. He reassured me that cancelling was a simple process, and showed me where to sign, and before I even had a chance to ask, he was telling me they would be refunding me the two months of premium I had already paid, and the check will be on its way within the week!

I was so pleasantly surprised at how smoothly it went and I felt pretty silly for having been such a nervous wreck. No worries though, it’s done now and I can move on with the rest of my week. Is it really only Monday still?

 

 

Food, Grown-up Stuff

New Things

1 Comment

Today may as well be recorded in the history books. Yes, it’s just your regular old Wednesday, but it was a day of new things for me!

1) A new pair of glasses. I’m so excited about these glasses. I had my eyes checked a couple weeks ago, and ordered new glasses then. They came in the day of my CI surgery, so I had to wait until the swelling went down before I picked them up. There are a few reasons I’m excited about these glasses. The biggest reason is that though they don’t correct the clouds, or you could call them blind spots, in my line of vision, they do make everything I DO see much clearer. This makes life a lot less frustrating for me. When you can only see a portion of what you are looking at, you would at least like that to not be so fuzzy. And the other reason I love these new glasses is because the arms are covered in paisley. I HEART paisley. I have a paisley key chain, paisley purses, paisley shirts… I even have paisley tattooed onto my upper arm. Oh, and I can’t forget about the paisley up in the corner of my blog, which happens to be the image identical to the stickers on my CI.

2) For the first time ever, I grilled. We purchased brats for dinner, and Mike showed me how to use the grill so I could make the food while he mowed the lawn. In all my years on earth, I have never had the desire to use the grill. And so, I never learned how. As it turns out, it’s ridiculous easy. And goes very well with a cold beer, I might add.

3) I wrote yesterday about becoming a faithful flosser. A friend commented on my blog post via Facebook (so the discussion won’t show here) and she was describing in somewhat graphic detail why she uses mouthwash. I’ll just say it basically involved ingesting bacteria, which is enough to motivate me to try it. Ew. So, today we bought a bottle of mouthwash and tonight I tried it. Dang, that stuff stings! They say to swish for 30 seconds but I don’t think I made it to 15 before I had to spit it out. Still, that’s better than none. It’s still one step closer to being a responsible adult, so I’m not beating myself up about the timing. I’m just proud I made that step.

So that’s enough grown-up activities for the day. Tomorrow I think I’ll stay in my pajamas and eat ice cream for breakfast!