Catching up

In about 10 minutes it will be midnight here and we will be going into Wednesday! Talk about being behind in everything! My husband has a good heart and he is trying to help a co-worker but had no idea how complicated the situation was going to become. You have probably heard that saying, No good deed goes unpunished? He spent his entire weekend trying to help his co-worker's daughter. It was supposed to just be teaching the girl how to put on new brake shoes and having BIL, who was coming to check on my car, put on a brake cable. But there are so many problems with her old car they were outside working on it both Saturday and Sunday and it still isn't ready for state inspection. It is still parked in our driveway to avoid it being towed. Meanwhile, BIL found out the leak in my car isn't the freeze plug as originally suspected but a bad manifold gasket. I don't really know what he was talking about except we had to order the part and the job will take a few days in his spare time. To add insult the gas company was doing some work in our area and our service was interrupted. That meant that sometime during the early morning Monday the heater and water heater went off line. It got cold in here! Well, cold for this area - in mid 60's. I couldn't do all the laundry that had piled up or take a shower. But I had a doctor appointment this (Tuesday) morning so when I got up I had to take a shower and shampoo in lukewarm water. Fortunately, our exhaust fan also has a heat setting. I wrapped up and cut that on for a few minutes while I finished drying off and blow-dryed my hair, something I rarely do.

Doctor gave me a medication to help me get to sleep, thinking that could be part of my exhaustion. Have tried several things before and nothing has worked but will try this one. Drew for blood work including a thyroid test and gave me a flu shot. Got home to find BIL had been here and got the hot water heater going (hubby and I had tried night before) but the heater was out again! My husband reset it again and so far it is still working. However, BIL thinks the mother board in heat/AC system is going bad and that is why it keeps cutting off. Ordered one of those. At least I was able to run dishwasher and a load of laundry. More tomorrow. Made up my list of what will be needed for Thanksgiving dinner and tried to set a schedule to get cleaning and cooking etc done for the holiday. Drat, I'll just finish with Thanksgiving and hubby will be after me to go ahead and decorate for Christmas, send cards and shop! On the 9th my Red Hat group is going to have a little luncheon and cookie swap so that's something else to prepare for. Grandson and his girlfriend want to come for dinner and cards soon. Husband's last day of work is 12/18. The Red Hat Snowball Express is 12/19 and while I've already created my head piece, I still have to find something dressy to wear and it must be red and white. Christmas weekend I have to travel to Richmond for the engagement dinner and must prepare some goodies to take along. Right now I'm looking forward to 1/1! But I imagine many of you are just as busy. Anyone have some energy to spare?

The murder mystery dinner this past Saturday was rather disappointing. Only 6 of us were able to go and that included a new member. We kept getting differing information about the price of the event (no fault of our queen): website said one thing, one employee said another and so on. The deal was to be seated at 6:30, have appetizers, play would start after, then break for buffet dinner, and finish up play afterward. Room was really too small to allow people to easily move about (they wanted us to go around to talk to people as other tables for clues and so on). Food was not worth the price. We got called up by table to serve ourselves. Appetizers were meatballs, salad (mostly lettuce with a few cucumber pieces by the time we got to go) and rolls. They had a small variety of foods for the buffet but none very tasty. Dessert was a slice of chocolate cake no more than 1/4 inch thick. The actors moved among the guests and it was so noisy you sometimes couldn't hear what they said. They tried. No way would I go again.

Many thanks to everyone for the lovely comments on this months freebies! About the wordart, Stacey had commented that she found creating it difficult. I always wonder how much is too much when it comes to embellishing it and I'm pleased you liked what I did . Somehow just adding a style to text didn't seem worth doing as many of you can do that for yourself. And I don't do alphas, in part because I rarely use them myself, and also because they seem to end up big and bulky if you want to put any detail in them. That said, if there are items you feel are lacking or would just like to see more of, feel free to let me know. Can't promise anything, but I will try to accomodate.
Hugs,
SherryD