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It’s Too Soon!

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Christmas music. I adore it. But even I think it’s too early….

for Oldies 103.3 to go “all Christmas, all the time” already. It isn’t even Thanksgiving, for goodness’ sake! What’s the matter, they couldn’t wait a whole week?

So I listened to 3 songs and then changed the station. I cannot listen to it. Yet.

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Just When You Scrape Together Cheese Money…

Okay, I don’t have cheese money, but I was starting to stockpile a little bit in the checking account, to pay for replacing the shingles that blew off the roof last week. And to maybe start a little of my Christmas shopping.

But then I came downstairs and said “What’s that?” to Junior, who doesn’t pay attention to this sort of thing anyway. Water spots on the ceiling. Sort of where the tub is. Oh crap oh crap oh crap.

I do not handle stuff like this. Neither does Mr. Dump. I do not feel like paying a fortune to have someone come in and rip things out. Our Christmas budget was going to be VERY tight this year anyway, but I didn’t want to spend Santa’s cash on plumbing and/or replacing the floor or heaven forbid, getting rid of mold because the leak isn’t new. I am doing worst case scenario, I know, but you have to mentally prepare yourself, right?

Looking at the ceiling in the kitchen, it struck me that the leak (which appears in a kind of line) looked a little far back to be where the tub meets the floor (which I have issues with anyway because the floor isn’t flush with the ground so it’s very very difficult to keep it properly caulked). I grabbed my only tape measure (I need a grownup-sized one) and got a rough estimate of 55 inches to the first spot. Then I went upstairs and measured out 55 inches…that’s actually the end of the tub, where it meets the wall. Crap.

My worst fear is that it’s a leaky pipe in the wall, I have to tell you. And the upstairs is just a disaster area, so I’d have to clean stuff up before I could even have a plumber come in and look at this. We are not handy, we do not do stuff like this ourselves. We don’t have the right tools, or the right skills. I hate my bathroom floor, but I am not going to be able to replace it on my own, y’know? Plus, I have no idea how much replacing a bathroom floor even costs. I have a headache.

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If It’s Interesting, You Won’t Find it Here

Am I striving for new levels of mundane or what? I don’t have a counter attached to this page any more, so I have no clue how many visitors I’m getting per day. For all I know, there are three of you out there who stop by daily. Isn’t that sad? Well that’s what happens, you know. You raise kids, and then they grow up and move on.

The drive to work isn’t even as interesting as the old drive to work was. Sure, there’s less traffic to deal with, but a lot of the drive is through woods on a windy road. That’s windy as in, it curves a lot, not that it’s got a lot of air blowing on it. I mean, it’s windy with the air blowing sometimes, not not any more than any other road in the area.

Two questions for anyone out there still reading…anyone have recommendations for a local store that sells battery operated Christmas lights? Basically I want to string up a few lights here in my cubicle, but I don’t have an outlet I can use for something like that. So either something that would run off the USB port on my computer, or battery-operated lights, or something like that. And I’d rather buy locally (which can be anywhere between Leominster and Nashua) than online, because I want to see what I’d be getting in person.

Secondly, anyone out there have a recommendation for a robot building kit for an [almost] 8 year old?

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I’m Back!

Did you miss me? Oh sure you did! I wasn’t gone very far, just working, writing my nano novel, and cleaning the bathroom. When I actually clean the bathroom, I reward myself by not making me do anything else productive that day.

Actually, I wasn’t home a lot of the weekend, and when I was home, I was busy. We caught my nephew’s last flag football game of the season (“Go Pats!”). We took the dog with us, and he was the happiest pup you ever saw. “So many people to visit! So many blades of grass to smell and taste! Oh, and could someone get this little girl off me? She’s like velcro!” Yes, my niece is madly in love with the pupster. I think it’s because he got his hair cut Saturday morning and he was wearing some lovely doggie cologne. I hate dog smell, and he smelled like anything but that. We’re going to have to take him to the groomer more often.

We got the holiday lights up, because it’s always way more fun to do it when it’s sixty degrees out than when it’s 40 and raining. I like the way it looks, but it feels incomplete to me. We used to always do all 4 shrubs in front of the house, but this year only did 2 of them (and lights around the door). So I won’t stick my neck out and say we’re done, because I’m not convinced we are. But if we don’t put up any more lights, it will still look really nice.

Also, we saw Zathura last night. Without going into any plot-spoiling details, it is a terrific, fantastic edge-of-your-seat movie. Junior loved it, but also was scared by it in places. But that good kind of scared, if that’s possible. It is rated PG and I wouldn’t take anyone younger than 6 or 7, and if the kid is sensitive, I’d wait until 9 or so. It’s a great great movie, but very intense. As I mentioned to my sister, nobody is killed or even hurt, but it isn’t for lack of trying. Kids who are still afraid of monsters getting them should stay the hell home. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But I would suggest this one to people without kids too. I had a lot of fun.

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Food Frenzy

Okay, the Sentinel (I’d give you a link but I’m lazy. I think it’s just that dot com) had an article about the two restaurants that will be coming to the Orchard Hill Shopping center in Leominster.

I am quite literally beside myself with joy over one of them. The other I could live without ever setting foot in again. Let’s start with the latter. Everyone knew it was going to be the Olive Garden. Well the official word is out. But the last restaurant is the one that I am BEYOND THRILLED to have so close to home. We have nothing at all like it in the area, but not only that, the food is outstanding. We are getting…a Smokey Bones! WOOOOO! Everyone stand up and cheer, and get ready to order skillets of corn bread with pecan butter, baby. And the pulled pork. Junior ate half of mine the last time we went to the one in Nashua, and this kid doesn’t eat things like pulled pork. Oh joy!

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