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Don’t you hate it when things start breaking down in your home?

December 7, 2008 by Tricia

I rarely use our basement washroom, but for some reason, I used it earlier today. That’s when I made a discovery … the taps we have in that bathroom are beginning to break. Figures .. just when we have NO money we’re probably going to have to go out and buy a new faucet set.

My husband knew the taps weren’t in good shape, but he never got around to letting me know. Men!

If we can keep the taps for a while, well until we have some extra money, I’ll wait and get some Moen faucets. We’re eventually going to redo the basement and basement washroom so I’d like to pick out nice, quality fixtures if at all possible.

Doesn’t it figure that things start breaking down just when you can’t afford it? That happened to my sister in law and her husband. They just bought a new house (across the street from where they had lived) and once they moved in, in October they realized that their furnace wasn’t working so they had to replace it. They also had to replace the washing machine and dryer, plus their water softener and snow blower just broke down too! They replaced the water softener … at a cost of $2,500 bucks! Why??? I’m sure they could have lived without soft water for a while. I think replacing the snow blower (considering their new property is larger than their previous property plus it’s on a corner so that means more snow to shovel!) was more important.

Anyway .. isn’t that a run of bad luck? A new furnace, washer, dryer, water softener and soon hopefully a snow blower … that must be $15,000 or more in extra expenses they weren’t counting on!

I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that nothing else in our house breaks down. Our washing machine and dryer came with the house and we estimate that they are going on about 35 years old! Yeah, I’m sure they are energy hogs … we’re going to replace them soon … but hopefully not before we can afford to replace them.

Constipated dog?

December 2, 2008 by Tricia

I think Midnight has a problem. As you can probably guess from the title of this post I think Midnight might be constipated. She normally poops about four times a day, but today she’s only gone in the morning and no matter how many times I’ve taken her out today she hasn’t gone.

Oh she’s tried. She’s paced and paced in circles on the lawn out front, but hasn’t produced anything. The one time it looked like she was going to be successful a neighbor came outside their house and called out to me. Great timing. Midnight stopped trying and had to go over and great the neighbor.

Then once we were back on the boulevard for another try another neighbor came by with their dog – just as I was becoming frustrated with Midnight and yelling “GO POOP!” at her. Naturally, Midnight stopped her pacing and went to play with the other dog -stealing his leash handle and making it look like she was going to take him for a walk!

Midnight has a few really good “doggy” friends in the neighborhood and this dog (a lab collie mix) is one of them. So as they played I talked to the other dogs owner. Trying to explain why I was frustratedly telling my dog to poop. LOL Hopefully he understood! We’ve talked several times about our dogs. He’s a very nice guy, but I hate to say this … he kind of needs to look into treatment for acne scars. His face is really pockmarked. sad really as he’s a nice looking man otherwise.

In total I’ve been out with Midnight approximately five times today, for a total of maybe 2.5 to 3 hours! A few walks and trips just outside the house haven’t helped her at all. Plus when Chris just came home from work I told him she was having trouble so he took her for yet another walk. He just got back a few minutes ago and all she did was pee.

She’s had a few other days where she’s been like this over the last week. She’s always caught up to her normal amount of deification by late evening, but this time I don’t think she will. I’m more used to her having the opposite problem, this is something new for her.

Fellow dog owners … has your dog ever been constipated? Is there anything I can give her to help her go? Maybe a fruit or veggie. I seem to remember reading about people giving pumpkin to their dogs but I can’t remember if that was for loose stool or constipation.

Time to start Christmas shopping … I think

November 28, 2008 by Tricia

If I’m feeling well enough tomorrow Chris and I were thinking about officially starting our holiday shopping.

We still aren’t sure what kind of gifts we’re going to buy all the kids in the family! Perhaps tomorrow outing will just be a trip out to get some ideas. Most of the kids, nephews and nieces, are teens and I think those are the hardest people to buy for each year!

I had mentioned in another post that I was thinking of getting some of them newly released movies and or gift certificates to their favorite stores, but if you have any ideas for gifts for teens I’d love to hear them. Especially gifts that don’t break the budget! I haven’t been making much money lately so we don’t have much to spare to buy gifts this year.

My only brother that lives in the area has invited us over to his house for an early Christmas get together next weekend. His wife, my sister, her twins and their girlfriend and boyfriend, and my brothers daughter, her husband and their new baby will be there. It’s just a small gathering, but one that we try to do each year.

My brothers and sister and I usually don’t exchange gifts anymore. As I said in an earlier post we decided a while back just to buy gifts for the kids. This year I might get my brother a gift though. I found some fantastic silk ties and I know how much he loves his ties. So I might surprise him with a small gift. The gift would be a thank you for the Tom Cochrane and Red Rider concert passes that he got us in the summer.

Have you started shopping for the holidays yet? I’ll bet that some of you started today consider that it’s Black Friday! Did you put yourself on a budget this year? Cut down on the number of gifts that you’re going to buy?

I always find Christmas the most expensive time of the year. I’m still trying to figure out how we are going to manage to buy all the gifts we need to purchase this year on almost no money.

Tired of seeing “fake” people on TV

November 25, 2008 by Tricia

I’m still not feeling very well so I’m trying to catch up on the television shows that I’ve missed in the last week (due to visiting our friend in the hospital so many times).

I’m so thankful that we have a PVR. It’s like Tivo. We pretty much record all the shows we like to watch even though we try to watch several of the shows we like on the same night that they are on tv. This way though we can watch them without commercials and of course watch them whenever we want.

It’s definitely a good way to pass the time when you aren’t feeling well!

Is it my imagination or is just about every actor/actress on TV these days just a little too thin? What happened to shows with actors that looked like real people? I mean it’s like most of the characters on the shows I like are taking diet supplements like Ephedrasil hardcore or something. They’re just too thin, too muscular, too perfect …

Do you find that when you watch TV the people just don’t look like your neighbors, co-workers or people that you’d see in your city or town? I guess most of the stories aren’t much like real life either for that matter! LOL

Gift ideas for teens?

November 24, 2008 by Tricia

After I wrote that post about wanting to get started on my Christmas shopping early this year, Chris and I had a little talk about what we’re going to do for Christmas this year – present wise, I mean.

Over the last few years our families on both sides have pretty much agreed not to exchange presents between the adults. Why? Well, everyone has children (except us) and we’re all established in our homes. We don’t really need presents. Oh they’re nice, but when you already have most everything you need or want you don’t really need to get Christmas presents.

So for the last few years we’ve all just been getting presents, for the most part, for the kids in the family. That’s still a lot of gifts to get! Between Chris and I we have 17 nephews and nieces, plus two on my side have kids of their own so add three more to the list (oh and add our two god-children as well!) If we were also buying for each of the adults individually we could add another 20 gifts to the Christmas list that we’d need to buy! So I guess we cut it in half … but it’s still a lot of gifts to buy.

Most of our nephews and nieces are in their teens and I find teens the hardest to buy for each year. Most of them don’t really need anything in particular. I mean they all have iPods, game players, closets full of clothes … so what do you get for a teen that already has everything?

As I said earlier I’m keeping my open for anything that’s on sale that might make a good gift. I think for at least half of the kids I’m leaning towards getting newly released DVD’s, music CD’s, and perhaps some popular games. I just need to find out what they already have (what games and game players, dvds and music) and what others are planning on getting them so they don’t end up getting two or more of something.

I spent some time this evening looking at the DVD section at Buy.com. There are a lot of great movies that have just been released on DVD and there’s a section there where you can pre-order DVDs that will soon be released like The Dark Knight , Mama Mia, Indiana Jones the Kingdom Crystal Skull, Step Brothers and many other movies. I figure that if I order some movies that are only being released at the end of November or in early December there’ll be little chance that the kids I get them for will already have these movies.

Of course, for some of the kids I might just buy them gift certificates. I’m fairly sure some of the teenage girls might like a gift certificate for one of their favorite clothing stores.

So do you have teens on your shopping list? If so, what kinds of things are you thinking of getting them?

Don’t you hate it when things start breaking down in your home?

Constipated dog?

Time to start Christmas shopping … I think

Tired of seeing “fake” people on TV

Gift ideas for teens?

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