Life Observation # 95

Two for Tuesday Observations . . .

The hardness of the butter

is proportional to the softness of the bread.

My wife has been sick since Christmas Day with the flu with some really nasty respiratory congestion. She sounds like she is coughing up a lung and you can tell it hurts. She headed to work yesterday and I received a phone call alerting me she was at the hospital being treated and had been there most of the day. She was hooked up to two bags of IV fluid, one bag of IV antibiotics, and given an inhaler to help her breathe. There were several prescriptions which needed to be filled so hopefully she can start to feel better.

All of this has made the dog Gus crazy with him not getting the attention so he has decided to eat every Christmas ornament from the floor to half way up the tree. Gus has shredded newspaper, paper towels, and even pulled toilet paper off the roll in the hall bathroom and made it all the way across the living room in one long run. I cannot figure out how he can run pulling it off the roll 25 feet when I can’t seem to get 12” to 14” off in one pull without it breaking off. Most of the time it is about three sheets and then it rips off the roll making me debate if I should use it as intended and possibly suffer the consequences or just blow my nose whether I need to or not.

I’ve had one of those days . . . woke up early to let the dog out to do his business, looked up and the sky was so black with the stars shining so brightly in the minus 20 below morning air. So far so good but things started changing as the morning wore on.

I started my rig (Alaskan for truck) this morning to warm up making sure I unplugged it from the electrical outlet that keeps the block heater going at night keeping the oil and engine warm. Started up nicely, slow to warm up which is to be expected at this temperature and I’m off to work.

I am about halfway to my office when all of a sudden it starts getting extremely cold inside as I realize the heater is not working now. I look at the gauges and see the temperature gauge is quickly moving towards the Hot mark and then see the excessive steam billowing out from under the vehicle. I am only a couple of miles to the office so I continue on since there is no service station close-by and there is a auto repair shop next to my office. I arrive and open the garage door and drive inside of my shop to see all of the steam filling up the space and now can hear the thumping sound of the thermostat under the hood.

I alert the people next door to my problem and they tell me they will get to it ASAP. I’m not totally sure where they come from as I spent all day waiting for them to get it in the shop for repairs but it never happened so then I had to figure out which rig I wanted to take home. I ended up in our van which rattles like crazy and sounds like a few marbles rolling around inside due to parts moving on the shelves. I hate that van almost as much as my rig. I am hoping soon to take the gas cap and drive another newer truck for it.

Another busy day that I had hoped would allow me to catch up on paperwork before the holiday but it did not work out that way. Other items crept up and there were several “no heat” calls which kept my plumber’s busy running to get people’s heat back on. Hopefully tomorrow I can get some of my ‘to do’ items knocked off my list.

Returning home tonight found Gus had continued his rampage of the house and the assault of the Christmas tree. It is a 7 foot tree now with no ornaments below the top three feet. All of the ribbons pulled off and shredded. The pine cones pulled apart and scattered all over the carpet. Many hand made ornaments destroyed and left in piles all around. Boredom seems to be his problem right now so finding ways to entertain him during the day while my wife is sleeping and him not in his kennel.

Now the two fer . . .

Does a clean house indicate that there is a broken computer in it?

Ice