The Joys of Ownership !

It was cold last night and this morning, so I wore jeans , t-shirt and sweater, and didn't take my sweater off until midday, when the sun came out. Yesterday was a shorts and tank top day !

My daughter calls every Saturday morning, and today she said that she is flying to England tomorrow for my mother's funeral. One of my half-brothers is sick with pneumonia in ICU over there, too. I would not have enough time to renew my British Passport and other paperwork, so I knew that I could not go with her. My mother had been so well, that her demise was a surprise, though at 93 years old, not unexpected in the future. My daughter is flying Air Canada, so she will fly from Houston to Toronto and then on to London Heathrow Airport. She will be picked up there, and driven to Lakenheath. That is a long day's trip when you start out in West Columbia, TX.

The dryer repair guy called and said that the dryer was fine, it must be a problem with the electricty. So when the renters said that the water heater had quit too, I went into town and bought a long water heater element, and a 220v. breaker to go on the outside breaker box, and another for the inside box. Those breakers are old, and they do go bad.

When we replaced the element in Jay's mother's water heater, we had bought the short one. It was the right volts, and wattage, it was just that it was shorter. We put the new long one in Jay's mother's water heater, first thing this morning. We were all ready to put the short element in the guest house water heater, as it is a narrow one that HAS to have a short one and I knew the one in it was old. But with the now working ohmmeter we were able to determine that just changing the breakers would fix all the problems. Success, for now !! I know this hard water chews up elements, so now I have a short one already on hand. When you can hear an electric element working, you know it is old.

It is Adoption Day so I put the kittens in their carrier, and we dropped them off at Petco. Then Jay and I went to Lowes to buy some stuff. Then on to pick up the dryer. Next door there was a big sale outside the flea market. Jay bought a table he wanted to use as a coffee table. Now I already have the dryer, and a big box with three different size nailguns in the little Puddle Jumper, see picture. Even putting the table on it's side, the back hatch wouldn't close. We tried taking the legs off, but no go. I carry a measure, so we measured how much it would take to cut off the two legs that were in the way of the hatch closing, borrowed a saw and lopped them off. It will now be at the right height for a coffee table when the other two legs are cut off too. Where there's a will there's a way ! We got all that back here, and got the dryer back where it belongs, and voila ! It worked.

I had been up since 5.30 am, and I had even taken the TranStar into town to get it inspected. It failed because I forgot that one of the four brake light sockets wasn't working, the bulb is fine. I dropped it off at the mechanics, but he didn't have the right socket, so I had picked one of those up, and dropped it off to him. He brought the TranStar back, but I was too tired to go back to the inspection station. My back was hurting, so I really wanted to take a nap before I had to run back into Conroe to pick up the kittens. Just as I dropped off, he comes ringing the door bell, and woke me up to tell me that he wasn't going to do anymore to the Coachmen Class B today !! Once someone wakes me up, I can't go back to sleep, so I was really cursing him under my breath. I groggily did some laundry, and went back into Conroe to pick up the kittens. I didn't even get any lunch.

It has been fix this and fix that, and rush, rush all day.