Life as we know it.....

I've completed my first week as a "temporarily single" woman and lived to tell about it. Although Hub has been gone during the week just about every week for so long, this just seems so different. Still nothing going on the house - not even shown this week - so there is no end in sight. He was complaining this morning that he didn't like waking up alone in his apartment. Tonight, he had dinner at Hooter's as that is the ONLY place that he could watch the ballgame with other fans. (That's a WHOLE other story.) We plan to go see him next weekend.

This week did have it's challenges. We are having some crazy weather for this area. We have had the lowest temperatures in 20+ years. Even had a day of closed schools due to ice. The roads weren't bad where we live, but this week proved pretty stressful at work, so I welcomed an extra day off.

On Monday evening, my son and I thought we were locked out of the house after the door shut behind us and would not open. Luckily, the back door was unlocked and our problem turned out to be that the front door knob was broken. This had happened once before and Hub had "fixed" it after he couldn't find another doorset to fit the holes already drilled in our front door. The deadbolt still worked so I decided to wait until the next day after school to look at it while it was still daylight. Hub texted one of his friends who was planning on coming over on Thursday and help the "damsel in distress". On Tuesday, I got out the screwdrivers and took off the doorset and started looking at it. I took it all apart and then spent some time on google and youtube looking for diagrams on how to put it back together. Finally, I put the puzzle together and back on the door. IT WORKS! I am woman; hear me roar! I did have one spring left over that I couldn't find where it went. I've saved it and hope that it doesn't become problematic.

Last night, my son had a friend spend the night. When I got up to make the boys some breakfast, I found that there was no water coming from the kitchen faucet. Again, I felt like a big sissy loser as I had forgotten to do anything as a prevention for frozen pipes. Luckily, we checked all of the faucets and the kitchen was the only culprit. The hot water would work so I ran it for a bit and finally decided to run the dishwasher and that seemed to help. I also went back to my trusty google and looked up frozen pipes. It suggested wrapping towels around the spigot and pouring hot water over that. I poured and poured and finally started heating the wet towels in the microwave. I ran upstairs for something and all of sudden heard rushing water. I was afraid that a pipe had burst but instead my deck was being flooded as the pipe thawed out. My deck is now covered in ice, but the kitchen water is running and I'm better prepared for tonight. Again I say, I am woman; hear me roar!

I have always taken care of the "business" end of our family. Things such as bills, doing the taxes, insurance enrollments, etc. This past year, I really pushed Hub to take care of the insurance from his company. I took care of the school insurance which just meant taking everything free and not enrolling in anything else. His company had changed insurance providers and he said that he basically signed up for the same middle of the road plan that we had. We finally got our cards this past week. (How loud can I scream here?) We are with a major insurance company and now have a really large deductible before there is ANY benefit. We have been accustomed to the $20 copay for a doctor visit, etc. They don't even seem to have contract prices with the docs. I also had a new script with my son's asthma meds that I had been holding for the new insurance. If I had mailed it in before, I felt that I would just have to get new scripts to change providers. Now a med that once cost me $25 would now be around $800!!! This is nuts. I don't know what Hub signed up for, but this doesn't work. Now we have to try to undo this next week. Wish us luck. Sometimes the insurance companies only let you make changes once a year. I certainly know who will be filling out our paperwork next year.

Life seems to be delivering some really strange, tough twists to our family in the past few years. I have to admit that once I really felt like a very lucky/blessed person. Now....not so much. Maybe that is my whole problem and God's just teaching me once more that it's all out of my control. I hate these lessons! I really thought that things would be so much simpler at this stage of life. We would be settled; smarter (ha!); richer (ha-ha!), etc. I do realize that we aren't alone in this and truly have no problems compared to so very many. I guess I have just been a little pissed and bitter lately. I can't bring myself to say who I am mad at, but I'm just tired of dealing with "stuff". I keep thinking that things are going to smooth out and we will coast for awhile. As much as I long for July and my son coming home, I know that it will also be with a lot of adjustments for all of us. We just really need to catch our breath a little. Enough already.

Didn't really mean to go off on that tangent. I guess that is where the "personal journal" part of this blog comes in.

Later.