Its snowing.

This does not thrill me for several reasons.

First and foremost: Uhm… first day of spring, anyone? Right.

Secondly, we are out of propane. And, I’m not talking just low. I’m talking probably not enough to make it through this cold snap.

I had already owed the company $450 for the last fill up of the tank. I was sitting on that bill until I had a little spare change, which never seems to come along.

But, they won’t fill the tank without paying off the previous balance, plus the amount they’ll put in now. Aaaand, considering its a weekend, it cost $50 additional to have them deliver it. Aaaand, considering I’m so close to zero, they may have to charge another $50 to check for leaks in the tank (checking for leaks is required by law to fill the tank if its at zero).

I have the money to get all this cleared up, thankfully. Just barely. I was waiting for a paycheck to come in today.

But, that paycheck was earmarked for my mortgage payment. And that payment was due on the first of March.

Its the 20th, by the way.

See my issue?

This financial circle of chaos I’m in is enough to drive any person insane. I’m so tired of struggling. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to get out of the downward spiral.

I guess I’m going to have to start looking for a third job. That should be fun, huh? To find one that would pay enough to make it worth the effort to go in will be difficult, I’m sure.

I’m going to curl up in my bed now and try to get over this nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach.

It’ll all work out. It always does.

Its just a matter of working out before I go insane.

The ceiling fan in our bedroom broke not too long ago.

This was frustrating on several levels.  One being that the ceiling fan was fairly new.  Secondly, the fan is remote controlled.

Remote controls = easier life for Tom and Sheila.

With the remote, Tom can turn the fan on and off throughout the time he’s in bed and regulate his own temperature level.  Mucho easier than having to make Sheila get up several times through the night to adjust the fan levels.

Anyhow – at first we thought maybe just the battery in the remote had died.  So, I went to the grocery store to buy a battery.  But, of course its some crazy type of battery that not just any grocery store would carry… So, I have to stop by another store to find the flipping battery.  Go figure, when I get home and install the new battery, that doesn’t fix the fan.

No.  That would of been waaaay to easy.

So, we sit back and stare at the fan.  I google the fan to see if it has any known issues, with no real luck.  We contemplate the next step.

And we think, and we think… we don’t have the money to replace the fan.  We don’t have the funds to buy any replacement parts.  We don’t even know what to look at to see if it needs to be replaced.

Finally, Tom and I ask TNR to check out the fan and see if he notices any issues with it.  He looks it up and down, without taking it apart, and doesn’t see anything noticeably wrong with it.

He stares at it, and stares at it.  Tom stares.  I stare.

TNR walks over to the wall, and flips the light switch to the ‘on’ position.

Uhm.

Yeah.

Amazingly, the fan works now.  Someone had turned the switch off.  I don’t know who did it… since the fan is worked by remote, we never flip the switch anymore.

Go figure, huh?  We all felt incredibly stupid to the fact that none of us thought to check the switch sooner.

But, at least it was a cheap fix!

I gotta lot of crap.

Tons, I tell you.

Can I get rid of any of it?

No. (That’s the simple answer.)

So, I finally thought of an idea to help create a little extra space in my tiny little world.

Okay, I didn’t think up the idea. Otherwise, I’d be a millionaire. No, instead, I helped the inventor become a millionaire by buying this:

vacuum bag sucker thingee that makes things smaller to store

to make these easier to store:

heavy thick blankets that we love but take up too much room

and these too:

even more blankets, cuz we need 132091238 of them

So, you gotta cram your blankets into the bags, and then ya gotta find the hole, like so:

the hole to suck out all the air in the bag

And, then this happens:

you are now witnessing the sucking action

Finally, it ends up like this:

airless sucked bags - mucho smaller-o

Which, makes Sheila’s small little world a little more spacier. Okay, notsomuch. But, it did help with some of the storage issues I was having.

Final product?

130123098123 sucked up blankets

Now I wanna put everything into vacuum bags and suck all the air out!! Its entertaining, I promise you!

PS – Sponsored post? Really? Not at all. Not enough people read this blog for someone to pay me to post about this crap!

I realize when the power goes out at three in the morning that its an inconvenience for most people.

Rarely have I heard someone genuinely cheer when they hear the thunder crack overhead followed by an extreme silence.  You know that silence… the one where you don’t even hear any white noise of the refrigerator humming?  Yeah, that one.

The darkness is so extreme that you can’t even see your hand in front of your face since the familiar glow of the digital alarm clock is gone.

Of course, its not until that very moment that you wonder where in the world the flashlights are kept.  Which is quickly followed with a silent plea that you remembered to install fresh batteries in the hidden flashlights.

A quick stub of the toe reminds you where the door frame is, and the poor attempts at swinging your arms side to side to avoid that one other object … that you know is there … somewhere.  OUCH!  Yup.  There it is.

Then, after finally feeling through the junk drawer that is overflowing with … junk … and the flashlights are found, you momentarily pat yourself on the back that the batteries are actually good.

What do you do then to regroup?  Call the power company?  Set the alarm on your cellphone that you hopefully already charged?  And then, you wait… and wait.  Maybe you go to sleep?

We, on the other hand, must come to an executive decision.

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Finally, the propane company that made the mistake of delivering me all that glorious propane and I came to an agreement regarding which path to travel to correct the error.

I had called them shortly after Fowler Fest ’08 and explained that I nearly had enough money saved to pay off the unexpected bill. They had said they were extremely busy, due to an unexpected cold snap, with people running out of propane and they would contact me again soon.

Nearly a week and a half passed before my phone rang on Election Day showing their number on the caller ID. I was about to believe they had forgotten about me with all their chaos, and I had slipped under the radar with some free propane. Of course, I knew it was too good to be true. But, I had to hope!

Anyhow, after offering up the billed amount to be paid in full, the company agreed to allow me to keep the propane. But, since I was technically a new customer, they legally had to do a leak test and check the quality and age of the connections on the tank and into my house. This process should have some fee, but it was explained to me that the company would eat the cost since this was their mistake.
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I have upset the propane gods…

They have decided to come and remove the gift from the heavens.

It has become a huge headache that I did not cause, but must somehow be accomidating to help solve.

They’re only solution, besides pumping the propane out again, is for me to pay now for the delivery.  Which, if I had the money, would be something to consider.

Instead, now we’re in a holding pattern until the ground dries so they can drive onto my land to pump the propane out.  (Get this, although they use a 120 foot hose to deliver propane, they only have a 20 foot hose to remove propane…)  I’m not letting them put huge ruts in my yard to fix their mistake!

And, to top it all off, I’ve pulled a muscle or something crazy in my calf.  It hurts to put weight on my flipping leg.

Really?

I mean, I thought I was being good.

Yet I get bit in the butt again.

I musta been a bad bad girl in a past life.

Ooooor, in my next life, I’m gunna not have a care in the world!

I mean, if that whole reincarnation thing is anything worth really considering…

We live off propane here in the sticks, the boonies, whatever.

We don’t have to fill it through the spring or summer… and depending on the temperature, we usually don’t have to fill it in the fall either.  But, come winter time, we may have to fill our propane tank 3 times or so.  At a hefty chunk of change at each filling, and with my lack of discipline for saving these hefty chunks of change, I always freak out a little bit come winter on how to fill’er’up.

Interestingly enough, today a propane truck showed up at my house and filled up my tank.

What makes this so interesting is the fact that I had not ordered propane yet, because I don’t have any money.

I thought the magic propane goddess had smiled upon us with her warmy-gassy-goodness and rewarded us with heat for the winter.

Which, in  my opinion, was a great story that I was more than happy to believe until I looked the receipt tucked into my door…

The name on the receipt?  Not mine.

The address on the receipt?  Not mine.

Ooooh, boy, someone is in some troooooooouble!  And it ain’t me!

Of course, being the good girl I am, I immediately pick up the phone and call the business.  So, now they’re going to figure out some payment program for me to pay off the propane that was mistakenly put into my tank.

The company kept thanking me and thanking me for telling them about their mistake.  I hadn’t even thought about not telling them.  But, I suppose I could of gotten away with free propane for a couple months…

Oh well, I’ll be the good Samaritan.

I’m a believer in Karma.

Hopefully someone up there is taking notes and I got a gold star today next to my name.