Friday, November 10, 2017

It's Beginning To Look...


I can tell Christmas is coming soon. How you may ask? Well it seems to be a family curse. Mechanical problems happen right before Christmas.

Cars break down before Christmas. One year all cars went kablooey at the same time. My oldest son worked from early morning until afternoon on the east side of Detroit. My second son was driving truck and often left it in line so it would be the first when a plant opened in the morning. My third son had to come from a nearby suburb to work near where we lived. His wife worked in a different suburb in the opposite direction. My daughter worked in a suburb at the end of suburbia. I worked in another suburb near the end of suburbia.

There was one car running. My second son's wife who had three children to get to school was the de facto chauffeur. That poor thing was in the car from morning till night. I forgot to mention that we worked from around 4:00 AM to 3:00 the following AM.

Somehow for that almost week she managed to get all of us to work/school on time and then pick us up when our shifts were over. She seemed to love juggling all the schedules to deliver good service. It was a horror. Let me tell you we were happy to get our individual cars back.

It seems like each year there are car troubles. Even though we are driving better automobiles than we did back then the glitches still pop up right before Christmas.

Now it seems that the curse is spreading.

My computer said I needed to upgrade. I followed all the directions and waited. And waited. And waited. I had been having some minor annoyances and was anxious for them to be solved.

Unfortunately it was worse after the upgrade. It seemed like everything was trying to run in a molasses lake. Finally my computer froze.

I duly did a shut down. It would not come back up.

Thank goodness my son thinks solving problems like this is a fun challenge. But he was not having much success either. After a couple of days he was ready to throw up his hands and give up. He decided to completely re-install Windows to see if that would work.

It took him another day and a half to get it working. Now we are still finding things we need to load again but it seems to be working good anyway.

While he was busy working on my computer we started hearing strange noises from the furnace. After hours we heard a loud WHOOMPH. And the furnace worked no more.

It has been cold out. It will be slightly above freezing today but not so tomorrow.

We do have electrical space heaters to keep us warm but because under the house gets cold the floors get cold. And there is always the danger of the pipes freezing under the house.

It took a couple of days for the repairman to get to us. They have to come from a town about 25 miles from here. They already had repair jobs ahead of us. We were lucky they came as fast as they did.

He gave the furnace a good cleaning and it relit the first try. Bless his little heart.

He was a nice young man who showed us pictures of the dog his family took in. It had been physically and sexually abused. It is doing well now and is a beautiful animal. He was on his way to pick it up from the groomer when he left our house.

So now my house is comfy and warm. My computer is working as it should. Just remember that Christmas is coming.

14 comments:

  1. That was a schedule for your second son's wife. I'm glad you got your furnace fixed. Our biggee is the well freezing. Last winter, we did not have much of a winter which is not good. We like our hard freezes but we hate them too. lol

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    1. Our repairman had just come from unfreezing a well pump motor. That is unusual for this early in the season. I can remember having to prime our water pump with hot water in the winter so we would have water in the house.

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  2. Yeah for up and running, and Christmas.

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    1. I am hoping that this is the end of it for us this year.

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  3. Glad you have a warm house again but you do not need the other disaster either. Take care and enjoy the weekend Diane

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  4. I have to admit that before I started reading this post and only read the title, I was thinking it could be about all the holiday decos out now. Surely, that would have been less problematic than the car, computer and furnace issues. When I read how you described the furnace noise I immediately thought of the movie, A Christmas Story, which most likely you recall as well and how the father cursed it daily. I also recently upgraded my Mac PC to a newer operating system and while there are some changes to get used to, all seems to be working.

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    1. My daughter and her family watch that movie over and over all Christmas Day.

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  5. When it rains, it pours. And the Christmas spirit seems to enjoy pushing our finances to the limits, even before we start buying presents. Always a challenge.

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    1. Because my finances are limited I try to buy gifts early and watch for sales. I need to have them ready for shipping right after Thanksgiving. Most of my children live so far away. So the only real expense I have left is postage. The mechanical failures are just a "bonus".

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  6. Wait, that dog had been physically and sexually abused? My God, people are sick. Thank GOD that the dog has someone who will care for him properly. Hope there is a special place in HELL for that dog abuser! I mean that. Same thing goes for the murderer who just killed in the church in Texas last week, I mean that too.

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  7. That is some sign for sure. :-)

    Greetings from London.

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  8. Each years when such big events come near ,people sound go crazy here too Emma and roads and markets get packed with disordered car parkings which is painful for pedestrians .
    Oh pc problems horrifies me too as my eldest son is very far now and younger one is too naughty and hyper active though he helps me but it takes my energy alot alot:)

    glad that now your pc is doing better my friend!

    we live in hetter part of land so cooling machines are kept in home known as a.c .
    cooler parts of land people use electric heaters so no furnace is used though they are build as designing part of house sometimes as my mom had .
    this is scary to know about the pet of that worker dear Emma ,this gave me shiver .
    such things dcrease my affection for being alive sometimes

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    1. I only have AC problems in the summer. I have had a fair share of those too. I live in a very small town. We do not even have a grocery store. So I have to drive a ways to get anything. I order a lot of things using my computer and have them delivered to my home. Plus TV, my Kindle (book reader), and computer are my main sources of entertainment. I would be lost without it.

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