Sunday's Festivus ED 13

A day to air your grievances about the situations you find yourself in during the week....

I have a few so sit down and grab a hot drink. (or if you live where its hot, an iced drink)

This week my grievances include: single girls on a mission, broken washers, ants, overflows and cheap bookcases.

Single girls on a mission: This is not the kind of mission that your church goes on! Girls who are fully aware that a guy is married and relentlessly flirt, send private messages and try to plan meetings are on my list as TOP OFFENDERS. Here's a tip. Once you find out a guy is married....hmmmm.....FIND YOUR OWN GUY. Even if he is good looking, nice, and funny. It is commandment number 10 "do not covet your neighbors spouse" (neighbor meaning anyone, not just someone who lives next to you. In bible times there was no way to know someone who hadn't actually come close enough to be your neighbor) Now there are tons of girls who flirt with my hubby. Most of it you can tell is innocent, however every few months there is one who goes over the top with hugs, batting eyes, inching me out of the way, calling on the pretense of business, or if they live far away like the current one does just leaving flirty messages and hinting about meeting.

Broken washers: If you find yourself depressed about your piles of laundry then think about your washer smelling liked burned rubber and not able to finish a cycle. A whole week of no laundry being washed. All of a sudden instead of a chore, the washing machine felt like "my best friend" had left. So what to do.......Since we are going on a mission trip to Ecudaor and needed to save the tax return to help pay for it, I read up on the symptoms, got a part from the appliance store, downloaded instructions, and put hubby to work. Once we got inside and saw how complicated it was, we decided it was beyond us. We went back to the appliance store and low and behold they had a used set that was almost exactly like mine. It was a fairly good price so we had it delivered that very day. I was so happy! I had my laundry all ready. But when I dried my first load it came out sort of damp after 60 minutes. Each subsequent load I had to dry for 90 minutes, and some clothes were still damp. SO back to the appliance store. We bought new this time. However when the technition installed the dryer it was making this weird thump thump sound. It was my lucky day as he was a dryer repair man as well. He took the entire thing apart, adjusted a rubber wheeel thing, and put it back together. It has worked great ever since. The washer is wonderful as well. I have two new best friends "Mrs washer and Mr dryer" (and no I am not flirting with Shannon Dryers husband over at Rocks in my Dryer LOL)

Thank you to my mom and Dad who have been washing towels continuously since THursday, except for during the "Sabbath", to help me catch up on laundry.

Being Seventh Day Adventists we try to get our houses fully clean by Friday at sunset time for our weekly "Friday sunset to Saturday sunset" vacation. During this time we do No work. I look forward to it each and every week. But the preparation for this day, I do not look forward to as much. Funny thing is, it seems all the disasters happen on Friday's when I have most of the house clean. Here's what happened this week.

Ants: for the past 6 weeks I see a stray ant here and there during the week and I put out the "Revenge" treat. However on Friday, I wake up to a counter full of ants. And lately they are not interested in the Revenge. This time they were hiding under the kitchen towel. This was a clean towel that might have been a little damp. The only thing I can think of is that they were looking for water. This is especially annoying because we have guests a lot on Saturday's, and have limited counter space. You cant really serve food on a counter with ants!


A single ant that was left. Notice he is not interested in the poison cocktail I left for him. I freak when I see small moving things so I forget to get a picture of the "swarm" earlier.

Another weekly event at our house that seems to only be happening on Friday or Saturday Morning's is the OVERFLOW. Toilet overflow that is. This week was especially bad. I was holding the insides of the toilet to stop the water flow, plunging, and yelling for help. no one could hear me as the rather loud fan in the other bathroom was on. The flood was inching toward the carpet in the hallway as my hubby came by and ran to get the carpet cleaner that sucks up liquid. Thanks hubby for saving me from the Flood!



This was a fully cleaned company ready bathroom before the "flood"


Bookcases: We recently got two bookcases for my books which seem to be everywhere. I LOVE books and refer back to them frequently. A few years ago I gave a whole trunk loadful to the church, but the remaining books seem to multiply when we aren't looking. The bookcases were inexpensive basic ones and when we put them up they leaned forward a bit. There was a strap to attach them to the wall, but that hasn't happened yet. We are also storing computer monitors in our living room to sell and make money for our mission trip (no they aren't stolen-they were purchased to help make money for the trip) I assumed everything would be okay. No kids bouncing around to knock them over. Well as you guessed it we heard a loud crash early Friday morning and found the bookcase laying on top of the monitors, and books, plants, dirt everywhere.


What are your grievances this week? Leave a Mr Linky to link to your site and don't forget to leave a comment. It will help me feel better....I promise. You can also leave a comment if you are not participating in Sunday Festivus.

Sundays Festivus Ed 11

A day to air grievances about circumstances of your week.

I am realizing that I am not an effective boss. I am too nice. I want people to enjoy their jobs and to feel uplifted and to do the right thing because they know they are appreciated. However, there are certain things, very important things, that continue to not get done. I have explained how important it is, made lists, asked the employee's to figure out a way to make sure it is done, but to no avail. I guess I will go back to my "One Minute Manager" book and see what I am missing.

What are your grievances? Leave a link to your blog on Mr. Linky.

Sundays Festivus ED 10

Festivus...a day to air the grievances of the last week.

Hmmmm......Toliets that overflow at the most inappropriate moments, ants that go marching through my kitchen, not enough hours in the day, time changes, teens that back talk, aching feet, cakes that go awry.

My toilet has a really bad habit of overflowing right after I scrub the bathroom, just before company is coming over, and if I wash the bathroom rugs. I have picked up the habit of watching it for minutes at a time, just waiting to see if the water goes down or up. I have the plunger ready to attack at a moments notice. I would call Rotorooter, but I have a good feeling that it has more to do with how fast the toilet paper disappears, and I have to argue with myself that wiping and being clean is a good thing. It sure beats the days of small children yelling out "I'm done pooping, come wipe my butt" I have requested that a flush be performed per 1/8th roll of paper is, but I can say with certainty this is not being accomplished. I got lucky this week as it overflowed just as I was walking in to clean.

Ants. Does anyone else have ants? I dont believe in using toxic sprays, so I have to put out the Revenge and wait 3 days, so they have time to get back to their nests and share the bounty, before the numbers decrease to a stray ant here and there.

I need about 50 hours and unlimited energy in each day. I have so many things to be done, and only the ones with the most top priority actually are accomplished. I realize that this is a little bit my fault as I try to do things in a "way too perfect" manner. This means only a few tasks get done perfectly, and the rest of the place looks like a tornado hit. I did get some help from a good looking guy. Not sure who he is as my husband usually sits on the computer all day. i believe the aliens must have captured him a week ago, as this guy was helpful last Sunday too. Today he rototilled the garden, pruned half the apple tree (it is really big), cleaned up part of the garage and tore down cardboard boxes and took them to recycling. He also bought all three meals to save me cooking time and ran the teens around to their babysitting appointments. Good thing he looks like my husband, cause I think I will keep him!

Time change. I despise this time change. I need more sleep than most. And to take an hour of that away is a really mean trick. So to rebel, I drank Diet Dr Pepper all day. I not only lost an hour last night, but it is midnight and I am still going strong (I dont drink much caffeine)

Teens that talk back. Why is it that everything a parent says needs to be challenged and proved wrong? I can count on one hand the times I actually was wrong. Of coarse I remember being the same way. Well, thinking the same way, I just wasn't so verbal about it.

Aching feet. My feet were aching when I sat down to write this but they are all better now. Guess I should take a break and put them up once in a while.

Cake that went awry. Today my son's girlfriend is over and tomorrow is her birthday. Who doesn't love a birthday and a reason to celebrate? So while my son and her were babysitting, Kiara and I decided to bake a cake. I go to the cupboard to get a chocolate cake mix (her favorite), But all I have is white so we decide to throw in some chocolate chips to make it chocolate-y. Looks as if the teen boy has been into the chocolate chips, but we have a few. I need something more chocolate, so I remember that cake mixes sometimes have pudding in them, so I grab a chocolate pudding mix and tell Kiara to add it. Upon further examination, I see it is "sugar free/fat free" but oh well. Then we realize we dont have any eggs. No problem I have read that 2 T of arrowroot powder is equal to 1 egg. So Kiara adds that, We spread the cake out in the pan which is very difficult as the moisture content is missing. Seems eggs have a lot more moisture than arrowroot powder. Whoops, forgot the few chocolate chips, so Kiara sprinkles them on top, and we bake the cake. It comes out looking different, but a little frosting will fix that, so I get out the trusty Wilton recipes and put Kiara to work. We dont have any powdered sugar. No problem, isn't that what Bullet mixers are for? Although after 3 cups , at 1/2 cup at a time, I get distracted, so Kiara takes over. One of us does not blend enough and the frosting is grainy. What to do....I know. Spread it on the cake and put under the broiler to "melt" the frosting...you know....like a glaze. I thought it wasn't half bad, but hubby and Kiara said YUCK. Hubby picks up a German chocolate cake at the store when he bought the pizza's tonight. Thanks hubby for bailing me out. Do We get an A for effort?

Spelling challenged. Yes It was midnight when I wrote this post so this morning I got a huge kick out of my cake that went "a rye" instead of awry. The ensuing laughter (mine) was so worth it.

What are your grievances? Leave a link on Mr Linky, you'll be glad you did!

Sundays Festivus Ed 9

Sunday's Festivus A day to air grievances

The Potluck Queen and the Mystery Casserole

Healthy food is not uncommon in our church as Seventh Day Adventist potlucks are vegetarian and the food is everything from as fattening as you can get, with cheese and eggs, to extremely healthy vegan fare. The people who are not used to the vegan food get a little freaked out about how it looks. So being in charge of Potluck, I wasn't surprised when my helpers were concerned about a particular dish. I was super busy trying to organize the final preparations, so I just said “its fine, it is just one of those vegan casseroles...Put it on the table” Once again they expressed concern, but I assured them that vegan food looks a little different. Everyone went through the line and I was about the last to through. I took a little bit of the mystery casserole. I sat down and about half way through the meal, I took a bite of something that tasted so wrong it was all I could do to keep from losing my lunch all over the table. At that very moment my sis and another church member were standing over the dish discussing it. The other church member said “hey this doesn't look right” and my sister trying to be brave said “I am sure it is fine and put some on her plate” (Sisters think alike:) However upon further examination, it appeared that mold had surfaced. And in my sisters words “it smelled all kinds of wrong and looked like total goo”. So we discreetly whisked it away to the kitchen. I was so puzzled why someone would bring a dish that was moldy. I was washing out the dishes, praying that no one would get sick, taking charcoal to make sure I didn't get sick, and imagining the newspaper headlines “ Head Deaconess poisons Church members with 2 week old moldy casserole” . I tried to figure out what happened, when it suddenly hit me. The last potluck, 2 weeks ago, I remembered a gentleman who couldn't find one of his dishes. That coupled with the fact that dishes are already in the oven when I get there, was a recipe for disaster. Now after every potluck about 9 different women check the ovens to see that someones dish isn't left till the next potluck! (fortunately no one got sick)

I am finding that the bad situations I find myself in are less irritating when I remember the satisfaction that I get when I blog them under my Sunday's Festivus!

What are your grievances? Either tell me in comments or put a post on your blog and leave a message in comments. Mr Linky will automatically link to your site.

Tune in tomorrow for the 100 dollar miracle....................