It's Been a Week

or more since I posted. Wanna know what we have been doing?

Started off with the Knoxville Creative Hands Street Team show and sale, cost us $70 for the booth. Diantha sold ONE yarn, Des sold 1 bag. My dh sold enough soap to cover the booth. Here is a pic. I sold NOTHING.

Got my period (sorry if TMI) 4 days early, during the craft sale. Came down with the flu, during the craft sale.

While down this week with flu, we found out that the little girl next door who spent the night a few times recently, gave my kids lice. In 23 yrs. of homeschooling, none of my kids have ever had them. I don't know how people whose kids are in school can cope with this happening. I have had to drag my fevered butt out of bed every day this week to treat hair, bedding, etc.

I passed a kidney stone this week. And despite the weakness and flu and pain, did several new yarns.

My dh, while working under the house to put in a new drain for the washing machine, to move it to the new laundry area, broke a water main. I have never seen this before, but the main water supply coming in to this house, at least the only one we have found so far, is a rubber hose coming up out of the ground. Crazy. We have had the water shut off for 36 hours now. He filled buckets of water we could flush toilets with. Has bought the wrong parts twice now... once PVC instead of CPVC, and once the wrong size screw clamps.

Beverly took a new, 2-year-old's-eye-view pic, This one of Diantha.

Meanwhile my 11yod has oil in her hair for 8 hours today because the water isn't back on, to wash it out. And the water isn't yet back on because...

I sent my 17yos off to the PO today (3 miles away) with a package of yarn to mail. On the way, a car cut him off, sending him and the motorcycle (a classic 1973 250 Suzuki) off the pavement. The police called to notify us he was in the ER. Full chest/spine/cranial CAT scan AND xrays, hand xrays, road rash down his Left arm, stomach, legs (but not into muscle), broken Left collar bone. Spent 4 hours in the ER.

The Officer said he wasn't doing anything wrong, was riding slowly at the time (20mph), but cited my son for no motorcycle permit (I was supposed to take him this week but sick) and no insurance. Plus the cops had the bike towed, NOT by the company that honors my AAA. We don't know yet if the bike will recover. It has been an $8000 day w/no health insurance. We are glad our son is ok. Motorcycles are great, and we love them. You can't help the jerks out there. BUt they are, after all, only metal and rubber. They are fully replaceable. People are not. So we breathe a prayer of thanks tonight that our Artemas (Greek name means Safe and Sound), though hopped up on hydros, is truly Safe and Sound.

And I am really, really, tired.

Does It Have To Be Everyday?

So last evening, after I had already written in my blog for the evening, Richard goes in to put the handles on our shower faucets. You know the shower he has been working on putting in, for 8 months. This week he finally cut the hole big enough to patch the drywall, and last night he had just cut the piece of drywall, so I can get to tiling the bathroom. I am supposed to return the borrowed tile saw on Saturday. Sure.

He goes in there, and I hear him yell, Help! Help! and he says, "Tell Artemas to go out to the street and turn the water off to the house!"

OY.

I go in there and he is standing in the tub, drenched from head to foot. And there is a DELUGE of water pouring out of the HOT water pipe where the handle should be, and he is trying to stop it up with a towel, which is soaked and pouring water down into the wall.

I took over for him, so he could go out and see if Artemas was turning it off right. mind, it was 28 degrees outside. I figured the towel was just complicating things, so I threw it in the tub and deflected the water down into the tub with the palm of my hand until it stopped running. He was only out for a minute, but he was chilled already when he came in. and I was soaked too, because when I first went in the bathroom and the water was spraying and he was trying to stop it up with the towel, it was spraying EVERYWHERE.

Only place he didn't get was on the far side of the door where I have a primitive ladder for towels (same wall as the pipes only about 10 feet away) and the back wall behind the toilet, which is 12 feet away.

The handle had just BLOWN apart. So he spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out the schematic for putting it back together, and we spent the night with the water turned off to the house. Which made a grocery-shopping expedition this morning look welcome, even if I did have to take 3 of the kids with me.

We put a heater/blower in there this morning and it is dry, so he can drywall it. I am so glad, because I am totally allergic to mold since I lost one of the babies (the loss damaged my immune system so badly) and I told him, no way can we seal that wall up if there is any moisture in it.

Before sealing the wall up, he gets the big idea to fill all the wall-holes he has made with Great Stuff to help insulate the walls, because that is one COLD bathroom. I mean with the holes in the walls and the outside temps lately, I am really reluctant to sit down in there. So he starts to use the stuff, and the end blows right off one of the cans (and down into the wall, of course). He tries another can. It is supposed to come out looking like a fat maggoty worm, then swell up greatly. No. It came out and stayed, just like that. Fat maggoty worms of Great Stuff in the wall.

What the heck? I mean, can't some of these things happen to somebody else? Does it have to be something EVERY day? My life is so WEIRD.

Ok, on a maybe just slightly
less weird note, Marvel Comics is going to feature Mr. Obama in a Spiderman episode. News story here: Spiderman Meets Obama. So in honor of just such a momentous occasion, I am making a handspun yarn by that same name. I am so proud of myself, I have only been spinning about 3 months, and this is SOCK weight yarn, and very even, about 15 WPI. I am going to make it available in my Etsy shop for purchase.

And, there really wasn't a block for today on our quilting calendars. But the quilt pictured is only over the next two days. It is a 2-block quilt that is a Snowball and 9-patch. So I made a couple random 9-patches. Never hurts to have some of them lying around anyway. And, here is a picture of one. It is UGLY. Today must have been Make Ugly Quilt Pieces Day, because my oldest daughter made an Ugly quilt top too.