Hoping for seam ripper fun tomorrow. . .

Game Day went well – Dearest Son got to tell everyone about the new computer he wants to build with Beloved Hubby for Christmas. He even had a hand-printed list of components as a visual aid. We’ll probably order parts next week, Beloved’s put in serious hours already.

Afterwards, we paid a visit to Mal-Wart, to just walk around and pick up a couple grocery items nobody has on sale this week. While I’m hoping to soon find some ‘Made to Move’ Barbie dolls – admirably reviewed at Toy Box Philosopher – I’m glad I didn’t today. I’d have found some way to put at least two on layaway or something ! Some of her joints look a lot like FT Frankie’s.

Got to see the new ‘budget’ MH ­– no accessories, simple clothes, retread shoes, and not much articulation – and thought they were overpriced at $9.97. But I can see the appeal for those who’ve had to find missing hands and broken arms. Frankie’s ‘molded’ stitches are kinda cute, but they don’t look quite right to me. While I like Gigi’s dress, and don’t have a doll of her, I’m still gonna pass. Ours had her, Frankie, and DracuLaura, I’ve seen images of Clawdeen, but our store either didn’t get her or already sold out. Everything else was the same as our last two visits.

For his part, Dearest is narrowing down which Star Wars Lego set he’s gonna add to his birthday list. He’s leaning towards the less expensive sets, as he already knows his computer is gonna be most of his holiday gifting. But he was happy to see them in store.

Then, for whatever reason, once we got home, I couldn’t keep my head up. I felt so tired, I was actually dizzy. So I drank a lot of water, in case it was dehydration, and read a bit more of the new Stephen King book I got from the Library. Finished my Tasks of the Day with enough time to sit for a bit before Beloved was home. He was in a bit of a mood, so we watched Darkman over dinner, again reminiscing over what we thought of some scenes twenty years ago. Since we were serving ourselves during the worst parts, Dearest watched with us. I think his sympathies were reserved for the grey warehouse cat !

Some of the weight on our shoulders is what we’ve chosen to not let go.

Oh, forgot to tell ya -  Beloved Hubby and I had some time together yesterday, so we made snacks and Netflixed Electric Boogaloo, a fun and nostalgic documentary chronicling the early days and eventual crash of favorite 80s B-movie studio Cannon Films. Ya might not recognize the name, but if you’re my age, you know the logo and their catalog :  the Death Wish series, Masters of the Universe, Alien From L.A., American Ninja series, Breakin’, Delta Force, Last American Virgin, Superman IV. . .at their peak, they released 43 movies one year. Very enjoyable – we talked through a good chunk of it, sharing ancient memories and good times.

Our ‘old’ truck made it to Beloved’s far-flung job site just fine today, but then the heater stopped working. But when he turned it off then on again on the way home, it worked fine.  That’s a relief ! We could squeeeeeak by this month, we’re nearly caught up on some late bills, if it weren’t Christmas. Beloved’s working extra hours, Dearest Son knows we’re doing all we can for the holidays, and says he’ll be happy with another ham and a big bag of chips and dip all his own. We should be able to do a bit more than that !

Hoping to sew something soon – I normally don’t get to ‘til Wednesday, because ‘clean up from the weekend’ Monday and ‘Game Day’ Tuesday take more time than you’d think. Should have some time between ‘desperate for clean clothes’ Wednesday !

Diet Dr. Pepper attracts no bugs. . .

Still coming down off that ‘high’ of getting our old truck fixed for so little. Beloved Hubby’s thrilled with himself, as well he should be. That kind of leaves us in a pickle as to what to do with the M-truck – previous owner Boss will take it back, but we hate giving him a lemon to deal with. We could finish paying for it, fix it, and sell it ourselves, but that’ll have to happen after December. Beloved said he’ll chat with Boss about it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, three vehicles on a two-car driveway isn’t working. Chez Insanity is located on a permanent No Parking zone on both sides of the street, and parking on the lawn is occasionally rewarded by sweet notes with offers to add something to the coffers from City Of. Rather than block the sidewalk, Emmy-chan gets to overnight inside the garage for a short while. We’ll know more tomorrow.

Dearest Son broke the good ‘house’ scissors, and with a coupon, I could replace them cheaply, but it meant going to the back side of the mall Jo-Ann’s across town. Ordinarily I’d wait for a non-weekend, but the 60% off coupon expired today, and it was one of the few times Fiskars weren’t on some sale. Or so I thought. My first clue that things weren’t gonna go as planned was the fact that I had to park halfway across from my usual fairly-close-to-there spot – who knew folks still went to malls ? Evidently, from all the cars much newer than mine, our mall is doing quite well. And I needed a four-block walk anyway. I appreciated the bench just outside, that’s fer sure.

Once inside, our local Jo-Ann’s was hosting an unadvertised sale – on selected Fiskars scissors, of course including the pair I wanted. Since you can’t use a coupon on a sale item, I ended up getting a pair not on sale but cheaper than the sale price, just $2. more than I intended to spend. I hope that made sense. Anyway, we have new house scissors.

Some markdown ribbon I wanted got all the way to the counter where I was told it was by-the-yard ribbon, not by-the-spool. But. . . there was no way to tell, my selections were in a bin with dozens of others, still sealed, and completely unmarked with ‘By The Yard’ stickers or printing. Oh, well, they could put those back later, I wasn’t buying them now. Got a couple of holiday Perler kits on half-price, then used another coupon for extra beads – if Dearest Son likes that craft, we can make more, perhaps an ornament for his grandparents. If not, I’ll use what we have, it’s possible I’ll like doing it. I’m already planning on obtaining more peg-boards if I do – I like the idea of glow-in-the-dark snowflakes and stars. And there’s thousands of free designs on line (basically any cross-stitch pattern would work as well). Hope to see how our Christmas tree and 3D snowflake go this week.

I also got a new sequin tiara. It was the only thing I bought that wasn’t on sale, marked down, or had a coupon to go with it !

Here’s what an Anna doll looks like with her hair down !

Who could say 'no' to that face ? Especially at a thrift for $1.50 ?

I don’t know what’s more annoying – retail outlets trying to shoehorn their store hours into public domain Christmas carols, or corporations trying to get in on the Star Wars bandwagon before it (probably) implodes, Death Star-like, in two weeks. I know I should be excited about the Disney take on it, since I got my fangirl card shredded by the prequels, but that enthusiasm really is darn near flatlined. And no series of ads by Mazda and Hewlett-Packard can resuscitate it. Frankly, I’ve found more joy in the fact that McRibs are back. We’ve had four so far.

I’ve learned a Gandhi-like lesson in internet / Facebook human relations. Been semi-trolled on a couple of embroidery groups (yes, again), and instead of taking up the gauntlet and defending my fragile self, I’ve agreed with the agro and left it alone, in essence, dropping the rope. That’s fun as heck ! They don’t know quite what to do, and the thread dies ‘cause nobody wants to get involved on either ‘side’. Doesn’t hurt my feelings, it’s just a buncha opinions, after all, and I don’t have to defend mine. I’ve already had my say, time to move on, let others have theirs. Less said, soonest forgotten, I’ve learned.

We had a nice Thanksgiving, despite the rain and slight ice storm – and usual downpour of broke - keeping us inside all four days. I think we went to 7-11 twice, that was it. I made a very nice holiday meal that we picked at the whole weekend, and just finished the ham today. The last few bits and bone is going into a pot of beans tomorrow ! Hope yours was both fun and quiet, too.

Beloved Hubby spent a lot of time working on one truck or another. If you don’t recall – I don’t blame you, I’d forget it if I could ! – our two-years-of-high-payments-to-go truck blew out the back something-or-other mid-October. We bought a slightly larger truck - and camper shell to go with it off Craigslist – from Beloved’s boss. At first, it seemed a great deal. . . but those days are gone. The ‘new’ truck, let’s call it the M-Truck, is a complete and total money pit. I can’t even list all the tiny annoying things wrong with it, and the big expensive issues would double the length of today's post. We’ve put more money in repairs than it’s worth already, and it’s still balding tires and getting ridiculously low mileage. And that’s after Beloved fixed wheel bearings and gone through the entire electrical system after it blew $20. in fuses in 6 hours, then refused to start.

As for our old truck, or O-Truck, for short, the jackstraw dealership we’re buying it from pretty much said ‘your truck, your problems, we’re not even gonna tell you if you’re still in our laughable warranty or not, oh, and no, we won’t even let you make one payment late’, and it looked like repairs would be very expensive. We discovered that two of the bearing assemblies and a couple gears inside the back axle had broken, and parts alone would be over $250. for just the bearings. We were just gonna get through December, then work on what we could, as Beloved can’t even get a quarter of the tools he needs every day into vastly more reliable Emmy-car.

But Thursday, he found a potential solution. An entire ‘new’ axle for $200. ! So this morning, we drove down with hopes it’d fit and work for us. It was a fun little adventure, and as it turned out, the ‘new’ axle is a direct same replacement for the original now-busted one. We spent maybe $20. more for brake fluid type stuffs, but didn’t even have to buy new brake shoes, the ones on the new axle were better than what we had ! We’ll  need shocks eventually but it’s not necessary now. Went for Chinese takeout as a shakedown cruise – and she works beautifully ! We got our ‘old’ truck back ! I don’t know who’s the most excited and happy of the three of us. I can tell ya, the M-truck has had so many problems, I’ve had nightmares about it. Now I can get back to enjoying that Stephen King book and not worry so much !

Ummm... hi ? Is this thing still on ?

Sorry to vanish for so long without explanation. I don’t even have a medical excuse unless hernia pain attacks and a weird sort of laziness /exhaustion combo will work. If so, that’s it. If not, well, I got nothin’.

Debated whether or not to keep going with this, and decided I wanted to, I guess I just needed an unexplained month off. I still love everything I usually write about, but I confess my usual enthusiasm just wasn’t there for a while. It’s coming back, I don’t know why it left or why it’s building back up again, but in the end, it really doesn’t matter. It’s there, so I wanna celebrate how I usually do – right here. My deepest apologies if I made anyone worry about my sorry backside.

Missed you, missed me doing this, so here we are. If I get off my round rump and make something soon, I’ll be sure to tell ya ! Hope you’ve been less indifferent about Life in General, and feel great excitement and joy over the coming days. I’m starting to, and I don’t mean Christmas.