Stressed Out
3:03 p.m. - 2012-10-12


What a week. My nephew was working around the house, clobbered the front faucet with the ladder (painting the eaves) and broke the handle. I went down to the hardware store and bought a new one and installed it. Then there was my birthday, and the spouse and I went out to Sweet Tom@toes for dinner, which was nice. For my birthday present, he gave me a subscription to Ancestry.com so that I could find out about my somewhat mysterious past. All my suspicions were confirmed, so that is exciting and cool.

It was fun talking to the people who called me on my birthday, getting all the family news (gossip). It's been harder to stay in the loop since my dad died and the family home was sold, but it's not impossible.

The next day I had a potluck brunch at church for the ladies' group, and I tried a new recipe. I have been building up a collection of orange marmalade recipes to use up the marmalade I made from the oranges from our tree. The oranges are rather bitter, so I needed to find some use for them besides subbing them for lemons in recipes. I tried an orange marmalade coffee cake that has a cinnamon butter layer, and it turned out really well. Since I discovered that I don't much like marmalade at all, this is a good development.

The next day I did a little grocery shopping and was putting away the groceries when I heard a strange sound like someone pouring out a huge huge bag of steel ball bearings. It went on and on and was really loud. I thought something had fallen over in the house and looked in all the rooms until I got to the back bathroom. I was shocked to see that the brand-new shower door installed so recently had exploded all over the room. Glass shards were ankle deep in the shower and spread across the floor into the bedroom. Little bits were still falling with a sound like dripping water. Thank goodness I wasn't in there. This kind of glass is like a windshield that breaks into little cubes, not pointy glass shards, but I'd still hate to be in the shower barefoot and have that happen. I looked it up on the internet, and it does happen from time to time with tempered glass, sometimes from a manufacturing defect or sometimes the cause is mysterious. To say I was freaked out is an understatement. Luckily, the company has outstanding service, and a guy was in my house cleaning up the mess inside of 20 minutes. They never once insinuated that I was at fault, just did their job and were very nice about it. The guy did tell me that this has never happened in his memory, so I just felt really 'special'. My daughter pointed out that if I was easy going and not a worrier, nothing would ever have happened, but since I do worry about things, I am a cosmic target. The company guy said that the chances of it ever happening again were almost nil, so I didn't need to worry about it when they replace the door, but I told him that chances were I would. We never even got a chance to use the new shower yet. Now I know that every time I brush my teeth I will be wondering if there will be a blast of glass hitting me from behind. Freaky.

However, I don't have to worry about that yet, since a new door has to be made and installed, so I am safe for the moment. I pulled out a sweater that was waiting to be hung on the knitting machine and started clearing off the machine. I haven't knitted for a long time, so it feels good to get back on track. I also finished the sweater I was crocheting and started another one in a lovely berry purple. In addition, I am still working on the African Flower afghan and have 4 rows out of 11 crocheted together. I had to figure out a filler block since they are hexagons and don't have a straight edge. Crocheting them together is certainly 100 times better than sewing them together by hand.

Tomorrow is my delayed birthday dinner. I have been craving hot dogs, so we are having hot dogs and tater tots, and A is making a cake. She has also been practicing the art of baking macarons (the French kind), so is bringing some of those too. I am looking forward to eating my first macaron. I'm going to make several salads to round out the dinner, like waldorf salad, and a beet salad. The spouse has been craving beets lately, which is surely a peculiar thing, but oh, well.