Baby has picked up some additional skills recently. Things like:
Riding in a shopping cart (a buggy if you're from TN)
Sitting in a high chair
Holding her own bottle
Removing her sock. Always just the right foot.
And being a drama queen - she learned that one from her father.
Hooray for Baby!
"Holy crap, it's cold in here."
Those words tumbled out of my frosty lips multiple times during a recent cold snap. The temperatures outside ranged between below zero and slightly above zero. The temperature in our house steadily dropped from 68 to 59.
Holy crap, it's cold in here.
Our HVAC guy came on a Thursday morning and confirmed we needed a new furnace. But...they couldn't install it for a week. We'd be chilly.
Later that evening, I was puttering about making dinner and blasting my Pandora station - per usual. Just as I was about to cook up the chicken for our cobb salads, the entire house went dark. The only sound was Pandora squealing from my phone. I looked out the window and what did I see?
All of the neighbors had lights on.
We waited 2 hours for the electric company to come over, my stomach rumbling in hunger, only to have them arrive and say it wasn't their issue, our main breaker was blown.
Good luck getting an electrician out at 9:00. We bunked in a hotel that night.
The electrician came first thing in the morning and didn't have the correct part to fix our breaker. In fact, no one in town had the correct part. He patched it up but only gave us 60 amps to work with.
Our dying furnace was drawing more power than that. So the furnace was shut off completely.
And that's when the holy-crap-cold really set in. We hit a balmy 48 degrees. INSIDE. We huddled in the TV room with the door closed and a space heater running at full tilt. I had 2 layers of clothes on and 3 layers on the baby. We were icicles for 3 days until the temperatures climbed past freezing outside.
Michael even changed from shorts to pants. He never wears pants.
Thankfully, our furnace was replaced and we didn't die. Thankfully, our breaker was fixed 10 days later. Thankfully, the adventure is over.
But holy crap, we were cold.
You can tell a lot about a person by how they choose to spend their New Year's Eve. For example, we chose to watch Field of Dreams; that makes us old.
Kitty protested loudly until I convinced her that it was a delightful movie and she would like it. About 20 minutes in, I realized it is a movie that plods along and is more endearing than exciting. So I let Kitty play Nintendo while Old Man Mykey and I finished the movie.
Then I taped my eyeballs open so I could make it to midnight.
But before that, I conjured up a delicious feast for the revelers:
Cheese ball with bacon jam
Deviled eggs and delectable meatballs
And Muddy Buddies for me and Kitty
Baby let loose and wore crazy Harry Potter glasses
And at midnight we blew our horns and Kitty did her famous dance for us. It was perfect.
The next day we played games and had a relaxing day. Afterall, we needed to recover from our riotous night. During our favorite dice game called Fill or Bust, Mykey scored an epic 2,850 points on one turn.
I think it's a sign that we're going to have a great year. Happy 2024!
