Adulting is hard!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I am NOT cut out for the single life.  

You might not expect that kind of declaration from a homebody introvert with moderate-to-severe social anxiety who would rather sit home and crochet all weekend than go out and see other people.  But I've also been married to the same lucky, lucky man for more than half my life.  I can make all the jokes I want about being a strong, independent woman who don't need no man, but...eh.  

Don't get me wrong - I could be, if I had to be.  But I don't have to be. 

But, if you ever need proof that I really don't like to be pretending to be single, just send my hubby away for a week or two.  Because that's inevitably when the proverbial crap will hit the fan.  

I was thinking maybe this was just a winter occurrence, but then I remembered the one summer not that long ago (OK, maybe like 10 years ago? I don't remember for sure.) that he went to Ann Arbor for the week, for work.  That was the week we got hit with a big storm that blew the roof off the pump house and took out our power for a while (I want to say a day or two?) and left a smattering of tree limbs and branches all over the decks and the yard.  I really don't feel like looking that up on FB right now, because if I do it'll end up taking me three days to get this post published.  😂

A few years ago, he went to work down in Northfield for a few weeks in February.  During that time frame, we got hit with winter storms like every other day.  I'm not even kidding.  It wasn't that long ago, because the boy was in college at the time, and I was literally home alone with the dogs.  I remember driving home from work in a blizzard the one night, and it took like two hours, and I had a full-blown  panic attack afterward and called in sick the next day and then felt bad because I wasn't really "sick" sick, just having a mental breakdown and not wanting to admit it because I was the Responsible Adult and all.  And we got a lot of snow, and I didn't know how to use the tractor and was contemplating hiring someone to plow the driveway. It was awful! This was about the same time that there was the very real possibility that he was going to be sent to work in Las Vegas for a couple of years.  I don't even want to talk about that right now.  Obviously it didn't happen, but still.

So...like I said yesterday, my hubby is working out of town right now.  He comes home on Saturday, yay!!  The first week went well here.  Nothing major happened.  But this week has sucked rocks.  The frozen pipes and non-working drain... still not draining.  It's warmed up to the teens above zero today, and still not draining.  The faucet didn't freeze today and the drain still isn't draining.  

But! I remembered to set the garbage and recycling out on Tuesday (I'd forgotten last week).  And I've remembered to bring in the mail every day (the hubby usually does that), and of course I've been feeding and watering the outside animals, and keeping the house somewhat clean (actually, the boy unknowingly paid me a huge compliment last week when I was complaining about not feeling up to cleaning the house -- he said that the house wasn't not clean, just very slightly unorganized. I wanted to jump up and hug him!!  I've always, always struggled with keeping the house clean. It's not my strong suit. Working from home has definitely helped me stay on top of that, and it's nice that other people notice, too. But I digress!) and keeping us fed and stuff.  

Even though I have a stupid painful annoying ear infection right now.  I think it started with this pimple type thing I got on my ear from where my Bluetooth phone ear piece rubs it.  The Bluetooth phone ear piece that I use when I'm working from home, of course. I only use my phone as a phone when I'm working from home, or to call my parents.  Anyway, me being me and not being able to leave things alone, it maybe got a little more irritated than it would have if I wasn't me and would've been able to just leave it alone.  Last Saturday night, I woke up in the middle of the night with sharp pains in that ear. It kept me awake most of the night, actually.  And also pain in my jaw and neck.  Like I could barely open my mouth.  And my ear was swollen and red.  Fuuuuuuuuuu...dge.  I was pretty miserable that day.  I took some Tylenol and looked up home remedies and when to go to the doctor, and all that stuff.  I felt feverish but didn't have a fever.  

Now, you need to know something here.  People make jokes all the time about the "man cold" and all that, right?  Like how men supposedly turn into big drama queens when they have a cold, or whatever.  Well...that's me.  I can out man-cold any man on earth.  You should also know I have a pretty good pain tolerance.  I've continued to function normally through some of the worst pain on earth, the pain of fibroids and endometriosis.  Alright?  I gave birth to an almost 9-pound baby without any pain medication. And it was a precipitous delivery, which means that labor and delivery happened quickly.  Which means there wasn't a lot of transition time, not a lot of time for my body to adjust to new stages...I don't know how else to say this...not a lot of time for stretching? I called it a natural episiotomy because that sounds nicer than big ol' perineal tear.  I couldn't walk right for six months. My point being, all of that hurt less than fibroid and endo flare-ups.  Not even kidding. 

But, if I should be mildly inconvenienced by body aches or sniffles or sinus congestion, all bets are off.  Life sucks.  No one has ever felt worse than I have at that moment, and I should not be expected to do anything that the normal people do.  I may be dying, and no one cares.  Just go about your lives! Nothing to see here!!  If I survive this round, I'll see you in a few days, I GUESS!!

*ahem*

Alright.  Short story long, I started antibiotic ear drops today.  The pain is mostly gone but my ear is still all stuffed up.  And I feel extra whiney because I'm dealing with all this (the pipes, the cold, the check engine light that I'm not going to have time to write about tonight but will write about tomorrow if I still feel like it even though I really just gave you the overall gist of the story right there, the presentation I had to give to the Executive Committee at work that I was super nervous about because public speaking isn't my thing, even though I knew it'd be fine because I know everyone who was there) while I have an ear infection which makes it all a hundred times worse because it's happening to me.  Pity party of one, now being seated...

On that note, I'm going to sign off for now.  Check out this accomplishment -- starting and finishing a blog post in one sitting! I'm unstoppable.

Baby it's (beyond) cold outside...

 

Don't tell me it's too late for Christmas songs. For one thing, "Baby, It's Cold Outside" doesn't mention any holiday at all; therefore, it's not actually a Christmas song.  It's technically a winter song.  And right now, it's winter.  

Right now it is -18ºF, with a windchill of -35ºF.  I used to say that anything colder than -10ºF didn't matter because at that point it just all feels cold, but I'm going to take that back now.  It's fricking cold, and I'm tired of it.  We're going on a week of this craziness and, according to the weather reports, in for another week of it.  The first time our low is supposed to be above zero is next Saturday.  I hate to complain about the weather, because most of us native Midwesterners can appreciate the extremes and may often be found bragging about our ability to survive them (my recent favorite is the one about how it's warmer in our freezers than it is outside right now, and you know, that's not inaccurate) but days and days of the same extreme can wear a person down.  Especially when that person doesn't have the luxury of in-floor heating.  

We live in an old farmhouse.  When a lot of people hear "farmhouse" they imagine all the "farmhouse chic", rustic-type things you can pay through the nose for to make your dwelling look somewhat like the inside of a really nice barn or chicken coop.  In our case, I'm going draw your attention to the modifier, "old".  We live in an OLD farmhouse.  Our house was built in the 1880's.  Most of our foundation is actually made of field stones.  Insulation?  What's that?!?

For real.  

I'm not a high-maintenance girl. Never have been.  I've lived in old houses all my life.  My parents' house, the one they still live in, is an old house.  Our house in St. Paul was an old house.  Our house in Illinois was a newer house by our standards, but we didn't live there very long.  And this house is an old house.  I'm used to drafty windows and popcorn ceilings and uneven floors and all that. So much so, that I can't even think of other things to add to that list, because I've never lived in a new enough dwelling to know what I'm missing ;).  

Laptop battery's dying. Will be back later.

OK, I'm back. So I wrote that a few days ago.  Since then, we had an even colder morning.  I have proof! (I love the WTForecast app!)  

And since then, our kitchen sink has stopped draining.  

In an effort to keep the faucet from freezing, I decided to leave the water ever-so-slightly on at night, and to leave the cabinet doors under the sink open.  Well...it worked! The faucet didn't freeze that night!  But then I noticed there was about an inch of water in each sink. (We have a double kitchen sink.)  

Long story short, yeah.  Haven't figured out why yet.  My plumber hubby is out of town until Saturday. He's tried to help us troubleshoot over the phone, to no avail.  Luckily the other drains and faucets are working just fine, so it's not the whole septic system.  Probably just ice built up from . . . ahem . . . someone leaving the faucet on all night.  Which we've done before in the past without any issues.  

It's always something.  

Right now it's warmed up to a balmy 10ºF.  ABOVE ZERO!  

And since the hubby is out of town, I'm kind of responsible for keeping us all alive.  So I'm gonna go make some supper and then relax with some crocheting and dog-cuddling.  So, catch ya later!

Welcome to 2021!

Oh, I know we've been in 2021 for a few 36 days now, but I wanted to signify the end of my reminiscing-about-2020 intro.

We had some fun times. We did some camping, and fishing, which is always fun.  We went to our first road course race, which also happened to be the first time we camped at a race track. I've never camped anywhere but in the woods before, so that was a whole new experience. Imagine living in the most redneck trailer park ever...yep, that's about what it was like! ;)  Nah, it was all good.  We actually really did have a great time there.  We're going back again this year because, as our luck would have it, the NASCAR Cup Series is having their first race there this year!  We didn't get the same awesome camp site as we did last year (which was literally like 100 feet away from the track. Don't need to set no alarm clock when you got Lamborghinis and Porsches screaming past your camper at 0700 in the A.M. to wake ya up!) but that's okay, we'll still have fun!  

So yes, in case you didn't know that about me yet, I am a huge NASCAR fan.  I'll pause here so you can get all the jokes out of the way...don't worry, I've heard them all before.  I've been watching NASCAR for as long as I can remember.  Way back when the only races they showed on TV were the Daytona and Talladega.  (cue Southern accent) I used to sit up in that ol' living room with my Daddy and watch them ol' races on the tee-vee.... (cut back to plan generic Midwestern accent) Alright, that's all I got. I did, though.  One of the first toys I remember having when I was little was a big ol' #11 Darrel Waltrip Mountain Dew car.  It's why I still have a soft spot for ol' DW today.  

My hubby wasn't into NASCAR when I met him, or even when I married him. I don't remember exactly when he converted, but it was somewhere before 2007 because that's when we went to our first NASCAR race.  It was at Chicagoland.  I believe that ended up being the last daytime race, because the next season they switched to running under the lights.  It was fun, overwhelming, and exhausting -- and took us about 5-6 hours just to get out of the parking lot after the race.  Yep, that was longer than the race itself.  Madness.  Not what you want for your first NASCAR experience. 

I know I have pictures from there, somewhere on the interlinks. But apparently not on Facebook, because I wasn't on FB yet in 2007.  That would've been back in the MySpace days... wow. MySpace has changed. I haven't logged on there since 2018, and go figure, it's taking a while for my pics to load.  And I don't have that kind of patience, and I know the pic has been on FB.  So, here you go: our family pic from Chicagoland in 2007.  The boy was so short!! 

Anyway... that was fun.

Our next NASCAR adventure was the big one... the 2011 Daytona 500.  Here we are, in all of our pale-Midwesterners-in-the-middle-of-winter glory! Do not adjust your screens, we really were that pale.  At least, for the first day.  That was also the trip where I got probably the worst sunburn of my life, ever.  On my face, of course.  Yes, I used sunscreen. Apparently not enough.  The week after we returned, I had blisters all over my face. It was lovely. Good thing I worked nights, eh? And too bad face masks weren't all the fashion at that time.  But I digress; it was a fun time.  It was Daytona!

In 2012, we went to the Michigan race.  Like Chicagoland,

that track is within driving distance of our house. It was a fun trip overall, too.  I guess I didn't talk about what else we did on our other trips.  We didn't really do much else in Daytona in 2011.  We went as part of a tour, so didn't rent a car or anything. We basically took a bus to the track every morning, hung out there all day, and then took the bus back to the hotel at night.  There wasn't a lot of time or the resources to do other things.  In Chicagoland, we rented a car to drive there. I don't remember what else we did while we were there; I think it was the first time we had been back since moving away (that's a story for another time, but we lived in that area -- about 20 minutes away from the track, but it wasn't the track when we lived there -- when the boy was born) so I'm sure we drove around the old 'hood and everything, but there's not much else to do in that part of Chicagoland.  OK, now you're caught up.  While in Michigan, we also went to the Henry Ford museum and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.  The race itself was fun!  A little wet; in fact, the race was delayed due to rain, and we got absolutely soaked at one point. But still had fun! Dale Jr won that race.  Yee-haw!

Well, my laptop battery is about to die, so this is a good place to break for now.  When I return... Daytona 2018 and Road America 2019!! 

...alright. I gotta stop with these blog entries that take multiple days to construct!!

And trust me, I am cutting these race memories down to almost nothing.  Not even telling you who won, except at Michigan.  I didn't tell you about how pumped I was at our first race, because I had my heart set on getting me a pair of Kevin Harvick crocs, and then we got there and found the Crocs trailer and...the Kevin Harvick crocs were red with yellow straps. And looked like clown shoes. And I wanted to cry because I hate clowns and there was no way on God's green earth I was going to wear clown shoes, not even to show my support for Kevin Harvick.  And I left out a whole great story about the drunk dudes getting stuck in the muddy ditch in the parking lot.  And there are a literal ton of pictures I could be sharing... in fact, I do have to share this one because it's fricking awesome:

Isn't it beautiful? That is my old 2007 Monte Carlo, at Michigan International Speedway.  I miss that car.  I'll have to tell that story another time.

Because now, as far as NASCAR race stories go, we're up to Daytona Speedweeks 2018!!  Holy crap, what an experience! Long story short: there's a bunch of race-related stuff happening in the week leading up to the Daytona 500. And we were there for it!!  That whole trip was one of my favorite trips ever.  Not only did we get to see so much racing you wouldn't believe it, we also did a lot of touristy crap, too.  We stayed in a hotel right on the beach and this time we didn't go with a tour group, so we had our own rental car and went and did other things -- one day we went to the Kennedy Space Center (highly recommend!!), and another day we went sight-seeing and climbed the tallest lighthouse in Florida (also highly recommend!!) and spent some time walking along the beach and exploring the local park, I don't remember which one it was now and don't feel like looking it up, but it was beautiful and I have about 2,000 pictures from that trip in my FB album.  Most of them are from the races, but a lot of them aren't.  I didn't get a nasty sunburn that time. 

And, lucky for you, our last NASCAR trip was to Road America last year.  Which was different in so

many ways!  We've always wanted to camp at a racetrack, but there aren't many that are close enough, really.  Chicagoland, Michigan, Kansas...OK, there's three.  And... Road America!  Which didn't have Cup races, but in it's favor, is actually in Wisconsin -- so, we decided to give it a try.  After all, "in Wisconsin" still could be about 5 hours away, which is about how far away it is.  Camping, road courses, racing other than NASCAR (don't get me wrong, there was Xfinity Cup racing there or whatever it is that Busch racing is called now, I can't keep up anymore) and getting out and actually doing something during COVID times...well worth the trip.  In fact, we left there wanting to sign up for season tickets.  We didn't, but... a few months ago, the hubby found out that his favorite driver, Jimmie Johnson, was going to be driving in the Indy series at Road America this year, so we decided we'd have to go back there again.  (It was a really tough decision. Not!!)  And then, a short time after that, we found out that the NASCAR Cup series was going to have their very first race there EVER, and we decided we have to go back for that.  So!  We're going back this year.  YAY!

And that, in case you ever wanted to know, is a summary of all of the NASCAR races we have attended.

As you were :)