Squared Lasagna And Numeric Tea

/ Diane Henders

It’s getting a little crazy around here…

Okay, fine; I’ll admit it:  We’ve zoomed past ‘a little crazy’ and are rapidly approaching chaos and madness.

The packers and movers arrive tomorrow, and we’re scrambling to get the last of our pre-packing done.  The house looks as if it’s occupied by hyperactive children with Attention Deficit Disorder:  There are little heaps everywhere because we rarely get a block of time uninterrupted by some crisis or another.

Here are just a few of the highlights:

  • Our ancient water heater wasn’t supplying enough hot water so we hired a plumber to replace it, only to find that all that was needed was a $2.00 part… but we had to pay $800 to replace the tank anyway because the old tank was already pulled out.

Time lost:  2.5 hours.
Equanimity lost:  98%

  • The furnace blower motor seized. Hubby fixed it.

Time lost:  2 hours.
Knuckle skin lost:  50%

  • The dishwasher died. (It’s the newest appliance in the house.)  Hubby fixed it.

Time lost:  2 hours.
Appreciation for irony lost:  92%

  • The builder needed an HVAC design for our new house, and we only had a half-assed sketch from the heating contractor. I figured out the heating and return air drops, modified the plan to accommodate them, and provided an annotated drawing.

Time lost:  5 hours.
Brainpower lost:  95%

  • We still can’t find insurance for our shipping container once it arrives on the Island.

Time lost:  Several days and counting.
Peace of mind lost:  89%

  • My brand-new Ford Escape refused to start… and then, just to make diagnosis virtually impossible, it started up and ran as though nothing had ever been wrong. It goes into the shop on Friday, and we want to hit the road in a week.

Time lost:  God only knows.
Sanity lost:  100%

At least we’ve still got a sense of humour.  (Yes, that’s one sense of humour between the two of us.)

To wit:  One evening I’d made a giant pan of lasagna.  We’d finished eating, but the pan was on the table and the cheese was still warm and melty.  Hubby and I each idly picked up a spatula and nudged the cut edges of the lasagna into a perfect square from opposite sides… and then burst out laughing at our anal-retentiveness.  At least our quirks are compatible.

And speaking of anal-retentive quirks, my sister and I had a good giggle, too.  She had sent me a yummy Christmas gift:  24 Days Of Tea, with the little samples randomly numbered.  So I did what any self-respecting geek would do:  I rearranged them in numeric order.

“They’re supposed to be like that,” she informed me through her laughter.  “If you turn the boxes around they make a picture.”

Seriously, why would you waste time hunting for the next number?

Seriously, why would you waste time hunting for the next number?

(I also didn’t realize I was supposed to wait until December 1 to start sampling the tea.  Who knew tea could be so complicated?  It should have come with instructions.)

Anyhow, I’m taking deep breaths and reminding myself that one way or another this move will happen.  It won’t be smooth or stress-free; but, hey, at least our lasagna is squared off and our tea is correctly numbered.

At this point, I’ll take any illusion of control I can get!

25 thoughts on “Squared Lasagna And Numeric Tea”

  1. Ooooo, I don’t like it when a vehicle decides to work/not work/work/not work … especially on the eve of a long trip. Good luck with everything. Anal-retentiveness often pays off, so why are you saying it like it’s a bad thing? 🙂

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    • LOL! The good thing about being anal-retentive is that I’m rarely blindsided by some unexpected detail; but I often think that in between crises, day-to-day living must be much easier for those who don’t think through and plan every possible scenario.

      Thanks for the good luck wishes – I have a feeling we’re going to need them. Yesterday my desktop computer exploded… literally, with a big bang and the not-so glorious scent of well-toasted electronics. Fortunately it was only the power supply and today I’m up and running again, but we’re waiting for the next shoe to drop. So far we’ve dropped more shoes than a small herd of ill-shod horses… 😉

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  3. Diane H – The following is my Christmas gift for you. It’s value is $174.67. The next time your Escape won’t start for some mysterious reason, shift out of park to neutral (any gear – it doesn’t make a difference) then put it back in park. Repeat a time or two if necessary. It’s something about a safety switch that sticks. It cost me the above amount to discover that about my Edge.

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  4. I think Mercury must be retrograde or something. New washer and dryer, check; new dishwasher, check; repair heat pump, check; get a $3k prescription, check. There seems to be a trend forming. I hope the move goes well. I take it you sold your house. Merry Christmas.

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  6. I thought that all your appliances are supposed to quit immediately upon the handing over the keys so that the new owners can believe they got a bum deal. You two are supposed to hold everything together with chewing gum and duct tape just long enough to see yourselves out the door, not leave everything in perfect working order.

    How is it that you got a hot water heater for only $800.00 when I just paid $2,000.00 for mine? Of course the heater blew at the moment when I had just finished paying for a new furnace and central air conditioner.

    It has all gone as my realtor predicted. I would be fixing everything on the tenant half of the house twice as fast as my own half. That was the tenant’s furnace, AC, and water heater. Their third water heater to my single replacement. They’ve had a new stove, vent hood and a new fridge, and innumerable new parts for the toilet to my single change per unit. Good thing I can do a lot of repairs myself.

    If the only outward sign of your massive stress is your need to square up the lasagna, you’re coping extraordinarily well. All this on top of the ridiculous stress that overtakes us during holiday madness and the SAD that goes with the shortest days of sunlight of the year- yeah, you’re doing very well indeed.

    Do you plan to foist your homeless selves on family members for the next 2-3 weeks or so? That means needing to provide gifts all around too. Yikes!

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    • LOL! Nope, no gift expectations or relatives’ sofabeds in our future! We’ve rented a condo for the next few months until our house is done. We’re hoping by the end of March we’ll have a ‘real’ home, but we’re not holding our breaths. “Hope for the best… plan for the worst” is our motto at the moment.

      And you’re right; it seems as though the appliances have a suicide pact. Every day I wake up with the fervent hope that everything will just hold together long enough for the final sale paperwork to be completed! (Please, please, please…)

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          • We bought a house several years ago in which the compressor in the air conditioning died FORTY-FIVE MINUTES after we walked in the door after signing the papers. The bill was fifteen hundred dollars, all told.

            It cost us a fifty-dollar service call…because we bought the home warranty along with the house.

            That was the first time we’d done that, and we haven’t been without one from that day. We’ve saved THOUSANDS of dollars on home and appliance repairs since then. Best money we’ve ever spent, I think.

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            • Oh, yeah. Something else with that house now that I think of it. The garage was rear-entry through a concrete paved alley, and the ‘driveway’ was solid, smooth concrete behind the house all the way across the (fairly narrow) property from fence to fence. Perfect! Thus, the faucet at the back of the house for the water hose connection came up through a small, one-foot-square hole in the concrete that had been neatly formed when the driveway was poured.

              No problem there, right? Right.

              Except the morons left the wooden forms in the concrete. And the home inspector found termite holes in the left-behind forms when we put the house up for sale. So we paid for a termite treatment for a house with no termites. And the house now has a totally-erroneous diagnosis of a history of termite damage where there is none.

              Word to the wise, here:

              DON’T EVER LEAVE CONCRETE FORMS IN THE GROUND AFTER THE CONCRETE HAS SET! GET IT OUTTA THERE!!

              End of Public Service Announcement. Resume regularly-scheduled hilarity.

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              • Aaaaagh!!! That’s insane! And yet another reason why I hate bureaucracy – any normal human being would have said, “Oh, you should get some Raid for your clearly outdoor and not affecting the house in any way termites in the ground. Grrr on your behalf.

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  7. I’m with you on the hunting for numbers, I really don’t see the point, don’t get me wrong I do love my advent calendar and eat the chocolate every day, but I hate searching for the number.
    We used to square off the lasagna, and smooth of mashes potato. These days I tend to only buy for one so if I’m making mash I eat it all so generally make enough for just me.

    Hope you get everything sorted for the move, and everything travels well and you get sorted and settled in the new house soon

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    • Thanks, Karen! We’ll be temporarily settling into a rented condo for the next few months until our house is done, but we’re looking forward to the hiatus of relative calm. We’re almost there… *keeps taking yoga breaths*

      And I’m glad we’re not the only ones who like our food neat and tidy! 🙂

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      • “Interim lodgings.” Sort of a good-news/bad-news thing. Beats the heck out of spending a Canadian winter out in the cold, but the advantage is much less than one might think because of the extra move.

        Hm.

        Chipping ice off the mustache every morning vs. packing and moving everything AGAIN in a few weeks?

        I dunno. Kind of a tough call there… 🙂

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