Many, many years ago (8? 10? wait – 6. There is documentation.), one key stopped working. (Yes, I did try to play occasionally.) When I owned a crummy thrift store piano back in Maryland, I dismantled that and put it back together, so I thought I could diagnose this, too. I took it apart, put it back together….. and eight keys were not working. Rats.

I just covered it with more mail.

Well, sometime this fall I thought I should maybe think about fixing it. My motto was, “It’s already broken – I can’t break it more.” (I obviously forgot about the one key/eight key fiasco of yore.)

I opened the hood.

I saw that some thingies were broken: they’re called bridle straps. I ordered some more that just clipped on. In this photo, the red tabs are the new straps, the grey, crumbling ones are the old straps.

Now, this is where my ADD really bogged things down. I thought I’d just have to replace a few straps, but realized that ALL EIGHTY-EIGHT straps would have to be changed. The old ones just … disintegrated when touched.

88!! UGH! Ain’t nobody got the attention span for that. I came up with a system: change five straps, get a Starburst.

That worked for three rounds, but then I needed to go watch tv. Slowly, slowly over many many days, I got most of them done.

This brings us to Saturday morning. I was up bright and early and only had 30 more straps to do…. and I just DID it. It must be what people with real attention spans feel like. When Lloyd got up, we took the action out and I worked on fixing the eight broken keys. Apparently, when I took it out all those years ago, the broken straps let pieces get all caddywompus (technical piano term), and that was the problem.

When I got to the final key – the original broken one – Lloyd helped me figure out what was wrong and helped hold everything still so we could fix it. When we put it back in, there was one injury to a damper that required some Laurening.

But, it works!! It’s not 100%, but it plays! I was so pumped, I rewarded myself with a very, very simple book to try and remember how to play.

“The Easiest Easy Piano Songs”. That sounds perfect.

August: School started. Some other things probably happened, but I there’s no telling what.

September: I don’t even know. Life is a blur of chaotic sameness.

October: I bought a food sucker! That’s the highlight of my life. If I ever get some photos up, I’ll show you. Until then, click this link to Souper Cubes to see part of my delight. We’re going to visit my Dad for Thanksgiving and even though he’s doing fine, I’ve been freezing some things to take out to Colorado. I found a Souper Cube mold at a thrift store, and currently there is no better hobby than freezing food into a perfect brick (I just have the 2-cup size) and then encasing it completely in plastic. (Sorry, Earth.)

November: Here we are.

• The roof is currently getting replaced, but the rest of the house is still on hold.
• Lloyd had his annual tech sale and I ‘helped’. (Sam really helped.)
• Keren was in Nebraska for work and stopped by for a night, which was lovely.
• I am making a batch of stew to put in my Souper Cubes!

Are you happy now, Sam?

This entry is mostly about the storm. Other things have happened that I will surely forget (and already have), but let’s talk about the Storm of August 9. I have had some GERD issues for the past week and a half and have tried various ways to sit completely up, not just elevated in bed. I was propped up in the guest room when I heard glass break. I thought a cat had knocked something over and went out to check it out. It was something round at the bottom of the steps. As I got the broom to sweep it up, I noticed how bright and flashy and weird the sky was and that the power was out. Lloyd came down and I told him he’d need shoes. He was dressed and said the constant lighting was enough to dress by – he woke up from the power going off and turning off the fan, and also the big ‘booms’. * We could tell something was up … and then the storm alert came through the phones. Duh.

We had flashlights and shoes on, and we could tell that there was foliage of some sort up against the house. We could also hear….water? Sure enough, water was coming through the top of the kitchen window frame. What the what??

Well a huge chunk of the maple tree had blown over, hitting the roof (knocking a light fixture from the ceiling above the stairs – hence the broken glass) and damaging the soffit enough to let in the rain coming straight in.

Before the sun came up and after the storm passed, people were outside assessing damage with flashlights and already offering help to each other. Once the sun was up, you could see how bad it really was. We don’t have a lot of photos of the ‘before’ but Lloyd got out our chainsaw, as did many people, and set to work helping to clear the streets. I pulled branches as I could, and we met a lot of our neighbors. Several houses were in our situation – trees had pulled down the power lines – but the whole county was out of power.

Here are just some photos from our street. This is our neighbors’ garage. I don’t have a photos of the back of their house. Two enormous tree chunks fell and put a hole in their roof.

Here are photos from our house: The big chunk of tree in the light of day. It has a five-foot circumference. (I know because I hugged it.)

Here’s the edge the roof: It smashed the soffit so rain got in the corner. Fun side note: I’m writing this the next morning. We had more rain last night and it is wet in the kitchen again. Fun times.

Concordia has their athletic camps now and the football and volleyball teams cancelled practice and instead went around volunteering and helping people move the trees. It was awesome watching them work. This photo is down the street from us.

I’m trying to get a little movie to load that shows our street after the first clean-up, but it’s having trouble. I’ll work on it.

So, insurance has been contacted, there is more work to do today, and oh – the new school year starts in three days. Fun. Go to Brad’s site for photos from Beth and Harold’s situation.

(*Everyone else I’ve talked to said how the storm sound was actually like a train and I didn’t know why I didn’t notice that. Then I remembered that I’d been sleeping in the room with the air filter that is RUMBLY and LOUD.)

1. Our air conditioning conked out. It did last year, too, and the repair guy said it needed more freon, but it was on its last legs. Both legs broke this year and it died. We have been making do with two window units (thank goodness), and the new one is coming next week. Sooooo glad we are having a heat advisory over the weekend……..

2. I can’t remember if I wrote about my Horrible Rash last spring? It started with a puffy eye and some itchy, fluid-filled dots on my hands that SPREAD – neck, face, arm, torso…. it was awful. I went to the dermatologist and had them biopsied. All they could tell me was, “Well, it’s not from gluten.” They wound up giving me medicine that helps with leprosy.

This Monday, my eye puffed up. *GULP*

In some ways it has been better – the spots are not all over, mainly my face and back of neck, but the whole right side of my face puffed up and I had a hard time seeing out of my right eye on Wednesday. People at work have been asking a lot of questions – either to me or whispering behind my back to see if I was in a fight.

I went to the doctor on Wednesday and he didn’t know either. He prescribed antibiotics and an oral steroid and said to keep taking the antihistamine (which I am doubling up on). Lauren, you have a health document in Google docs if this should happen again.

Anyway, we are heading to a wedding today, and thankfully I just look like someone slapped me and it’s a little red, puffy and scaly. I’m going to blame Lloyd.

Have a good Saturday!

When the Peperkorns came for graduation, I thought it would be nice to do the same. Our local thrift store had a round option, but with no dividers. It works great when it’s full, but when it’s empty it’s a little weird.

I looked online for a loooooong time for a rectangular option. There’s a cool one for traveling because the lid is level with the tops of the sections, but that’s not very useful for heaping stuff. Plus, it’s small. I wanted bigger with a taller lid.

So, I bit the bullet and bought it. It takes up less real estate in the fridge, and I’ve gone through three rounds of vegetables with the old one (that is on it’s way back to the thrift store) and one full cycle with the new one.

(The round one had just been washed – it’s not really that spotty.)

Let’s see how long I keep this up!

The current problem, though, is that Lloyd has developed some sort of sock vanity. “My socks are pilling,” he whined said. “I want one of those things that shaves sweaters.”

Good grief. 1) Nobody is looking at his socks, and 2) he knows how Amazon works.

I later realized that this was a hint to buy a present for him. That is, I think it was. I don’t pick up on hints and I’m really bad at presents. Anyway, I went to Amazon and found the second-cheapest shaver they had. Battery operated or USB and it came with two extra blades.

Now, in the cool of the evening, Lloyd shaves the pair of socks he’s wearing and I don’t make fun of him at all.

Huh. They do look better. Can you tell the finished one? (Different night from the first photo.)

…… so he sent us some blackberry bushes.

Four, to be precise. He told me about a week ago about his surprise, so I was expecting some sort of large-ish box with some little pots/small sprouts. They were delivered yesterday in what I can only describe as….. a pencil box.

They’re so little! Little, but incredibly healthy!

We sent some ‘thank you’ photos to my Dad and Lloyd immediately started looking up what these little guys need in terms of soil and sunshine, yadda yadda yadda. Dad sent several articles, too. I just laughed, grabbed a spoon to dig some holes and plonked those babies in the only spot we’ve ever actually grown anything: the corner of the house where my miracle tomatoes did so well last year.

They’re as tall as a paintbrush now, and I can’t wait to document their growth! Bonus surprise: Dad ordered four plants, but they sent five!!

(Please don’t die, plants. Please don’t die.)

Lots and lots has been going on this month. A few weeks ago our pastor spoke about ‘May’hem – all the things that May has going on. I’m not even doing a bunch of things that other people are doing, but man, this treadmill is never ending. End-of year/start of summer/ ‘goodbye’ to college staff/ ‘hello’ and training for new summer staff/ ‘goodbye’ to some children and ‘hello’ to new/Concordia’s early childhood conference is this weekend and our center is helping / a project I’m helping a friend with. I realize that none of this is overwhelming, but each day I feel like I can’t get to the long list until after I’ve been in my room 9 hours. It will be fine, it will be fine……

There have been some bright spots, though. Last weekend Sam asked Lloyd and I for some help with some artwork he was making for his end-of-year stuff. (Talk about May-hem.) It was exactly what I needed. I’d already told Lloyd that I had a little apprehension about getting through Memorial Day weekend. (There was the Perfect Day in Omaha that ended with the phone call about my brother Phil.) Hanging out with Sam and helping was the perfect combination of goofing around and also being productive. Thanks, Sam.

Sam is an amazing artist. I am always amazed to see what he does and how he brings his vision to fruition. He’s made some crucifixes out of rebar, which are cool on their own, but for this one he carved wood pieces and epoxied them onto the ends. Short sentences make this sound like an easy process. It wasn’t.

He also worked with his students to make a twisted wire tree and we worked on the base. These were both gifts for a couple at his school who just retired. Nice work, Sam.

Ok. Off to spray some wasps, paint a corner of the hallway, clean my classroom, print some stuff, then hopefully a trip to Costco.

There’s a preschooler who sits at my lunch table and nearly every day he says, “I’m going to be a teacher when I grow up.” I always tell him that he’ll make a very fine teacher. Today, I found out his reason. It’s not because I’m such a glowing example of the educational world….. it’s because I get more lunch than he does.

Dang.

Lloyd likes cheap gas, too. He has the app Gas Buddy that tells you what the gas prices are around you, and he also has a Phillips 66 app that gives him 15 – 25 cents off per gallon.

Well on our way out to Colorado, we stopped in Denver for the night. (This time we stayed at a swanky hotel that had a barn door to the bathroom…. with a window, riddle me that.)

Anyway, the next morning we stopped at the Phillips 66 in Idaho Springs, just a couple of miles west of Denver. The regular price was something like $3.45 a gallon. Lloyd did the app thing….. and it was $2.12. I want to make sure you read that right: TWO DOLLARS AND TWELVE CENTS. I would have been more excited but I was already pretty heavily medicated due to the prospect of hitting icy roads in the mountains.

On the way back to Nebraska, Lloyd was calculating how much gas he needed to put in at the start of the trip so we’d have an empty tank in Idaho Springs. Same situation, and I felt like a criminal as we left the station. So cheap!!

I told my friend about it, and she also has the app and thinks it was a Thanksgiving promotion. Well, if it took $1.30 off each gallon – totally worth it.

I didn’t take a lot of photos, which is a shame. In fact, the only real photos I took were of the neighbor cat who came over all the time. His name is Roland, and we all loved him. He is a rare black tabby, and was a true nut.

The other fun thing was Jacob’s brainchild. His actual job is building race cars – for REAL – and Dad always refers to his Subaru as his ‘race car’. Jacob had some stickers made up and we spent an evening doctoring the car.

(I was just a helper. Jacob was the expert.)

Dad thought it was funny enough. ‘36’ is the year he was born. I told him he’ll never wonder which car is his ever again.

It was a comedy of errors. I couldn’t contact Keren until later, and it was all up in the air. They bought a camper a while ago and we’d often said we should meet up for camping, but this was all last-minute and arranging for a campground where Lloyd and I could be in a cabin was too difficult and weird, so at 8:00 Friday night, Lloyd and I booked a house in Cedar Falls. (I never got the name right. I thought we were going to Clear Lake. Every town in Iowa has two names. Bear Lake. Clear Falls. Clear Bear…..)

Saturday morning, I drove His Grossness five hours east. We got to the house where he pretty much just stayed in bed in the basement. It was awesome seeing Keren and Kurt, and on Sunday, Lloyd was well ‘enough’ to do his auction things. Here’s a brief tour of the house, minus the basement. (Click HERE for more photos.)

It was the town high school’s building. They were landlocked, so they built a new school near the edge of of town and sold this one to a small Christian school. They purchased all new stuff for their new building, so this was all up for sale. Lincoln Lutheran was interested in some of it, so Lloyd was the scout. He traveled the place quickly with his Clipboard of Interesting Things, and I followed the 6,948 step behind him. (Not a lie.) Keren and Kurt looked around for a little while, then went back home. Here’s an automated video of the place, and Lloyd in his natural habitat. Sorry for the camera swinging around all over. (Also, the last photo is of my coat-carrying skills. The weather was cold and rainy, but it was hot inside the school, so we took off our coats. I dug through all the cabinets looking for a string bag to carry them, but no dice. I wound up with Lloyd’s coat tied around my waist and my own coat stuffed into the back of my sweatshirt. I am truly just a pack mule on these adventures.)

Afterward, I drove His Grossness home until it got dark, then he took over. All in all, a very pleasant weekend, in spite of the hilarious mishaps.

I’ve used the Litter Genie system for the litter box for years, and I’m a total fan. We scoop about every other day, and the bags hold over a week’s worth of yuck, then it gets tied up and goes outside. The cartridges are a little pricey, but the convenience is worth it.

At the store one day, I was in the baby section to get some wipes for school, and lo & behold: the Diaper Genie cartridges, that used to be round, are now square, just like the Litter Genie cartridges. The same length is half the price, so I bought one of each – for science!

I think we can tell by the pictures that the Diaper Genie bags are made of a thinner plastic, so it would be wise on my part to not load them to capacity – or else that is going to be a terrible, terrible mess on the way outside. Note to Future Lauren: Take the whole thing outside and tie up the bag there.

One other nice thing? Finding the end of the Little Genie bag is a gamble every time. The plastic is all crammed in there and you have to pull out several inches of plastic, hoping to find the end.

They were kinder to the parents of babies, most likely replacing their cartridge in the sleep-deprived middle of the night. They put a red tab on the edge.

So, hopefully I won’t update you with a sad story later of cleaning up an enormous mess from the basement. Remember, Future Lauren. Remember.

However.

We were going to host a science night, and the teachers in charge wanted to put up signs to show what the theme for each classroom would be. I said if they’d print the signs, I’d take care of it.

I had an idea. This cream cheese box has a magnet inside. Did you know that the corner where two pieces of drywall meet has a metal strip inside?

Here’s the other side:

Well, I could use magnets at school for my idea, but I felt comfortable putting a nail in the wall for each. After all, I am the one who knows how to repair a nail hole.

I used ‘coat boxes’ from the wrapping paper section at Wal*Mart and glued on the printed signs. They worked a treat, and all the staff said, “We should have signs like this to label the rooms.”

I know! (Please ignore the little thins that bother me about these, like how they aren’t flush and you can tell from the edge that it’s just a box. They’re prototypes, after all!)

If you want to see a glimpse into Science Night, click HERE.

I had been curious about it for a while. The owners are parents of some former preschool children, and they are go-getters. They turned a blank piece of land into an entire campground with a pool, hot tub, playground and a lake that they built.

It was fun! I rented an Apod, which is like a tiny A-frame house. There are two that are bare-bones, but because the owner recognized my name when I booked it, she put me in the nice one with a fridge!

The weather was crazy windy, so I didn’t do an evening fire. I took along my fire can for Council Fire, but I could have left that at home. Their fire ring was a Solo stove/gasifier style! (It was probably for the best. Nebraska is still so, so dry.)

So, it’s not my best video. There are verbal typos and an abrupt ending. I also left in the hilarious start when I was trying to take just a photo with my phone and watch, and wound up making a very awkward video.

We made some hard decisions about the toys that were kept up there. There was a small assortment for the children of friends that would come over, but since the youngest of those is a high school senior, it felt ok to let a lot of it go. Someone else would benefit from this stuff.

I did my traditional ‘put it in the back of the pickup and list it on Facebook’ thing. Most of it went by the end of the day.

And the nook? It’s much better.

My mom always wanted to make some southern lady’s biscuits (I can’t remember the lady’s name right now), but we never got the chance. The lady had a giant bowl of self-risin’ flour and she’d just throw in a knob of Crisco and some buttermilk and mix it until it was right and then put them on a skillet to bake.

Well, I wanted to try layered biscuits, so I halved a recipe and did it all wrong. They were in the oven for a good long time, but they were doughy and gummy and not right.

I know that the only way to get better is to try again, but the problem is – I don’t really like biscuits unless gravy is involved, and I only have that when there are leftovers from school. I guess I’ll try again in a month?

In the meantime, I had torn-up toast and gravy. Mmmmm….

The first was when Brad was here. I got a pop from the entry, opened it, then set it on the table to go get a glass of ice. As it turned out, the can had a rounded bottom and tipped over as I was walking away. Ugh. Sticky pop all over the table, floor and chair.

The second was when I was putting a glass down on the side table/crock one evening and missed it. BAM!! Shards of glass and a sticky drink I was angry for that one.

Third was when Deborah was over and Lloyd was getting gin and tonic fixin’s. He dropped a can of tonic and spent the next ten minutes mopping the floor and closet doors.

The fourth was me, trying to juggle too many things to carry to the car on Saturday. I dropped a can of pop that EXPLODED in the living room. After the shock, I laughed and laughed because it was EVERYWHERE – the walls, the t.v., the windows, the carpet and sofa. Lloyd helped me clean and kept saying “Take a picture – it’s a post!” but I was too embarrassed.

Here’s the aftermath, when I realized I should have done this right away. The floor was wet and sticky underneath.

Ugh. I’m getting too old for this nonsense. Get a grip on your drinks, people!

“Did you forget to take the wrap off?”

“No.”

I scoffed inwardly because I knew he had….. then I saw this in the bottom of the dishwasher.

Dang it.

It got it real good.

I mean, real bad.

Eh. I had three spatulas and now have two. That’s one more spatulas than a person really needs, so it’s all good.

There is a nightlight at the very top of the stairs. It’s plugged into an extension cord, but it exists so that we see Emme and don’t crush her. (Can you just barely see her? That’s the reason.)

Next, I bought a tap light for my sock cabinet. I get ready in the dark in the morning, and we are entering Sock Season. I don’t usually care, but it is preferable if the color of my socks matches what I’m wearing. This has been helpful.

Behold the light!

Last, I bought a dumb light for the shed/camping. It is currently in the shed right now and I am too lazy to go get it, so here is a photo of the tag that came with it. It is a tap light – you just tap the top and it cycles through three settings: warm/cool/daylight. It’s also dimmable! It recharges with a USB cord, so it ticks all the boxes!

….. I recognize that I have a problem…..