Update on things....

It's cold here. Of course that usually is true in January in Wisconsin. The first year after Will and I moved up here the temperature for 2 weeks solid was under -15 every day. Nights were -30. It was cold! Thankfully at that time Jake was a year old, so we all fit in a cozy little 1 bedroom apartment that was easy to heat. Not so now. It takes a lot of gas to heat this huge house. Especially with the concrete floors which although are wonderful in the summer and really keep the house cool, are a bugger in the winter and suck the heat out of the room quickly. Thankfully most of the walls in the place are at least 12" thick.

Will and I are really looking into getting radiant floor heating. You can get some that can be installed right on top of an existing concrete floor. It adds less than 1" of extra floor height to your floors. That's no big deal because we have higher ceilings anyway. According to the research that I have been looking at, to heat just one of our family rooms it would cost 30 cents for 24 hours and would really cut down on LP costs which at this time is $2.73 a gallon AND THE FLOORS WOULD BE WARM. Sounds like a win, win situation for us. Our dream is to put hardwood and tile/stone floors throughout most of the house and then just use area rugs for color. We have not done this yet mostly because of the carpet being warmer during winter and easier on our feet. We're wimps, I know.

I went to the Doctor yesterday and had a check up on this aggrivating arm thing. From what we can tell (without an MRI which is expensive and I am claustrophobic) I have damaged the inside of the joint. It is like the bones coming to my shoulder from my spine are the axles and "a arms" that go into a tire, my shoulder being the tire. Where they go into the tire is damaged somehow. He took this tuning fork thing and made it vibrate and then put it on my collar bone on the right side. No big deal, felt kind of funny. He did the same thing on my left and OH My I felt that. He said that in order to find hair line fractures of the collar bone, that works better than xrays because small fractures inside a joint are very difficult to read and often missed, but when you use vibrations...watch out. So...... end of the long story. I'm still on light duty although I am allowed to move my arm some and able to lift under 10 lbs. with it, but no reaching frequently or pinching my fingers together frequently as there seems to be nerve involvement. I start physical therapy twice a week for three weeks and go back to see him in 10 days. The good news, at least I'm not limited as much and I can type. The pain is not as bad and I am sleeping better. Much better off today than last week. Thankfully I'm right handed. It's all good.

Still trying to get the artwork for the CD cover to work with the CD makers. My brother is a wonderful graphic artist and what it all boils down to is that the CD place has inferior equipment to the state of the art stuff that David has and they are a pain to work with trying to get it fixed. It's one of those, the only one that can help you is.... and he's on the phone.... he's with another customer....you need to do this.... you need to do that. All hurry up and wait. We hope to get it fixed today and get the stupid things ordered. So much for being ready for Christmas.

Will's parents bought him a new chain saw! It's wonderful. He had it out the other day cutting wood. I guess it worked pretty great because I now have a nice stack of wood, drying out in the sun porch (it snowed right after he cut it, so we put it in there to melt the snow). I have a work crew of 3 -5 teenagers that is going to go out and help us cut wood and bring it home as soon as the weather breaks. You can go to certain places and cut downed trees up and bring them home for a very small fee. With this great crew of kids, it really, really goes quickly. I feed them and they do odd jobs for me. Great kids.

I have a house full of kids almost every weekend and on about every school holiday. I love it and so do they. They have an entire room to themselves and during the spring fall and summer they all pile into the apartment and live there for days. They come out to eat, swim, bike ride and do chores, but then they play video games, board games and listen to music. No fighting, no carrying on, just good clean fun. I think they enjoy it as much as I enjoy the peace and watching them have fun.

(******another random political/commentary post on Dea's corner..read it if you dare.**********)

Well, time to finish getting kids off to school. Have a great day.
dea