Exceedingly Mundane

I wasn’t going to blog again this soon, but this one had to get documented!

I thought when you had a new house, you didn’t have to worry about things like pipes freezing! Wrong. At our old house, we never had the pipes freeze, not in the 21 years that I lived there. We never had to leave faucets dripping or had a burst pipe. But, we had a different kind of water heater and different piping (apparently… I’m learning a lot today!) at the old house. This new house has a tankless water heater in the attic and instead of copper pipes, it has some kind of flexible pvc pipe, but they are exposed, so they freeze. I just got back from an emergency run to Home Depot to buy pipe insulation, and hopefully Tim can wrap more pipes in the attic tonight. Then maybe this won’t be an ongoing problem. It was really weird, when I woke up, some things worked and some things didn’t. Two showers wouldn’t come on, and one would. The hot would not come on in most sinks, but the cold in a couple. Tim had left several faucets dripping last night, and that seemed to help some. Also, I think he had wrapped a few pipes a couple of months ago, I know we bought some insulating things a while back, probably before Thanksgiving. Anyway, it took till 1:45 PM this afternoon for the last one to thaw. I hope they don’t freeze again tonight, or again for that matter 🙂

To be fair, we’re having extremely cold weather. Last night, it dropped to 13 degrees here, which is inordinately colder than normal. Today, the high is supposed to only be 33 or 34 degrees this afternoon, and so far, at 4:00 PM, it did get to 34. I was out this morning going to the doctor and it’s funny how much warmer 34 degrees feels compared to the 16 it was when I left the house!

I’m glad to have THAT doctor visit over for another year. I just have to hear back from the tests and I should be in the clear. Most of my bloodwork and numbers were really good – blood sugar, HDL/LDL, cholesterol were all good. My blood pressure was slightly elevated, 141/80, but I’m chalking that up to the pipes freezing and me being rattled all morning trying to get things done here with hardly any water. LOL! 😀

Later, gaters!

8:00 PM UPDATE: Well, Tim got up in the attic after work and it was very slow going trying to wrap the pipes with the insulating sheaths I bought at Home Depot (it seems to be the way the plumber guy did the lines in the attic, he is very upset about how it was done). He was very frustrated, both with work and the water/pipes issue, so he declared he wanted to go and get rolls of insulation and try that. So, we went to the new Schlotsky’s and I got treated out to dinner (I had a california avocado flatbread and he had chicken and dumpling soup and half a sandwich, it was good!). Then we got more insulation, and now he’s back up in the attic trying the rolls. Fingers crossed! Already below freezing again, 26 degrees, so things could start freezing again 🙁

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, and another day filled with family and food 🙂

Wednesday was busy. I got my hair cut and highlighted in the morning, and also went to Kroger to pick up a few last things. We smoked a turkey this year, since Tim got his smoker last year for Christmas. We also put some sweet potatoes in there, but didn’t end up eating them, since Gail and Elizabeth brought sweet potato casserole. We also had appetizers (pickles, olives, cheese and crackers), bread with chive butter, green bean bundles, broccoli casserole, dressing and cranberry sauce. Gail made an apple cranberry crumble and I made a frozen apple cheesecake pie, but both Elizabeth and David commented that next year they wanted pumpkin pie! So the regular food went over better than dessert 🙂

Daddy came, just for the day. Everyone else stayed till late. Tim and I, along with Gail, David and Elizabeth all went to the first ever early Thanksgiving Black Friday sale at Walmart on Thursday night, starting at 8 PM. I wanted the Harry Potter movies on either DVD or Blu-Ray, and Elizabeth wanted the three Potter movies she didn’t have. We got the movies and got back home in about an hour, so a really good experience!

Gail and Don stayed both Thursday and Friday night, and we had a great time hanging out with them. Friday, we all went to see SkyFall, the new James Bond movie (which was really good!), and also went to Lowe’s and Walmart. We ate out twice, lunch at Corner Bakery and supper at Majestic Burger. All delicious 🙂

Saturday, Don and Gail left after lunch, and Tim and I started getting out Christmas decorations. Tim put out my garland, both front and back, and also the lighted trees out front. I put out my Snow Village, and Tim got out the tree and plugged it in, only to find that a whole bunch of the pre-lit sections were not lighting up. So, I wanted to just put lights on it and keep going, but Tim wanted a new tree, so off to Lowe’s we go. He picked out a new tree, and when we got it home, I realized it was smaller than our previous one. It’s just not very wide and full, it’s sort of pencil shaped, which I did not want. But I didn’t want to pack it back up and take it back, so it’s staying up. I’m slowly getting used to the smaller size, so I think it will be ok in the long run! 🙂

Monday, we both had our doctor’s appointments. Mine was a normal visit, but this was Tim’s first time to see a regular doctor since we’ve been married. All of his numbers were good, except his blood pressure was a bit high. So, we’re going to work on diet and try to exercise more and hope to get it under control without medication.

After a really terrific weekend, my Monday is off to a roaring start. Today is the day for my annual checkup, at that lovely doctor’s office all women love to visit. I can’t say that I love to go, in fact, I dread it every year, but I do go to make sure everything is ok. Hopefully, it will all be routine and nothing is wrong. I’ve posted a QOTD in the past about this topic, and surprisingly, quite a few people said they disliked going to the dentist more than the doctor! I can’t seem to think of another QOTD along these same lines, so I’ll just ask a simple one – did you have a good weekend and do you have anything special coming up this week?

We had a really good weekend, Tim and I. We did a lot of fun things together, watched some TV and a movie, got all of my pansies planted, visited a new deli for lunch and a new coffeeshop for a cup of coffee and just generally enjoyed every minute we spent together. I don’t have a lot planned for this week, after today’s trip to the doctor. How about you?

Hope you all have a great day! Mine will be much brighter when I’m all done later today 🙂