WNBP: Hellooooo? Anyone Still Out There?

Yeah...probably not.  That's OK.  I understand.  You can't invite people over and leave them waiting in the living room while you attend to other matters about the manse for a couple of months.  Eventually they will gather up their coats and head out to find a more congenial  host.

No harm, no foul.  I'll just leave a note (or a Wednesday Night Bullet Post) for those who still drop by to make sure I haven't gotten lost or been kidnapped by aliens.

* I haven't been hanging out in other corners of the internet either, in case you were worried that I abandoned you for hipper media outlets.  Facebook and Twitter have been largely ignored lately as well.

*I know this because Facebook and Twitter have been emailing me to let me know I've been missing a great deal of amazingness.

*Our school's winter vacation is in February.  I put it on the calendar because that is my favorite school vacation.

*Apparently, bronchitis reads my calendar because I was stricken within hours of settling in for my week of obligation-free vacation time.

*I staggered into the doctor's office on Tuesday morning of that week already so sick I could barely breathe without coughing up lungs, spleens and other various organs best left inside the body.

*I know I only have one spleen.  I was trying to be descriptive.  You know...exaggerate for effect.  

*But if I did have multiple spleens, all of them would have been on my living room carpet what with all the coughing.

*I left the office with a shiny new inhaler, cough medicine with blissfully high amounts of narcotics mixed in and, of course, antibiotics.

*This thing held on like grim death for the entire vacation week and well into the first week back to school.

*I finally felt better on the second Friday of my back-to-school routine.  

*I can be exactly that specific because I caught a cold the following Saturday.

*A doozy of a cold that was almost as bad as the bronchitis except for the part where it hung around in my sinuses and required that I make weird honking noises for another ten days in order to keep them semi-clear.

*I blame the children.  You know the ones I mean.  The ones that show up around 7:15 every day and hang around spreading their foul germs until 2:15 when they finally return home to their parents.

*Where they, no doubt, plot further germ warfare against me.  I'm sure their parents have no idea.  They all seem like very nice people.

*I'm feeling much better now.  Although I still deal with leftover sinus issues from time to time.

*I originally wrote that as, "Although I still deal with leftover sinus deposits from time to time." 

*Then I rethought that sentence because it seemed gross and I changed it.

*You're welcome.

*I took the car in for that oil change it had been whining about for a while.

*There I learned that I was due for an inspection.  Or past due if you are being picky about semantics.

*Either way, there is a rather spendy obstacle between me and that sticker so it will have to wait.  That kind of cash doesn't just magically appear.

*Although the service technician seemed to think that repeating the official date of my motor vehicle inspection thirty seven times might cause cash to suddenly rain down from the sky.

*At least that is what I assume.  I didn't ask as I was too busy paying for my oil change and studiously ignoring him.

*I'm well past the age where I believe that magical incantations work in the service center.

*On a happier note, several of the kids in my class caught my cold.  I'm sorry they don't feel well.

*But I consider payback to be completely fair under these circumstances.  My illness fell partially during a vacation week and that was dirty pool on their part.

*There is also a stomach flu going around.  I am not planning on getting that one.  

*Seriously.  It's not happening.  Not even funny to consider it.  I don't have time for that.

*I am in the market for a new couch.  You can only pile on so many pillows before you have to come to the conclusion that you need a new couch.  

*I am currently up to three layers of pillows.

*The only thing standing in my way is waiting out the car payments.

*You may remember when I bought my car.  My truck was on life support and required many, many dollars to fix.  Thousands, in fact.

*I could choose between paying thousands that I didn't have and hoping that it was enough to keep it running or going into a new loan while still owing on the truck.  

*The former was an expensive gamble that could probably pay off.  Or not. Surprises awaited. The latter was expensive, but predictable.  Sure, I'd be paying through the nose, but at least the newer vehicle would have a warranty and I'd be paying less in repairs.

*I chose the second option.  My car payments rival those of people currently driving off the lot in shiny new luxury vehicles.  Or those of people driving two (maybe even three) lower end economy cars with fewer bells and whistles.

*My repair costs, overall, have been minimal.

*Six years of double car payments.  Six years.  Double car payments.  The lesser of two evils.

*I am have less than two full payments left.  I am in the home stretch.  

*When my car is paid off, I fully plan to spend that day dancing around the waiting room in the local branch of the bank that holds my loan.  There will be lots of fanny waggling and shouts of "Take that suckah!  You don't own me or my soul ANYMORE!!!"

*I doubt seriously that anyone at the local branch of the bank that holds my loan will have any idea who I am or why I'm waggling my fanny in their faces, but I'm going to print up some flyers to toss around in my wake as a means of explanation.

*I've pretty much covered all the picky details except what I'm wearing.  I'm stuck between a belly dancing outfit and some sort of animal costume.

*Let's see...what else happened while the blog was dark?

*Oh, yeah.  It snowed.  Then it snowed again.  Then it stopped snowing long enough for us to get to the store and stock up on more snow supplies.  

*And then it snowed again and we ran out of places to put all the snow so we just started parking on top of it and pretending it wasn't there.


I think that covers the highlights.  You'd think that, with this amount of time having elapsed, there would be more to report.  To be fair, though, that whole thing with the lung hawking and sinus inflating kind of took up a bunch of my time.  I hope your Wednesday (and the many that have preceded this one) went smoothly.

Personally, I'm just glad I got through it without contracting the plague...

SA