On the mend

I'm grateful to say I'm finally on the mend. Boy whatever that was really hit me hard. I finally stared feeling better on Monday but didn't have a stitch of energy. I was winded after climbing a few steps. My arms felt like they each weighed 50 pounds. It was so strange. That kept on until Wednesday when I finally dragged my rear end to the doctor. He said he'd be happy to do some chest x-rays and blood work to see what it was or he could just prescribe his tried and true steroid and antibiotic cocktail. I went with the latter and am finally feeling like myself again after a 36 hours on meds.

Luckily I felt well enough to participate in my birthday activities. I had a lovely birthday. My kids are at wonderful ages where they shower me in birthday wishes and adorable homemade gifts. We had a nice dinner with my parents at the local rib joint (the place with the rhino head as Greta calls it......which isn't a rhino at all but rather a giant buffalo head). Thank you Mom, Dad and Sean for a wonderful birthday.

It wouldn't be a normal day without some excitement. I was driving the kids home from school when we heard a pop and I glanced down at the cars display screen to see the right read tire with a big ol' 0 next to it's tire pressure. Luckily we were just around the corner from home so I did what I wasn't suppose to do and hobbled home on my flat tire going one mile and hour. It's not like I had a spare tire or a jack or anything and the tire wasn't fixable, it had a big jagged hole in it. I'm so done with these crappy Goodyear Assurance tires. The first one blew at 13,000 miles, the second at 15,000 and the third, yesterday, at 17,500. I feel like that last remaining tire is just a ticking time bomb ready to blow at the most in opportune moment. The next vehicle will have a spare tire, mark my words.

Being under the weather for a week and a half has caused so many things to pile up. This is, after all, spring planting time. I had to reschedule my rental on the rototiller until this weekend and I'm pumped to get the garden up and going. My seedlings are busting out of their pots. They need to be repotted but I'm just going to dump them in the garden instead, it's definitely time. They are outside as of this morning hardening off.

Greta and I are going in today to buy flowers and pots for the new deck. This is the first Spring I've had with a deck and by golly I'm going to decorate it up with colorful pots of flowers.

Nails, Parties and Pies

I just got off the trampoline with Greta so I could come inside and write a blog post. I haven't written anything in over a week, which is sort of unheard of in the last 6.5 years. I can't believe I've been blogging for that long. Crazy right? It's pretty difficult to drag myself inside on a day like this. 75 degrees and no wind. I was just lying out there on the trampoline soaking up the sun while Miss Greta jumped wildly around me. What a beautiful day.

It's been an interesting week. My little car decided to leave me with a flat tire while I was picking up Greta from my parent's house. I swear I pick up more nails than any other person I know. Sean tried to patch it but the hole was so big that even two plugs wouldn't work. Yet another reason I wish I had a SPARE TIRE. Grumble grumble grumble. I had to go buy my second tire for the car in 15K miles. Aren't tires supposed to last longer than that?

I got to be chauffeur Mom in the truck for a few days. Transporting two kids around in a single cab truck along with backpacks, library books and groceries was not enjoyable......but it was doable. Even as tiny as my car is I am grateful to have it back in working order. Greta loved riding around in the truck, I think she was sorry to see it go (don't worry, I turned off the airbags).

Saturday evening we got invited to the birthday party of Sean's old college roommate. Another old roommate was there as well. It's been 11 years since we last saw them. It was enjoyable catching up and seeing our kids all play together. We aren't exactly the most social people so yay for a night out being social!

Greta was invited to her very first birthday party this weekend and oh was she excited. They had a rack of prom dresses, high heels, costume jewelry, boas and purses for all the girls to dress up in. That along with a bounce house made for one very fun afternoon for a certain little 4 year old.

We can't forget to mention Happy Birthday to my father-in-law. We got to celebrate Rich's birthday last night before he left to head back to his temporary home. He's only got three more weeks before he retires and heads home to New Mexico. We'll miss not seeing him regularly, that's for sure. I knew he liked coconut so I made him a coconut cream pie (I'm a coconut fan too). It was delish (if I do say so myself). Happy Birthday Rich!

Keep on keepin on

It would be so easy to focus on how nasty of a winter this is. How the winds howl at night bringing the lows into the negative digits. How there is hardly any sun anymore, and how desperately I need sun. I try to keep busy inside and reassure the little bundles of energy (aka my kids) that Spring is on it's way and we'll soon be running around outside again.....even though Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today meaning another 6 weeks of winter. Darn groundhog. The other day I got in the car and saw this:

This is about average it seems for morning temperatures when I take the kid to school.  The bad thing about an electric car is that the gas engine runs in these temperatures. It runs a lot. My average mpg is 67 right now, down from 165. I say this while smiling because that mpg is still super cool even though I have to buy gas.

The animals are all doing ok this winter. I can tell they are all ready for spring as well. The big dogs have become indoor dogs and spend their days lounging on the couches. The cats have remained outdoor animals (since I value my marriage) and I can always tell how cold it is depending on how many cats are crammed into the little wool bed outside on the deck. Today was a "two cat day" so I knew it was in the 20's. When it's a three cat day it's bitterly cold. At night they get put in the shop and cuddle up in the hay. I have peace of mind knowing they aren't getting eaten by coyotes too.

Sean has been passing the time out in his heated shop working on the Range Rover. It's pretty much ready to go. He's been tying up a few little loose ends....headliner issues, burned up light bulbs and a few more chewed through wires. I think a couple more weeks and he'll start putting miles on it. That will be fun.

The kids have found out how much fun games are on the tablet. About once every few weeks I get on the Google Play Store and we download a few new games to play. Greta gets the preschool learning games and Wesley likes the racing games. Together they play matching games and have a blast.

I'm kind of in a blogging rut, there isn't much of anything going on. We're all just trying to stay warm these days. I don't want to dwell on anything because I know there are people all over the country with worse weather than we have and with all the problems that come with prolonged cold weather. One lady blogger I read on the east coast has had her pipes freeze and been without water for weeks. She has to visit her neighbors house to lug buckets of water home to her livestock. I can't even imagine. I feel so lucky having a warm house with no frozen pipes (knock on wood) and a healthy, happy family.  Stay warm everyone!

Goo Be Gone

If you look in the trunk of my little car you won't find a spare tire. You won't even find a jack. What you will find is this:

This is a little air compressor. It has the option of just pumping air or air with the "goo". You know that stuff that they pump into tires to seal leaks? Well I got to figure all this out last week when the side wall on the rear tire blew. Of course it happened when I was taking Wesley to school bright and early. The Volt has a little tire pressure window on the dash that tells you what each tire is aired up to. You'll understand my alarm as I watched the little tire go from 34psi to 8psi in a matter of seconds. I was on blacktop and going 60 mph at the time. The kids got to hear some choice words as I quickly found the location that I knew I'd be stranded at.

I got my little air compressor out and hooked it all up, turned it on and watched as it tried in vain to pump air and "goo" into the tire. Hubby came to my rescue and felt around the inside of the tire, he figured out it was a blow out. All the goo was oozing out of this hole in the side wall. Doh. Luckily Sean is a pro at putting in tire plugs (I think he plugs a tire a month at our house). He was able to plug it enough to drive it slowly home. Thank goodness for him. It would have been a tow truck otherwise.

My message: Shame on you Chevy for not supplying a spare tire! Perhaps it's to get better gas mileage, or battery life or maybe it's just simply a lack of room but that's downright dangerous. Lucky for me it was just a lightly traveled blacktop road but it could have been far worse.

Greta and I spent that afternoon trying to find a matching tire, we were successful.

The Wednesday Write-Up

-The first day of preschool went wonderfully. She was a little shy when we got there but after finding the bucket o' Barbies and a playmate she bid me farewell with ease. I asked her in the car at pick-up time how everything was and she said "All the kids were so nice, nobody kicked or punched me like Wesley!". Ha! Don't worry about Miss Greta she punches Wesley far more than he does her. I'm thrilled she's excited to go back.

-The deck progress has stopped due to a rather ill husband. Poor guy got a nasty stomach flu (or maybe West Nile virus?) that had him curled up on the couch in misery. The kids and I tossed Saltines to him from a safe distance (not really) as we really did not want to catch whatever bug he had. Luckily he is feeling better today and on the road to recovery. As much as I've tried he still won't let me go out and put down decking, he really wants to do it himself. I'm ok with that. I'm just happy to be seeing this outside my sliding glass doors:

....rather than this:

-The Volt just turned one year old and turned over 10,000 miles. So far it's been fun, sporty and different. We haven't noticed any difference in our (gigantic) electric bill and it's been lovely not filling the car up much. I've used 57 gallons of gas over 10,000 miles which averages out to 175 mpg (come on, that's cool). That means the 32 mile range is just about perfect for my transportation needs, I don't tend to ever need to use the gas engine except for the occasional trip. The downsides thus far include the low clearance on the front....I scrape anything and everything. I'm an equal opportunity scraper. And the black interior. You mix living on dirt roads, kids and a black interior and you are left with the dirtiest car interior ever. It's dirty right after I clean it. It makes me twitch. Never again will I own a car with a black interior. Mark my words. Fun car though! Happy birthday Mr. Volt.

Road Trip

This weekend we got to get together with the family to celebrate my nephew Emery's birthday. Initially we were to travel there as a family but at the last moment a decision was made to leave Sean at home so he could finish up the siding project before it rained on Sunday. Therefore I got to take the kids on a road trip to KC all by my lonesome. I'm happy to report it was smooth sailing due to the dual DVD players and several Disney movies. Sean even managed to hook up the DVD players into the main sound system of the Volt so we all got to listen to the movie broadcast (loudly) over the radio. Oh and the Volt did pretty good on the highway getting 44.5 mpg.

Emery turned three years old last week and was excited to celebrate it "Thomas the Train" style. There were several little kids that he hangs around with there along with Wesley and Greta. They all enjoyed themselves and love going to Aunt Betsy's house.

 On a funny note, Wesley kept going up to my dad (Papa John) and would call him Papa Rich (his other grandpa). My dad kept correcting him and Wesley kept calling him the wrong name. Finally my dad just started calling Wesley "Fred". Wesley looked at my dad all weird and said "Papa, my name is NOT Fred" and my dad looked at him and said "Well my name isn't Papa Rich!". They got a good chuckle. And of course Wesley kept calling him Papa Rich and dad kept calling him Fred all weekend. It was great.

VOLT Report

I thought I'd take a moment and write a little post about the electric car out in the garage. As of this weekend I'll have put 2,000 miles on the Volt. I've got to say it's completely changed the way I think about driving. Even though it has a back-up gasoline engine I'd say I get obsessed about NOT using it. I ask myself "Can I get there and back only using the battery?" If the answer is "No," then I ask myself "How can I get there and back without using gas?" This has turned me into the typical little old lady driver. I take back roads, I don't take highways, I coast up to stop signs and stop lights, and if nobody is behind me I go well under the speed limit. All these things combined can get me up to 47 miles to a charge (my personal best).

The car likes to tell me I'm getting 250+ miles per gallon. It's a mind boggling number.

Like I said, the car is not 100% electric. It does have a back up gasoline engine that acts as a generator to run the electric engine. The gas engine gets 37 mpg if you use it solely without the battery. But there is a little loop hole that Volt owners use to get better mpg's if they are traveling past their battery range. The car has several modes in which you can drive. One of the modes is called "Mountain Mode" and this particular mode causes the gas engine to run at such a high rpm that it charges the battery while you are driving. Cool eh? So if you have a long drive ahead of you all you do is deplete the battery (not all the way), put it in Mountain Mode, charge the battery while driving, switch it back into battery mode, deplete the battery and repeat. I've "heard" this method can get you up to 50 mpg. We will be finding out if this is true this weekend. I'm anxious to see if this works.

I was worried about the size of the car when we got it. It's not a big car. I'm used to driving bigger vehicles. The last car I drove was a SUV of sorts and I carried all sorts of things in it including feed bags, straw bales and my personal favorite, baby goats. I knew there would have to be some changes made to what I could and could not carry in this car. Probably no more baby goats. But I'm happy to say I've already loaded the car full of 50# feed bags and a weeks worth of groceries (horse feed in the front seat and goat feed and groceries under the back hatch with Greta in between).

It's a great car and I'm having fun with it.

Plugged in and charging.

The Wednesday Write-Up

-Volt Report: We had its maiden voyage yesterday (we've been waiting on a 30 day tag that came in the mail). Greta and I decided to take Sean to lunch so we could try out the range. I'm thrilled to report we went 46 miles on a single charge (blew that 35 mile average out of the water). It was achieved by driving it easy. Which means not gunning it, coasting down hills and when coming up to stop lights which uses the regenerative braking (when you lift your foot from the accelerator or apply brakes the motor acts as a generator that works to recharge the battery). That 46 miles cost me $1.30 worth of electricity. That same 46 miles in my former car (a Ford Freestyle) which got 23 miles to the gallon would have cost me $7.50 (2 gallons of gas at $3.75 a gallon). That's one heck of a savings! So far I'm very happy with it.

-Princess Party Planning: A certain little girl is turning three years old in about a week and half. I've been trying to figure out what to do about her cake and came up with a princess cake idea. It should be cute if I can pull it off. She's been using her brothers Imaginext dragon castle as a doll house for her princesses so I figured it was time for a proper doll house. So I ordered a wooden barbie house off of Amazon. It's sitting unassembled in a large box by the front door. The kids keep coming up to me asking what's in the big box and I have to keep lying to them saying it's car parts dad ordered. I'm putting off assembling it because I don't know where to hide it until her birthday. I'm sure it will be a couple of late nights putting it together two days before the party. She's going to be so excited.

We've gone electric!

What a weekend! I've been working on an exciting new addition to our garage for about a week and a half now and it arrived on Saturday. Via car hauler. I seem to get the two year itch with the vehicles I drive and it was time for a change. And a change I got! No more gasoline for me (I hope). In the garage right this moment is a 2012 Chevy Volt. It's a plug-in electric car with a backup gas motor. It's got a 35 mile electric range (with the possibility of more if you drive it carefully). With my driving habits this could mean I won't be visiting the gas pumps at all. Nada. Zero. Zilch. How exciting! Based on my past year of driving this car will save me over $1200 in gas in a year. Can you tell I'm pumped?

Car was delivered right out in front of the house. It literally has 29 miles on it.

My Volt next to my Dad's Volt. Note that it's plugged in and charging. How cool.