A New Year - And Still Tired

Sweet little girl! Maybe we'll have to rename her Annie GREEN now that her eyes have changed from their baby blue status!

Anyway . . . good morning!

And, oh, I am fighting - with every fiber in my body - the massive urge to curl up on the couch with the heating pad this morning. Just a l-i-t-t-l-e bit more sleep . . . . My six hours last night just didn't cut it. Ugh.

Maybe more coffee will help. Hang on . . . .

The replacement part for the generator finally arrived, and so we drove in to town last night to pick it up. An hour on the road back home again, and, by 8:15, Tom had it installed and the beast put back together. Next, I stepped in to do the tweaks to the settings of the inverter (which had been changed to accommodate the limping along we did with the small, portable gasoline generator). Finally, we held our breath and fired the system up. Yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . ?! We were cautiously optimistic. No error lights flashing (anymore) on the generator . . . . Then, that lovely "click-click-hummmmmm" as the inverter began feeding the battery bank with the generator's energy! Yayyy! We ran the system manually last night until I went to bed at which point I switched it over to automatic. The true test will come when I go out this morning to take all the voltage & amps readings. Keep your fingers crossed for us! The big energy-suckers (laundry, ironing, and vacuuming) have been falling to the back burner since we've had to be limping along (for two weeks now). I'm eager to work on getting caught up!

Tom's birthday is coming up on Sunday. On Saturday, he and my dad and some other manly men are going to find something fun to do to pass the time. Then, we'll celebrate with my folks that night. (He's asked for Meat Loaf with all the fixins for his birthday meal plus Crème Brûlée for dessert.)

And, speaking of birthdays, Maisy Grace's was January 1st . . . her fourth. And, true to all birthdays that occur around Christmas: she got shafted. I.e., we didn't get her a thing - not even a special meal of "junky" (canned) dog food. But, there were promises made of a gift the next time we visit the pet store! :)


Looking back in time a bit, Mom and I held our annual cookie bake on December 8th. This has been a yearly event since I was a wee lass when Mom and I and the neighbors (all homesteaders) did it without the benefits of electricity or running water! It's always a long, exhausting, rewarding day. We used to take turns hosting: the benefits to the hostess being that she didn't have to haul anything and was in her own kitchen. But, on the flip side, she needed to make the food for the day plus suffer the clean-up. The benefit to the "hauler" was that she had a clean, quiet house to return to . . . but her "flip-side" was that EVERY SINGLE supply and ingredient she would need during the course of the day had to be packed up and hauled to the appointed house. I got away with hosting this year (ultimately the better of the options, I think) due to the claim that we have a bigger house (more room to work) and that I can't bake anything anymore without my handy-dandy, nifty convection oven. Unfortunately, while I've grown to L-O-V-E my new oven's feature, Mom wasn't used to it and, so, a couple of her cookies came out a little "toastier" than she would have preferred! I suspect that next year, I'll have to suck it up and be "the hauler".

Speaking of hauling . . . . (Logs, that is.) A logger and his crew have been working almost directly across from the end of our driveway this winter. And, while it does result in some noise pollution from the cutting down, splintering, and throwing around of massive trees, it produces one FANTASTIC benefit! They have been doing the plowing on "our" four miles of the road! And, when they plow, they PLOW! To allow enough room for a loaded logging truck and a potentially passing vehicle, they must plow WIDE! And, they have the equipment to do it. So, that has been one massive time-saver for us this season. Gotta love those loggers!

Okay, I feel like I've written a short book here. Time to sign off and get on to the rest of the day's chores.