December 2009

Ok... so right now I am an absolutely HORRIBLE blogger... I can't believe I haven't posted in such a long time... I have been reading everyone else's blog but haven't had much time to respond or to post myself. Things are so hectic - with three kids, teaching, and running a house... leaves no time for anything else.

Anyways... we have been pushing the limits this past week with safety issue. Tuesday morning, I had the HVAC people come by just to do routine maintenance on our heating units. He came and got me about 45 minutes later - said "minor problem, your builder never sealed the gas pipe that goes to your upstairs heating unit so it's been leaking gas for two years." I just about freaked. We have a carbon monoxide detector and it has never registered anything. He said he had the stuff to fix it and would do so for me. About ten minutes later, he comes back downstairs and says, "Ok, problem #2. I can't turn off the gas to fix the problem. Your builder put the shut off valve on the wrong pipe." I guess he could tell by the look on my face that I had no idea what to do next. He tried to calm me down and gave me step by step instructions. So I called the builder. Amazingly, they had a plumber here by 1 o'clock. Guess they realized the severity of the issue... Plumber fixed it (or so we thought). That night when the unit came on, we had a horribly high pitched squealing sound coming from the unit. I called the builder back on Wednesday afternoon and he rescheduled the plumber to come back out and worked around our schedule. He got him here Friday afternoon and fixed that problem... so far so good.

On my way home from school on Friday, I came to a stop at an intersection but heard a very loud grinding sound coming from the back right wheel well... omg... brakes... but the back brakes are fairly new... anyways... Chad took it for me to Brakes Plus. They put it on the rack... ended up that the right back brake pad broke in half. He said sometimes it happens but my brake springs were corroding so that might have added to it. My front brakes (which we knew would have to be replaced this month) were starting to wear into the red warning line so we had the back and front brakes replaced and the back springs and the windshield wipes and they threw in an oil change. Tough for the holiday season when presents need to be purchased but at least I don't have any car payments...