Laundry room chaos...

I got this great deal on a used washer and dryer a couple of years ago.
It was the bargain basement price of FREE, and - well - this sister doesn't turn down free.
There were a couple minor issues with the washer and dryer, but nothing I wasn't willing to live with - especially considering my old washer had decided to spew oil all over my laundry and my old dryer had decided it would rather eat my clothes than dry them....
Ahh..life's rough.

Based on these core facts, it came as no surprise when the appliances were in need of repair.

What did come as a surprise was the fact that it would happen all at once.

Week One:
I get a text message from my brother that says, simply, "dryer is broke."
That brother of mine, he's so detailed in his informative skills....
After a quick inspection, and a visit to repairclinic.com, I had a new heating element on the way.

Week Two: (Part 1)
Just days after having placed the order for the heating element for my dryer I was met with a second laundry catastrophe. My washing machine had for some reason decided that the water was better placed on the floor than in the drainage pipe clearly labeled "WASHER OUT".
Who knew?
A quick inspection alerted me to the fact that the drainage hose had sprung one hell of a leak, and further inspection alerted me to a severely worn place on the agitator belt.
Wanting to preempt any future repairs or shipping expense, I hopped on repairclinic.com and ordered both the replacement belt and the new drainage hose.

Week Two: (Part 2)
After the arrival of my first order for the heating element for my dryer, I hunkered down with my socket wrench to make the repairs. 30 minutes later my dryer was running like a dream...and even getting hot enough to dry the clothes completely.

Week Three: (Part 1)
Upon the arrival of my washing machine replacement parts...I again hunkered down with my socket wrench to begin to disassemble my washer. An hour later, covered in the stench of water that had likely been sitting in the washing machine pump for the last decade, the washer was again running smoothly.

Week Three: (Tonight)
My brother tosses something into the dryer and turns it on. From my desk in the family room I hear this incredible squeal....
Never a good thing.
Looks like I'm making another visit to repairclinic.com

Do over...again....

I go through these phases....
Sometimes I'm writing hard core, balls to the wall, without any hesitation or reservation.
Other times I come to a full and complete stop.

I suppose you can guess that most recently I've been at a stop.

It was the unexpected message from an internet friend which prompted me to start reevaluating the things I'd been doing with my time.
Essentially, her message was "where the hell have you been?"

I had to stop and ask myself the same question.

I didn't have a good answer.

Wherever the hell I've been doesn't really matter as much as the fact that I'm back. At least for the moment.

Time to get you caught up on the life that is Heather....

You better fasten your seat belt.

Words For Sale

Lately I feel as if I've turned into a bit of a word prostitute...selling them off for a few dollars at a time until the dollars add up to something good.

If you're one that follows the articles I post on Associated Content, then you've probably noticed that the subject matter of my recent articles is a bit off from my normal gig.

I mean common?

Me?

Writing about bed wetting and toilet training?

There would have to be some reason that I had chosen this subject matter for the crazy collection that has been recently published.

There is a reason.

Dollars.

Writers aren't a whole lot different from artists...

Most of us are starving...

Only a few of us ever get noticed...

And that's only after we're dead.

As I wrote that just now I started thinking...

What if, years from now, long after my bones have turned to ash, someone decides to do a bit of snooping into my portfolio of work?

I have turned my legacy into a collection of articles highlighting the joys of excrement.

Wonderful.

Of course in a perfect world I'd be one of the featured authors in Oprah's Book Club and would spend my days lounging on the deck with my handy laptop. Sadly, my world has yet to reach that stage of perfection just yet...so I bide my time hooking out my talent 450 words at a time.

It's a hard knock life...

But one day, when I'm hanging out by the pool in my $1.7 million dollar house overlooking the ocean in Hawaii - I'll drop you a post and let you know how I'm doing on my tan.

Saving Pennies

My daughter stood in the doorway holding a handful of money.

"This is what I've made so far."

She passed me the stack of twenties and I counted them out.

"$240," I smiled at her. "I'm impressed."

"And I get paid again tomorrow," she grinned. "That'll bring me up to $300."

"You're doing a fantastic job."

She trotted off with her wad of bills in hand.

She's spent the last five weeks, her entire summer vacation so far, babysitting for the kids across the street. It wasn't exactly how she had wanted to spend her summer, but the bait of making a few dollars was to much to resist.

"So what are you going to spend your money on?" my mother asked her after she found out about her summertime gig.

"A car."

My mother laughed at her answer, but was quickly met with the determined stare of my 15-year-old daughter.

"I'm serious. I want to buy a car next summer when I get my driver's license."

My mother assured her that she had plenty of time to save money for a car, but she held firm to her original answer. Every penny she earned from her babysitting job would be stashed away for a car.

It was a lesson she had learned from her brother, who, after he turned 16 worked for an entire summer to be able to save enough money to buy his first car. She watched him scrape together every last cent he had so that he could purchase the $1500 car from the local car lot.

That summer her brother taught her a valuable lesson about money:

If you want to buy something, you have to save your pennies to be able to get it.

That summer also reinforced an important "mom rule":

If you want to have your own car, you have to buy it yourself.

"So if I start saving my money early," she said during that same summer, "then I can buy a nicer car, right?"

"That's how it works."

Now we'll just have to see exactly how dedicated she is to achieving her goal.

American Pride...Small Town Style

The claim to fame for the small town where I live is that it's the site of the oldest consecutive 4th of July celebration.

Forget the east coast towns of our founding fathers, instead a tiny little town tucked in the midwest lays claim to the fact that through times of peace and times of war, through times of economic hardship and times of booming success they have always come together to celebrate the national holiday.

Here are some scenes from this years 4th of July Parade...a little American Pride...Small Town Style!

Matty enjoying some sucker goodness! Nothing like some candy first thing in the morning!

Lily showing some American Pride with her tiny flag!

To see more photos....click here!

You better not be sexting!

Becoming the Teen Issues Examiner has definitely opened my eyes to a lot of things that, as a parent, I'd rather stay blind to. Not that I didn't realize that these things existed...but more because when you have the statistics to back up the issues then it makes it really hard to say "not my kid".

A recent piece that I did about "sexting" pointed to the fact that, in spite of all the media coverage, one out of five teenagers admits to sending or receiving a text message that would fall under the category of "sexting".

I read over the report, my mouth hanging open, wondering what in the world was going on. First you have kids sending nude photos through their cell phones, then you have those same children being charged with sex offenses and being forced to add their names to sex offender registries, and then you have the same demographic admitting to the fact that they are still engaging in these behaviors.

What in the world?

I yelled out to my teenage daughter who was in the next room.

"What are you doing?"

She appeared in the doorway holding her cellphone.

"What do you think I'm doing?" She held up the phone to display a message she was in the process of sending.

"You better not be sexting."

"Eww, mom." She said as she turned back into the kitchen, "That's just nasty."

I breathed a heavy sigh of relief...

Then made the mental note to keep a closer eye on her texting habits.

Being the parent of a teenager is hard work...

Rebuilding Frankenstein

About a week ago my computer started acting a little hinky...

Not in the mood to mess with diagnosing the real "problem", and confident that with the laptop as a backup I wouldn't suffer any serious withdrawl symptoms, I decided that I would just format my harddrive and start over.

Great plan.

Now don't get me wrong, sometimes the only choice is to just start from the beginning, but in this case reformatting the drive didn't fix anything since my problem was hardware related and not software related.

Anyway...that's besides the point.

So, for the last week I've been sitting here, my computer functional but essentially naked.

The first thing that struck me was my programs list...which had once stretched across three columns of my monitor. In an instant, it was reduced to only the basic choices offered by Windows.

The next thing...and most disturbing...were my gadgets.

I have a lot of gadgets, and every one of them has a USB cable connected to my computer.

There are so many USB cables attached to my computer that my desk resembles some kind of Frankenstein experiment.

We're talking an absurd number of gadgets...so many that when my son asked me what I wanted for Christmas last year my reply was: "A 7-port USB hub, please."

Oh yeah folks, I have a problem. And seconds after re-booting my computer after my brilliant plan to reformat my drive, I realized that my problem was biting me right in the butt.

A series of rather irritating Windows prompts began to display on my screen:

"Unknown hardware found"

For every single gadget that came with a cable there was a disk somewhere that held the necessary software for my computer to know what it was...

That's a lot of disks...

Cause there are a lot of cables...

Cause I have lots of gadgets...

So what are my plans for the day?

Rebuilding Frankenstein.