Me and Mr. Murphy

Please meet two of the finest people you would ever wish to run across - my mom and dad - Eve and Luther Nolan. We had a fantastic visit which I'll be writing more about later this week. But for now I want to discuss Mr. Murphy and his dad-blasted law.

Last week I was putting up dishes I had washed the night before and I noticed this black stuff on my white plastic collander. "Well, that's odd", I thought. The next day I was noticing that this black stuff was showing up on everything white in my house - the toilet, the bathtub, the curtain hanging in my bedroom doorway and I began to realize that something was seriously amiss. I figured it must have something to do with the ancient and decrepit furnace that's in my basement and called an HVAC guy. He came to look at it Friday, the same day as my parent's arrival and sure enough, it was leaking creosote and soot and all kinds of gross stuff. Luckily I was to be out of town with mom and dad most of the weekend because he couldn't get back to work on it until today. What he thought would be a fairly quick fix turned into a day long project as the inside of the chimney had crumbled and it was totally blocked! This is only the most recent in a long list of problems I've had since moving into this house - which while beautifully remodeled, only serves to divert attention from how functionally remiss the work was. I'm still waiting to hear from the clean-up people as I am living with a fine layer of soot over almost everything. For a woman that some consider a bit of a clean freak this is a real challenge.

At the same time as this little drama was unfolding, I came home to a kaput computer monitor and have been without access to my computer since last Friday as well. I called the greatest (and most handsome) computer guy in the world and he got me hooked up with a monitor about the same time as Irwin, the greatest (but not the most handsome) HVAC guy finished up with my furnace. So I'm finally connected and my house is beginning to warm up and I guess I can live without both heat and computer access longer than I thought.

Forever the optimitst, I'd like to tell you what is great about all this. First of all, it's great that I didn't die from carbon monoxide poisoning! I now have a detector and I highly recommend everyone get one. Next, it's great this happened while my parents were here because I was scheduled to be gone with them most of the weekend and I didn't have to spend much time in a freakin' cold house! Finally, because I live in a small town with exceptionally wonderful people, I have a used computer monitor that cost me only $20 - and it's bigger than my other one which is a good thing since I'm getting older and don't see so well without my readers anymore.

None of that really compares to the greatest thing that happened over the weekend, and that's that I became great aunt to an 8-lb. boy named Chase Allen. Congratulations, Coley!