UGH, so sick!

My husband works at a school (germ city), the same school that my 2 older boys go to. He came home Thursday from work complaining of a sore throat. By 7pm he was down and out on the couch with the shakes and a fever. He only got about an hour's worth of sleep all night. He went to work the next day much to my dismay. By noonish he was home and having his mother take him to urgent care. $45.00 later he was home toting his giant horse pills. I never understood that! You have strep throat, can barely swallow your own spit and they expect you to take these giant pills the size of a small child!

Yesterday I knew I was getting it. Midday I started feeling my glands swelling and by 8ish that night I took my turn on the couch. What a horrific night! I haven't been that sick in a long time. Fever, sore throat, swollen glands, bad bad headache, chills, body aches, nausea..you name it I had it. I barely slept. One thing I do often when I have body aches and can't seem to get warm is to let the hot shower beat on me. I did that 3 times last night. Then I'd get into bed and cover up with my 2 comforters (on top of my flannel pj's) and wake up in a cold sweat. It was miserable.

Today I went to urgent care myself. I was hoping I could just go in and tell the doc that my husband had been in the day before and he wouldn't do a throat culture and charge me an extra 20 bucks. No such luck. He said to me after looking at my throat that he was giving me an antibiotic either way. So why do the culture? I don't get it.

I just have to say that WITH health insurance if we all get this that co-pays and antibiotics for 5 of us would be $225! OH DEAR LORD! Please God, don't let the kids get it. Not only do I not want them to feel this way, that's a LOT of money! How ridiculous is that?

Oh well, I'm going to shower and lay in bed.

KitchenAid..such a love-hate relationship

I broke down a couple of years ago and bought myself a KitchenAid Professional 600 6 quart mixer. I was so excited I couldn't stand it! If you know mixers, you know that I paid a pretty penny for this baby. I didn't mind because I wanted one so badly.

For an entire year I was thrilled with it aside from the volume of it. Lets just say you can't talk on the phone next to the machine when it's running. It's claim to fame is that it can mix up to 14 cups of flour at a time. I'm a huge homemade bread/roll/cinnamon bun/pizza dough/soft pretzel fan...anything involving yeast, really. My mixer gets a workout but it's okay because it's a KitchenAid, right? Heavy duty, right? Huh! That's what I thought. Literally 2 weeks after the one year warranty was up the stinking thing stopped working right in the middle of mixing dough. The motor ran but the mechanism wouldn't spin. Gears stripped. PERFECT! *SIGH*

I called KA customer service and much to my surprise they replaced it with a new machine! I was very impressed and my faith in the company was renewed.

After doing much research about my problem, I found TONS of others with the same problem! I guess they started making the gear box with plastic parts rather than the all metal that they claimed. At this point I figured it's all good because I've got a new one coming and another full year warranty on it.

Here we are 1 year and 3 months after I received this new mixer and guess what happened? Yup! Right in the middle of a batch of pizza dough. I cannot express to you how aggravated I was and still am. Not realizing it was 3 months past the warranty date I called KA again. The lady in customer service was very pleasant. She allowed me to explain what happened, put me on hold and when she came back on the line she explained to me that they would send me a refurbished model with a 6 month warranty.

Now am I supposed to be happy? afraid? I guess both? I'm very happy that they are sending me another one knowing that the warranty was outdated. I'm very scared that the gears will strip again. Part of me wants to sell it on EBay and buy a different brand. I just don't know. I do know that this should NOT be happening. It's not like I bought some cheesy floor model from WalMart! I suppose what I'll have to do is mix my dough and then knead by hand? I'll have to think of it as therapeutic.........

Seriously?

I don't know what made me notice this or why it bothers me, but seriously? Look at the outside package of the butter. The salted butter has a red outer package and the labels on the sticks are blue! The unsalted package is blue and the sticks red! What? Why? Some sort of stupid joke? Trying to confuse us? I think it's kinda funny actually. What person came up with that idea? "Yes, that's what we'll do, a switcharoo on the colors, perfect idea!" Yep, it's the little things...

Choose Your Battles

I love this phrase and remind myself of it daily as I raise 3 little boys and 1 very big boy. Fighting battles like putting the toilet seat down, even if there are more of them than me and getting the pee INTO the toilet and not spraying it onto every surface of the bathroom. The battle I've given up on is keeping their bathroom fresh smelling and I've decided that with 3 boys all 5 years apart, it's bound to reek for the next 17 years weather I like it or not. That or make them sit like girls to pee (which I threaten to do on a regular basis.) Like taking drinking glasses out of their bedrooms BEFORE the milk curdles and then finally dries out and you can't figure out why your room smells like vomit and foot funk. I know, ewww! Comes with the territory I suppose.

And I'm wondering why, when the garbage can is in the cupboard under the sink, do they put it IN THE SINK? Or when all of the spoons are dirty (all 3...they've lost the other 5) do they have to use my plastic ones I keep for cookouts and such instead of washing one. Or they get a drink and not only leave the container out, but don't clean up the sticky juice they spilled on the counter that's now dripped onto the floor and between the counter and the stove? Perfect to attract those colonies of ants I'm battling to get rid of.

I wonder why my hubby always leaves the car without gas, leaves his dirty socks under the end table and candy wrappers on the couch. Why he thinks he's done a thorough job cleaning his whiskers OUT of the sink and completely ignores the ones stuck to the faucet and all surrounding areas. Why HE has to use the toilet right after I've cleaned it. Again, I know...ewww. But come on, I can't be the only one!

Some things I guess are never-ending battles.

Buffering.....Buffering.......Buffering

I cannot even tell you how much I -heart- dialup....*blink*blink*. No, really! Nothing makes me happier than to wait a full 20 minutes, yep...TWENTY minutes to upload a picture *sideways smile* to blogger and facebook! If I'm having a really lucky day, my laptop will overheat and shutdown with no prior notice *double thumbs up*. Or one of the kids OR dogs will trip over the phone cord leading to said laptop and pull it out! Joy! Joy I tell you!

Youtube? Pff....what's that? Seriously! It's fabulous to be able to watch half second clips of any given video so a 2 minute video takes about 4 minutes.

On the phone with tech support.....them"Okay Mrs. ***, if you'll just log onto the internet, we'll talk you through it"....me "hmmm.....well? I'd LOVE to but you see, I live on this street, it's only a half mile from houses with high speed...I'm not the only one on the road otherwise I'd understand. There are 11 houses within that half mile. ELEVEN. So sorry Mr. Techy Guy, you won't be talking me through anything." NICE.

So I think my property taxes should be lowered for being in a less desirable area, afterall, high speed internet is almost a necessity these days, right? Pff...