Mrphf

I'm watching the election coverage and it's like watching a really close football game where they keep taking time outs. I should really just turn it off and check the results tomorrow. There's nothing I can do about who wins and watching only draws out the suspense. I voted a week ago. Due to my gypsy nature, I never know where I'll be on election day and I cannot commit to just one polling place. So I'm a permanent vote-by-mail person. It's very convenient.

Anyway, so a couple things I thought you guys would get a kick out of. Number one- I think I want my room to be silver. Grey/silver. I think for now I'll just change my linens to the blue ones and see how I like the brown with a little more color in the room. I hope I don't change the exterior color as much as I have changed my bedroom color. Like how about never? I took yesterday off work to receive my new phone from FedEx who will not deliver a phone without a signature. And Verizon refused to believe that my work address was a real address. So I stayed home. I put a second coat of paint on wall number two (we're talking exterior now) and a first coat on wall number 3. If I remember correctly, there are 10 walls. Some are larger than others.

I also pulled a very large awning frame off the back wall. Apparently some one thought it would be a great idea to put up an awning over the windows of a sun room. I've been putting off taking it down because it's very large, and I assumed (correctly) very heavy. Not something that I could just pull off on my own. Well yesterday I had enough. It was coming down. I'm a little off topic here, but anyway. I am proud that I thought to tie one corner of the frame on to a strong beam that leads to the carport, with 3 different bungee cords. Yes, I am a genious, thank you. I figured there were a few things that could happen. It was most likely going to come crashing to the ground, which was scary being that I had to be up on a ladder to lift one side out of the brackets and hopefully lower it to the ground without killing myself. The second possibility was that when it came crashing down it would nail two large windows and completely shatter them. So one of the bungee cords was in a position to pull it in the opposite direction of the windows. The other two simply would hold one corner up.

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I got in place on a ladder on the far side and lifted the frame out of the brackets. Somehow it ended up crashing completely to the ground. Apparently I was smart enough to let go of the thing. There was a large thick tile on the ground that was completely shattered, the other end hung from the bungees and the windows were all in tact. I was too, at the time.

So the far end still hung from the beam that I had secured it to, and now I had to somehow lower it down without killing myself. I unhooked the one with the lateral support first. I'm not sure if that was the one that did it or not, being as I just carried on afterward, but somehow in the first two bungees, I removed a large piece of skin from my pinkie knuckle. Officially an avulsion. Meaning not quite an amputation of a large piece of skin, just mostly off. Of course the pinkie is a small digit, so relative to the rest of the body it wasn't much. Relative to my pinkie...well the knuckle is now a thick flap of skin. I ignored it briefly while removing the rest of the bungees, and managed to lower the frame to the ground.

Looking at my knuckle, it was pretty bloody, ready to start dripping on the ground. Not a scrape people, an actual avulsion of the knuckle. I have no idea what all you could see under there because I went into the house, rinsed it out, replaced the flap of skin, put antibacterial ointment on top and then taped it up. As I went about painting, I could see the blood seeping through.

And you know what? I never lifted the flap to see. Last night I cleaned it off again and wrapped it up. Today I changed the band aid and it's really hard to tell. I'm wondering if being so quick on replacing the skin might allow it to heal back together? I'm not sure. I guess time will tell. It didn't get scrubbed real well which worries me a little, but we'll see.

Anyway, back to my amusing house issues.

I got a wood pellet insert for my fireplace. For those who don't know what that is, let's start with the insert part of it. Fireplaces are pretty, but very inefficient on heat. Up here, that matters. So you can get an insert for the fireplace that will heat your house much more efficiently. Wood pellets are very small pellets (think hamster food) of highly compressed saw dust. This pellet stove adds little pellets to a bowl inside the stove depending on how you set it. If you put it on low, it will add pellets more slowly than if you put it on high. It's amazing how much heat these little pellets put out, and they leave very little ash behind. The cool thing is, I bought a remote thermostat with it, so I can set the room at 70 degrees and it will turn off and on depending on the temperature. I just broke the remote by the way, so I've been operating it manually. On Thursday, the fireplace guy will be here to hopefully fix the remote.

So the problem is this. Actually I have a coule theories, so here we go. I have an alarm clock that is a synthetic sunrise. I set the sunrise for the length of time I want. I like 15 minutes. So 15 minutes before it's time to get up, this alram clock starts getting brighter. It's got a big bulb thing on it. It starts very dim and gets brighter and brighter until it's time to get up. Then it ends with an annoying beep like most alarms. Optional, but I like the back up. I wake up to light. One of the reasons why I can't really sleep in and I get sleepy when it gets dark. I've had this alarm clock for maybe 6 years. So I've definately trained myself to wake up with changes in light.

I was really excited to get a stove insert for my fireplace, so that I can enjoy the warm glow of the fire while falling asleep. Plus the heat. You can't beat a warm house in the middle of winter.

Warm glow = light. Flickering light to be exact. And now I can't sleep.

The first night I had it on, I instinctively rolled over to turn off the alarm before it went into beeping mode. It was around midnight. That continued throughout the night. After that I turned it down to 68 degrees so it turned on less. Then I tried loading the wood stove in the dining room to the point that it was too warm for the pellet stove to kick on. That was even better.

Then I broke the remote. So I put it on low and it burned all night...and now I'm not sleeping. I'll have you know I've been sleeping fairly well for the past 5 months, until recently. Maybe a metabolism thing. Could I have been sleeping better while eating more fatty foods in the southeast? It's possible.

So to sum it up, I painted my room again and I don't think it's the right color and I finally got my wood pellet insert that I've been saving for for a year and it's keeping me from sleeping. Bah! So I've got the wood stove going so I can turn off the pellet stove when I got to bed. Geezo.