Living Large In Our Little House

I feel like I've been chas­ing my tail this week

You know when you’ve had a Monday, I mean a real Monday, when every­thing you touch ends up in worse con­di­tion than if you hadn’t done any­thing at all?

Mine started on Monday and even with tak­ing a day to play with our neigh­bor in town,  hasn’t ended yet. It’s like Groundhog Day.

My week has been filled with two of my least favorite things to do, get­ting our taxes ready for the accoun­tant (that is one appoint­ment I ended up not being able to keep last week because I real­ized almost too late that we were miss­ing one of Dale’s W2’s) and the dentist.

On Monday, I also real­ized my heating/cooling unit didn’t feel like it was quite heat­ing prop­erly. Since we had storms over the week­end, I thought it might need reset, so I turned the breaker off and cleaned the filters.

It chugged along, not quite work­ing right until I finally called the ser­vice com­pany yes­ter­day. They can’t be here until tomor­row and it is freez­ing in The Belle Writer’s Studio this morning.

This is the third time since last sum­mer I’ve had to call the ser­vice guys (at a min­i­mum of $75 a pop) due to prob­lems with it, so again, if you’re think­ing of a one-room heat pump heat/air unit, I would not rec­om­mend the Fujitsu Halcyon.

Combine that with a com­puter mon­i­tor about to go out on me and I'm a lit­tle stressed with my work this week.

At least the sun is shin­ing today and the radi­a­tion laced rain has stopped for now (although Arkansas offi­cials said they don’t have the means to test the radi­a­tion lev­els in our rain it’s assumed since the rain to the west of us and to the east of us has tested pos­i­tive for radi­a­tion from the Japanese dis­as­ter, the rain had it when it arrived here).

The sun is a wel­come sight for another rea­son, it’s the first time since some time last week that’s it’s appeared. The weather also promises to be warmer by tomorrow.

I did notice when I was doing taxes that I’ve allowed our paper­work to become woe­fully dis­or­ga­nized. Instead of filed neatly in my fil­ing cab­i­nets, it is stacked up inside the cabinets.

Books I’ve read and another stack of books to read are stacked pre­car­i­ously on top of the cab­i­nets, just wait­ing to fall on a big heap on the floor.

When I have these Murphy’s Law type of days or weeks, some other part of my life is usu­ally in dis­ar­ray too, almost like a Feng Shui effect. So, this week­end, I’m going to take some time to orga­nize the paper­work, hang the remain­ing art on my walls, start my spring clean­ing and take the win­ter com­forter and shower cur­tain and replace them with the spring/summer ones.

Hopefully, things will start to fall into place again around Our Little House after I once again estab­lish a place for every­thing and every­thing in its place. If not, well, at least I will be warmer and not be get­ting my jaw drilled on next week. The anx­i­ety of not know­ing whether we owe taxes or not will also be relieved (if we owe, we just deal and move on) and life will be good again!

What do you do when you just feel out of sorts and things are not going right?

When I kept that den­tist appoint­ment last week, I learned once again that I have yet another cav­ity, the sec­ond since mov­ing to Our Little House nearly four years ago.

Dale and I both have issues with grind­ing our soft teeth and as a result, I’ve had to have one crown so far and have two more sched­uled. Dale has had to have so much den­tal work done since mov­ing here I couldn’t tell you what all it has been, but I know it has included sev­eral fillings.

My ques­tions is why, after years of good check ups in Kansas City did we start to have cav­i­ties again?

When we moved here, flu­o­ri­dated water we drank all of our lives was no longer avail­able. I also stopped using flu­o­ri­dated tooth­paste, opt­ing instead for a nat­ural brand con­tain­ing lit­tle more than bak­ing soda from our nat­ural food store.

Was this the wrong move? Do some chem­i­cals actu­ally do what the gov­ern­ment says they will do for us?

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The upside to not fly­ing into NYC this week was that I was able to keep a den­tist appoint­ment, an appoint­ment with the accoun­tant to do our taxes and be avail­able for work when most of my col­leagues are out on spring break.

Ok, I’m being sar­cas­tic, but at least I am get­ting a lot done.

Due to a hec­tic sched­ule, I’m going to let you enjoy a cou­ple of pho­tos that proves spring has sprung here because by the time you read this, a cold front will have hit.

The weath­er­man even men­tioned the four-letter “S” word as a pos­si­bil­ity for Sunday.

This is me with my hands over my ears singing, “La, la, la, weath­er­man, I can­not hear you!”

Have you been get­ting a mixed bag of weather where you’re at this week or has it been all win­ter or all spring?

Enjoy your week­end, Living Large readers.

Late last week, while sit­ting in the Belle Writer’s Studio toil­ing away, I received an email with the sub­ject: “Nate Berkus Show.”

Thinking it was prob­a­bly one of the many press releases I get on a daily basis, I almost deleted it, but decided to open it up. I was sur­prised to learn that some­one at the home design show had taken a look at Living Large after speak­ing with Kent over at The Tiny House Blog. They wanted to speak with me about pos­si­bly fea­tur­ing Our Little House on the show for Earth Day.

I dropped every­thing, of course, and called the assis­tant, because this is usu­ally what one does when Hollywood, or in this case, New York comes calling.

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