What is a monkeybox?

When I was a little girl, we had a pet monkey named Amanda. My Dad worked in the produce business, so each night he brought home that days culls in a big box - spotty cucumbers, pithy apples, limp celery, moldy oranges and the like. We called it a monkeybox. It was really just trash, but my Mom would take each piece of fruit and trim it, pare it and cut it up to make a beautiful fruit platter for Amanda. Even though it was deemed trash by one, it still had life left in it and was good for the purpose we needed it. That's how I live my life - thrifting, yard saling, looking for another's trash to be my treasure.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Burnin' Down the House

A quick update. Thanks for all the love and well wishes. It means a great deal to me. No power at my Grandmother's house yet. My Mom has power as of 10:00 this morning, but I haven't been able to talk to her because her phone lines went down and they don't have cell reception in the boonies. Our Cable and Internet has been out until 10 minutes ago and not sure if it will stay on.
On a completely unrelated ice storm note, I nearly burned the house down today. Not really, but I could have seriously burned the darn house down. I put a pan on the stove and forgot it. Went outside to talk to a repairman and remembered THE PAN. Ran in to a completely dark house, smoke, crying cats, etc. I was completely freaking out. I threw open the windows and got the smoke out. We set up fans in every window and turned on the A/C fan unit. Really the end result was only soot on the ceiling above the stove and some nasty sooty cobwebby things attaching themselves to the ceiling. I'll have to paint one wall in the kitchen just because soot just smears around, but I was wanting to paint it anyway so I will just look at it like that. One more minute outside and it could have been a tragedy. The cats are fine, the house doesn't smell and if you just don't look up in the kitchen, all is well. That just proved to me how scatterbrained and out of sorts things have been lately. I cook all the time and never forget a pan. I haven't cooked all week and I have forgotten everything. Normalcy please!
After I dealt with that, I realized that there was cold air blowing full force out of the furnace vents. Oh. come. on. One call to the Heating guy and he came over at 7:00m pm tonight and he fixed it. I thought I had sooted it up or something. But, luckily or not so luckily, he said the sudden power surges had been doing this to heat pumps all over town. He fixed it and it warmed right back up again.

Pretty much everything melted away today. Tomorrow I have a guy (actually the heating dude on his day off) coming to clean up the yard and someone else on Sunday to fix the punctured hole in the roof. The insurance adjuster said that someone would be out in a day or two to look at the damage. I said, "May I ask where you are?" "Cincinnati, Ohio", she responded. I thought so because there are 100,000 homes in disarray and I know there is no freakin' way anyone will be "at my house in a couple of days". Then she suggested that maybe I should take photos and get things cleaned up. Uh, ya think?

In the midst of all this today, I received a package from a swap from December. My partner has some difficulties with the shipping and it kept coming back to her. It arrived today full pink Christmas vintage-y goodness and was really a bright spot in an otherwise crap-ola week. So, maybe that's why it never came - because I really needed it today. Thank you Joanne - I will properly thank you when I feel that my Internet will stay on for more than ten minutes!


Only I would take a photo of the Salvation Army Thrift Store in the middle of an ice storm. The Breadman's place of employment is actually right next door and we had to go see what they wanted him to do the next day. Plus, the stores were closed and that is the mecca of all things bread and donutty. You need Chocolate Donettes in an ice storm. You do!

This plane flew over the house yesterday and I begged for it to land and take me somewhere tropical, but to no avail. That's okay, I'll just assume it was Oceanic 815.

I'll be back when and if I can. Thanks again to everyone and to those in the same boat - I feel for ya! And, please let tomorrow be a regular old day!

4 comments:

  1. So Glad you got the swap package finally, can't wait to see pics!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh you poor thing! I am so happy you did not burn the house down but I bet it sure got your heart pumping when you saw all that smoke!

    Sure hope things get better for you.

    I can't believe the package just made it to you. I don't know what in the world the problem was between my place and yours. Oh well, at least you finally got it.

    Hugs,
    Joanne

    ReplyDelete
  3. Smoking out your house...one more thing you and I have in common. I have done it TWICE!!!! It can get your adrenalin pumping and it will force you to clean. You will be surprised(maybe not) at all the stuff it will cling too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Sally is in my old neighborhood..I just lived down the street and my car would AUTOMATICALLY turn in there in the way home...really. lol

    ReplyDelete

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