More Calamaties

More Broken Items
Maybe I should just make a numeric list of all the things that are breaking around here!  The Wii gave up a little before Christmas.  We shipped it back for a price ($99) for Nintendo to fix.  Instead,  they sent us a new one.  The new Wii is better designed than our old one that kept overheating.  They've moved where they put the air intake to a much better place.  And it comes with a one year warranty in case it feels like giving up again.  So, a fix with a bonus.

The camera gave up this week.  Suddenly, all the photos I took had a nice rosey hue.  While some people like looking at the world through rose colored glasses, I don't like looking at photos that way!  Dode googled the problem and found that our camera is known to have issues with this.  Amazingly, Canon is willing to take our camera back and fix it, for free (and our camera is seven years old this month and taken 12,000 pictures!).  I'll be borrowing cameras from the kids for a while.  (Not too much of a sacrifice since they're running around with 1-2 year old cameras which actually work much faster than ours!)

Jacob's 18th birthday photo

When I went to make pizza yesterday, I found that the bread maker was not working.  Dode took it apart and found another plastic gear which had self destructed.  Curse on all plastic gears!  With a bit of epoxy, we fixed the problem and were soon back to enjoying delicious bread, rolls, and pizza from it.

And a big mistake
This week I received a friendly letter from the IRS informing me that I'd made an error on last year's tax return and would I kindly send them some more money, several thousand dollars to be exact.  I absolutely did not intend to be dishonest and feel terrible about it. 

We use two banks, one for our day to day expenses and one for our savings. It keeps our savings much safer when I have to visit two banks to transfer money instead of just sitting at the computer and hitting "transfer funds" while doing online banking.  I don't visit very often, usually once a month when I deposit the newspaper money.  I haven't been to the bank for several months since our newspaper money went to Disneyland, car repairs, and Christmas.  Since I needed to dig into the savings to pay the IRS, it was the savings bank I headed to.  It was at this bank that I experienced one small bright spot in all this unexpected stress.

As I sat at the desk with the bank employee, I reached into my wallet to pull out my photo ID, she said, "Thanks, but I know you Stephanie, I don't need to see that."  It felt like a perfect small town moment.  One more lovely thing about the IRS, they sent me a bill and let me know that there may be more penalties to come, to be determined at a later time.  I guess they like to keep you uncomfortable for as long as possible.

We get to call the poison control center
Elizabeth loves to smell things.  Flowers, freshly cut grass, the soap she washes her hands with wherever she goes.    She notices smells the rest of us take for granted. 

Tuesday night is our busiest night of the week.  We're trying to get all our papers folded before the kids go to youth night at church so Dode and I can deliver them while they're at the church.  It was 10 minutes before we were supposed to be leaving for youth night activities.  People were just finishing up their chores, changing their clothes, getting ready to head out the door.  Dode was heading out for a three hour meeting with the Bishopric and Stake Presidency.  I'd roped Jacob in to delivering the papers with me in Dode's place since the forecast was for snow that evening and I was worried I wouldn't be able to do it later.

Into all this comes Elizabeth, red in the face, in tears.  Tuesday night it was Elizabeth's turn to clean the bathroom.  She decided she'd like the smell the toilet bowl cleaner.  She tried to sniff it but couldn't get a good whiff so she gave the bottle a squeeze.  She sent a stream of toilet cleaner up her nose.  The main active ingredient in our toilet bowl cleaner is hydrochloric acid.  Her nose was burning badly and soon the white of the eye on that side turned red and started to tear up.  So at the last minute, Dode took the kids to their activity, took William with him to his meeting, while I got on the phone with the poison control center.

She had to immerse her eye in a bowl of salted water for ten minutes to rinse it and then lay down with her eyes closed for an hour to try to flush the chemicals out.  She was miserable.  I picked up William from the church and delivered papers with Jacob and got home to find out the poison center had called three times to check on her while I was gone (I felt like such a wonderful mom when I learned that!) 

I called the poison center back and they wanted me to take her to the emergency room.  I knew that would take hours and I just wanted to get to bed.  I also had no insurance card since all that information was in my missing wallet.  After consulting with Doctor Boma (my Mom), I decided to send her to bed feeling very sorry for herself and see what the morning would bring.  Her eye was back to normal, her nose didn't hurt, and she's just left with some stuffiness in that nostril.  The poison control center called one more time to check on her.  They're sure committed to those children!

My wallet is back, and we unexpectedly find something else!
While driving home from work, Dode stepped on the brakes and out scooted my wallet from under the seat of the truck.  Amazing!  I've wracked my brain and I know I didn't put it there.  Apparently, someone else did. 

That same someone provided Dode and I with a good laugh this week, and a fair bit of dread for the future.  We were having family scripture study and William was sent out half way through to brush his teeth and get ready for bed.   Once we were done, Dode started walking with him upstairs.  He noticed that William kept poking at himself in the underwear area so he took him into the bathroom to see what was up, thinking maybe he'd gotten his underwear twisted when he'd gone to the bathroom or maybe he was going commando.  Nope, everything seemed to be in order but something just seemed wrong.  He pulled the underwear away and checked front and back, nothing wet and nothing dirty.  He couldn't see anything and was ready to call it a fluke. But something had been keeping William from leaving himself alone, so in desperation Dode pulled William's pants down, still nothing wrong.  Dode pulled his underwear down and still could not find any problems and was pulling up the underwear when he noticed a sliver of silver poking out from between William's legs.  He'd brought a dead cell phone home from school (of unknown origin) that we'd confiscated earlier in the day.  While getting ready for bed, he'd taken it back and hidden it between his legs.  He was trying to sneak  it upstairs when his observant father noticed something amiss. 

When Dode found it, it was all he could do to not start laughing.  William was treating the whole things with perfect seriousness.  When asked what was wrong with his underwear, he'd assured Dode that nothing was, even when Dode found the hidden item, William still wasn't letting on.  Dode called me into the bathroom and told me to check William's underwear.  I thought I was looking for a rash.  William was just standing there, continuing with his innocent appearance.  I relived him of his underwear contraband and he went off to bed a very angry child.  We'll spare you the photo evidence!