Just a quick update
Our carbon monoxide detector loudly started chirping Saturday morning. Mind you, not the one fixed to wall, but the one still packed away in a box from my old apartment. And yes, I was feeling crappy and yucky all morning, but I attributed that to perhaps too many drinks the night before. Jim and I were the moronic duo, running about trying to locate the loud chirp, pulling down the attic steps, traveling up and down from the basement, tipping our ears up and down and sideways, doing the whole "what is that?!!? Then, once we located the detector, we refused to believe that there was indeed carbon monoxide filling up our house, kinda like, nah, must be a false alarm, but a new battery in the detector elicited the same response, so we opened up the entire house and sat around freezing our asses off, pondering the situation for a good long while. That invisible, odorless gas is insidious, if for no other reason than it really makes you look like a moron for assuming that if It can't be seen, It must not be Real. Well, duh. Finally I was like fuck it and called the fire company. Then I spent the entire time we waited for Mustachio and his monitor fretting that they'd send a huge fire truck and how that would just be the suck and the biggest attention drawer and if they did come in a big truck, they just better not have the sirens blasting.
But the dude showed up instead in a beat up SUV, for which I was forever grateful, and indeed his monitor registered carbon monoxide, albeit at a very low level, to which he attributed to our airing out the house so well. And despite the fact that I was the idiot who caused said elevation, I was the only one smart enough to figure out the problem. Which was this: emptying the embers and ashes from the wood burning stove into a tin can and not covering said can with a lid, nor removing said can to the outside. The embers smoldered and burned inside the can, inside the house, for more than few hours, filled up the house with enough carbon monoxide to make me feel ill and set off the old alarm. For which I, too, am forever grateful for boxing up and having, since our brand new alarm that's fixed to the wall failed to alert us that we were all about to die.
Efficiently operating this wood burning stove and heating our house completely on wood is turning out to have a pretty steep learning curve. Fingers crossed that we don't kill ourselves in the process.
I'm totally digging the new waitressing job. I like working the day shift and I couldn't be more jazzed about the operation and their work politics. They have a huge sign hanging from the kitchen ceiling that reads something like, "We strongly feel that we have a social responsibility to our community and to our workers. We value each and every employee's individuality and strive to create a work atmosphere that indicates such and allows creativity and individuality to flourish and foster". Or something like that. Bottom line, the place rocks, the money's good, and the people are unique and interesting and a pleasure to be around.
I'm not digging the book keeping job when I have to be there at night. I can do one restaurant on Fridays, but the other I have to do at night. I headed up to Milano's after Tuesday's wait shift and didn't leave until 10 in the evening and then I cursed and bitched the whole ride home to my own self cuz I was tired and frustrated and despise working thirteen hour days and I didn't get to feed my family nor see my boy to bed and grr grr grr grr grouch grouch blah. But we need the money and getting my first paycheck was great, so suck it up Amber.
I met with Kaleb's teacher Wednesday for my first parent/teacher conference and was delighted (seriously delighted) when I walked in the room and she said, I have to tell you, I really like your son. He's nice to be around and he's vibrant and funny, and he has a creative streak and a sense of self that's uncommon in a child his age. He's just a very nice person. She said he's doing fine academically, and wasn't hung up on his lack of fine motor skills, didn't care that his hand writing sucks or that he refuses to use lower case letters when writing his name. My mom, on the other hand, finds it to be a dramatic failure, both on his part and mine (for not pushing harder or caring more), but his teacher echoed my philosophy that you can't be good at everything, and it's not like he'll never write "properly" or never learn to read. To me, and apparently her, brains are individual entities that learn in their own unique ways, and what's most important is that you foster the inner drive and let the rest unfold organically.
Amen.
But the dude showed up instead in a beat up SUV, for which I was forever grateful, and indeed his monitor registered carbon monoxide, albeit at a very low level, to which he attributed to our airing out the house so well. And despite the fact that I was the idiot who caused said elevation, I was the only one smart enough to figure out the problem. Which was this: emptying the embers and ashes from the wood burning stove into a tin can and not covering said can with a lid, nor removing said can to the outside. The embers smoldered and burned inside the can, inside the house, for more than few hours, filled up the house with enough carbon monoxide to make me feel ill and set off the old alarm. For which I, too, am forever grateful for boxing up and having, since our brand new alarm that's fixed to the wall failed to alert us that we were all about to die.
Efficiently operating this wood burning stove and heating our house completely on wood is turning out to have a pretty steep learning curve. Fingers crossed that we don't kill ourselves in the process.
I'm totally digging the new waitressing job. I like working the day shift and I couldn't be more jazzed about the operation and their work politics. They have a huge sign hanging from the kitchen ceiling that reads something like, "We strongly feel that we have a social responsibility to our community and to our workers. We value each and every employee's individuality and strive to create a work atmosphere that indicates such and allows creativity and individuality to flourish and foster". Or something like that. Bottom line, the place rocks, the money's good, and the people are unique and interesting and a pleasure to be around.
I'm not digging the book keeping job when I have to be there at night. I can do one restaurant on Fridays, but the other I have to do at night. I headed up to Milano's after Tuesday's wait shift and didn't leave until 10 in the evening and then I cursed and bitched the whole ride home to my own self cuz I was tired and frustrated and despise working thirteen hour days and I didn't get to feed my family nor see my boy to bed and grr grr grr grr grouch grouch blah. But we need the money and getting my first paycheck was great, so suck it up Amber.
I met with Kaleb's teacher Wednesday for my first parent/teacher conference and was delighted (seriously delighted) when I walked in the room and she said, I have to tell you, I really like your son. He's nice to be around and he's vibrant and funny, and he has a creative streak and a sense of self that's uncommon in a child his age. He's just a very nice person. She said he's doing fine academically, and wasn't hung up on his lack of fine motor skills, didn't care that his hand writing sucks or that he refuses to use lower case letters when writing his name. My mom, on the other hand, finds it to be a dramatic failure, both on his part and mine (for not pushing harder or caring more), but his teacher echoed my philosophy that you can't be good at everything, and it's not like he'll never write "properly" or never learn to read. To me, and apparently her, brains are individual entities that learn in their own unique ways, and what's most important is that you foster the inner drive and let the rest unfold organically.
Amen.