WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT? AND PACKING AWAY CHRISTMAS FOR THE YEAR

 Where is what coming from next?  

Last week my husband complained that the basement that the basement smelled and I should come down and check if it smelled like (natural) gas.  It did not and the smell was coming from the other room in the basement – near our oil burner.  (In this area fuel oil is one of the common heating sources – it is the same as diesel.  It is dyed so that if one uses it in one's car because there are less taxes on it than on diesel it will obvious. ) We contract with a company to deliver our oil automatically so we don't run out and also we have a service contract with them to deal with any work any needed on the furnace.  It is a hot air furnace (meaning hot air is blown through vents running through the heat to heat the house). The smell was not of the oil itself, but sort of like it smells when burned.  We looked around the furnace and saw nothing and figured it was a one time thing.  Our carbon monoxide monitors had not gone off – even when we took one to the basement and put it near the furnace.  

Friday we went out for one of our corona virus food shopping sprees – 4 hours for a 15 minuted drive each way and shopping.  An hour and a half to wipe it all down and store it.  Smell still there.  It was still here over the weekend.  Monday husband decided that “we” had to do something about it.  I telephoned the company that we contract with for this and explained -also that we had forgotten about the annual cleaning and checkup.  (Okay, a bit of a lie.)  They were very nice and when I said - “in the afternoon, please” gave us an appointment for Tuesday afternoon.

We are entitled an annual cleaning of the furnace – replacement of filters, etc and they check that the furnace is running properly.  It would normally be done in the spring or summer  - their slow time.  I did not call to have same done in 2020 as we did not want anyone in the house due to Covid-19, and figured by the time winter was taking hold the pandemic would be over and we could deal with it then – ha ha.  So we figured the problem was that the furnace needed a cleaning and the filters needed replacement, but were afraid of a major repair or the need to replace our 70 year furnace and pandemic or not it had to be done. 

I spent a good part of Monday evening making room for him to walk around and work.  In addition to the usual items out in the basement – husband's foldable work table, laundry sorting cart, sewing machine cover, and such – I had moved things around to take out our Christmas tree and the Santa/elves figures we keep down there – under the staircase.  This also involves moving our Packtite heater (to kill possible bed bugs in items coming into the house) which is about 5 ft long.  It sits out of the way in a corner of the basement – but right in front of the Christmas items stored.  When we are dealing with decorating inside for Christmas I put the Packtite on top of the large piece of wood we use for its base normally, on top of the portable worktable and then put the Packtite on the piece of wood.  This stays like this until I finish putting away the inside Christmas decorations.  I had finished taking the ornaments off the tree – but not had not chance to move these items to get to the box to store them in.  So I had to move the Packtite and board back to where they belong so he could move around where he needed to.  I also moved a number of items to the other side of the basement including my wheeled laundry sorter and the portable work table.  (I folded up the work table before moving it – easier to carry and smaller to store – husband was surprised, it had not occurred to him to do so.)  

We woke and were getting dressed just before 11 am – the appointment was for 12-4 pm, so an hour before seemed like plenty of time.  I heard a vehicle door close outside and looked out the window – it was the serviceman.  Since I sleep in jeans and tee shirt (and these days sweatshirt also) I went downstairs to let him in while husband got dressed.  

When we got down to the basement I explained.  He immediately found the cause of the smell – the exhaust pipe from the furnace had partially popped out of it's mate in the wall – the furnace exhaust had been leaking into the basement!  I was astounded that we had not noticed this.  Later husband said that he looked at the exhaust several times and did not notice it.  The pipe was put back into it's mate and taped into place (it has always been taped into place).  The furnace was cleaned, tested, and everything changed.  In the interim husband and I had changed places  - with me going upstairs to get dressed and him staying with the serviceman.  (Having worn my sleep clothes around someone I through them in the laundry.)  Most of the smell was gone from the basement.  

After the serviceman left – due to the crazy people we become – I sprayed where he had been, left his jacket, his tools, etc. with a bit of our precious Lysol just to be careful.  The next day when I went down to the basement I smelled the Lysol with perhaps a whiff of the other smell.  Husband insisted he still smelled the smell.  Finally today – 2 days later the basement has cleared itself of the smell and all is well.  We cannot open the windows in the basement for a variety of reasons to air it out and I did not want to leave the door to the kitchen from the basement open as that would bring the smell into the rest of the house.  

Tonight I put back what I had moved so I could store the Christmas items away.  I like to do move the heavier Christmas items up and down the stairs while I am doing the laundry.  A trip down with laundry – throw it in the washer, bring up a box when I come upstairs.  Trip down to shift load to dryer, put new load in washer – bring up another box.  I had meant to bring the first box down when I came back down – but was not done with it yet.  I took the ornaments off the tree in our dining room and put them in the box in which they are kept (one of the fancy boxes we put under the tree to make it look like there are gifts for us).  I stored that tree in its box.  I then brought up the box for the tree in our studio – the ornaments were already off them as I took them off when I took the ornaments from the main tree.  I took apart and packed that tree in it's box also.  I taped both boxes closed.  Next trip down I will bring them to the basement and put them aside – they store on the main tree box so cannot be stored until that tree has its light removed and is dissembled and boxed – I did bring up the plastic bags to store the lights from the main tree on one of these trips – that is the next step in storing the main tree in it's box in the basement.  (Box remains in the basement as it to large and would be too heavy to carry the entire tree in it's box and sections are put in the box down there – one by one, each a trip down to due size and weight.)

Tonight we went out and drove the USPS mail collection box we are using – we are to get a snowstorm and we did not want to pay our real estate taxes late.  I had wanted to mail it last Sunday as it was the only mail for this coming weekend's trip to send mail, but husband had said to wait, so we had to go out tonight.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Okay, two of them -

First, make sure that all service and cleaning is done timely on your large appliances.  Second – make sure to allow time to pay bills before snow or other bad weather.  

COVID 19 #19 UTILITIES STILL OUT FROM ISAIAS, CLEARING OUT KITCHEN PANTRY AND I FOUND MY MISSING BEARS

 First a couple of updates on my last two posts -

In the July 30 post (2 weeks ago) I had mentioned that I was going crazy having lost an assortment of bear figures that I use in my “Teddy Village”.  (Don't think it that crazy that I have this village – it is the only place I can “visit” without a mask right now, and it is cute and fun to do.)  I have put off climbing under the bed in the spare bedroom (aka the Teddies room) both because of the logistics and because I feared not finding the bears there – and since my only thought was that they been tossed out –  I could not take them not being there.  I tend to put things in places that are logical when I put them there, but later do not come to mind when I am looking for them.  Last night on our way to bed I was looking around again as to where the bears might be – and my eye fell on a large, thick white cardboard box (I am guessing that is the inner box that some computer peripheral came in) which I call “the hill”.  It is used for skiing and sledding bears and in the past I would store those bears in it for the rest of the year.  My brain started whirring.  I touched the box – definitely something in it – but hadn't I seen the big skiing bear in the Christmas boxes when I looked there?  I removed the teddy bears riding in a train setup on top of it (not winter – no skiing or sledding) and carefully turned it over, took it to my desk, and opened it.  YES!!  The missing bears.  See – I put them where it made sense – right in the village itself in a safe storage box that I have looked at every day since they were stored!  Today the bears in the box that made sense (and there was room for) and the musician bears for the summer concerts in the part were added to the village and the rest carefully stored in a marked box with the other storage boxes of bears for next time I need to use them.  Oh – and my husband was right about two things (not unusual for him) – I did not throw them out and I would find them.  

In the August 5 post (last week) I was talking about Hurricane Isaias – technically only a tropical storm when it hit this area.  I explained how lucky we had been to get back our electricity that evening.  Around here there are still people (8 days after the store) who still do not have electricity.  Supposedly they are all suppose to have their electricity back by “11:59 pm” tonight, Wednesday.  I am guessing that the tens of thousands still will not have their electricity back.    In addition to electricity people have been without and some still are, without their natural gas.  (Here is in run through underground pipes to areas were it is available and may be used by those using it for heating and/or hot water.  We did not lose same and only use it for hot water.)  Our local cable/Internet provider which also provides a good percent of landline telephone service, as well as our traditional telephone company which also provides all 3 services also do not have all of their customers back online yet.  The stories one hears about people who have special needs and are suppose to have service to be restored quickly – people with medical conditions and are still waiting are especially upsetting.  Also people have live lines down in their yards that as of yesterday (today's news will be out tomorrow of course) which is terribly dangerous.  One man found an electric company employee working on someone else's outage and asked the employee to shut off the live line down in his backyard (dangerous both for someone or an animal touching it and dying or it starting a fire) was told it was a question of flipping a switch, but the employee was not allowed without a work order to do so!  And this company was brought in (and seemed good as they are in a neighboring state) because the last company did such a terrible job during Hurricane Irene and Sandy!   I hope that any of you who were caught in Isaias also, did not lose your utilities for too long a time and did not have the circus we have had here.  

Now, as to actually dealing with clutter and disorder – I think I mentioned that back in March when we went through our pantry closet (actually 3 shelves in our kitchen closet) we found, among other items, a half gallon jar which had been filled with, per the lid) Bisquick.  This is a good item to have as so many items can be baked with it.  Problem was it was dated 2017!  We did not toss it out as back then food was hard to find in supermarkets – but we did not use it either.  In the interim we purchased new (smaller) packages of Bisquick.  My husband suggested yesterday that I should dump it out and put new Bisquick in it and then we can easily use same.  I pulled the jar out tonight and dumped it out, wiped it out and washed it.  While doing so I looked at what else was on that shelf – in the back.  I found out that I had 2 started containers of dried basil – I combined them and they are in the container which was in my spice cabinet.  I found we have more sugar than we thought.  Worcestershire sauce – almost a full bottle (well it is not something we use normally).  Part of a bottle of vinegar.  Interesting items to have and have available for use that we did not realize we had (or had so much of).  I might even get some of the items on the dining room table into the closet where they belong.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

It is important to remember that we are more resilient than we think we are.  Even those of who think we are weak can deal with and do amazing things when we have to.  Whether as trivial as missing inanimate “friends” or something as major as no utilities, somehow one can get through it.  When one thing after another hits us  - Covid 19, hurricanes, loss of utilities – we can get through it.  We take a deep breath and think about what to do to continue on and deal with the problem.  

I hope none of you were hit hard by Isaias. 

ALMOST A FIRE

I was taught to be very careful when cooking, My mom’s stove (an electric one) had 1 2 3 heat settings on the dial.  I was taught never to walk out of the room if a burner was set at 2 or 3 and never to walk out of house when the stove was on (unless in either case someone else was in the room to watch the stove).  After we married, in our apartment we had a (natural) gas stove/oven combination which scared the heck out of me as I was always afraid that it would blow up.  I had to light the oven with a match to use it and was always sure that would be the last thing I did. (I actually once smelled gas outside the apartment as we were going out, called the gas company and when we got home later we had no stove.  I telephoned to have it turned back on per the note left.  When I asked, I was told that this all stemmed from a woman who had smelled the gas leak in the street and called them - hey, that was me.) 

When we bought this house there was a gas stove/range combination also.  I was not happy about that.  I was even more upset when I was sure I smelled gas when we were in the house for later visits before we bought it.  I was again right.  Rather than get the unit repaired, we bought an electric stove/oven unit and had the kitchen wired for it. 

Last night I made for dinner a pot pie we had bought on sale (we bought a few of them on sale - these are small production ones, not the major brands ones). I, of course, had forgotten to go down and put it in the oven to bake and therefore did so an hour late.  Husband really likes these pies so he did not complain. I bake it in an oven which sits on the counter (uses 1/3 of the counter space we have).  I carefully pulled the oven away from the wall and the stove and removed some plastic storage items sitting next to the oven to the other side of the kitchen.  I lined the pan with foil to keep it clean. 

In the interim while it was cooking I set the table, laid out our pills for dinner, etc. I would have thought nothing of walking out of the kitchen while the baking was going on, but in this case I stayed in the kitchen.

I made a can of soup for us to share as a first course.  I split the can of soup before cooking it and use two small pots to cook it.  It is worth cleaning the extra pot as it is much easier to split the soup as it comes out of the can and husband likes more water added to his soup than I do.  As the pie went into its last ½ hour of cooking, we sat down and had the soup.  After I poured the soup into our bowls, I put the pots on the stove.  The burners for the soup had been shut off and I also made sure not to put the pots on the burners they had been on as the burners were still hot (electric burners take a short while to cool down after they shut off).  As I said, I am very careful.

When the pie was done cooking, the countertop oven beeped and I took it out and put the pan on the stove - on the larger burner in the front on one side which was cold.  We had the very nice pot pie for dinner. 

After dinner I normally have a cup of tea for dinner. I normally cook it on the rear smaller burner, but I had moved the pots onto the baking pan and had put it on that rear burner, so I put the pot of water on the front, larger, burner to boil it and turned on the burner.  I went back to the kitchen table - 5-6 feet away - and started reading the newspaper (TV was on for husband) while I waited to hear the water boiling. 

It dawned on me that it was a bit long for the water to take to boil and something smelled wrong and notices small bits of black floating around the room.  I had turned on the wrong burner!!  I had turned on the burner with the pots and baking pan!  I shut it off and using pot holders moved the burner with the pots still on it to another burner that was cold.     

Luckily I caught it before we had an actual fire.  The stove was covered in soot and the pots looked burned.  The foil I had put in the baking pan was what seemed to be the black wisps flying around the room and the pan had a mark that went through it.  I never did have tea.  Husband suggested checking inside the oven to make sure all was okay there - I carefully put my hand on the front of it first to check that it was not hot before I opened it. 

When they cooled a tiny bit, I put the pots and the pan into a dish pan of cold water to finish cooling them off.  I was surprise that the pots and the pan (even the foil stuck to the pan) cleaned so easily.  The pan though rocked when I put it on a flat surface, distorted by the heat.  After I was done with pots and the pan, I started on the stove.  It cleaned up much quicker and easier than I thought it would.  I took apart the burner that all this happened on to clean it and found when I took out the drip pan that the foil liner in the drip pan had mostly melted.  This had been the source of the black wisps floating about.  I immediately pulled the liners in the other 3 pans - too dangerous (despite this not happening in the past 30 years) - and threw them out also. 

Today husband was able to mostly get the baking pan to stop rocking by leaning on it.  The kitchen no longer has a burning smell.  Unrelated to all of this, we took in Chinese food for dinner tonight (easy way to deal with Ash Wednesday for husband).

Something we realized later in the evening when I boiled water - with the same pot I started to do so to make tea - later in the evening for some hot cereal before bed. The smoke detector had not gone off.  (For a reminder of a past cooking incident that did set off the smoke detector see - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2018/07/not-in-pennsylvania.html    )   

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

Well two of them actually.  Be careful when cooking - even if you think that you are being careful - be more careful.

If you have foil drip pans in your stove - TAKE THEM OUT.                   

PROCRASTINATION

I have been making phone calls that have been sitting waiting to be done as long as we have been in the house.

When we picked up our prescriptions after going to doctor one of mine came up showing I owed $45 on it - it is suppose to be covered in full by my insurance.  I had expected a $5 charge as husband had when he picked up this prescription for the first time on this insurance, which was later refunded to us as he did not owe it - but $45?  Pharmacist said that I had to talk to the company, so I finally had a chance today.  They don’t know why - they have to talk to, yes, the pharmacist about it!  So next time we go in I have to tell them to call the insurance company about it.  Both husband and I have the same prescription, so I am taking some of his in the meantime (90 day renewal, so there are enough for now until this is resolved).

I also called about the annual service for our furnace.  We used to be called by the company each year to have this done - often in the spring or early summer.  When I went looking to see when the last service had been done it was done in October 2016!  2 years with no service on the furnace, not only we did pay for the service last year as part of our service contract and did not get what we paid for - one of the things done in the service is to check for carbon monoxide.  So I finally called yesterday to find out what was going on and to make an appointment.  The cheerful voice on the other end told me that it was no trouble to make the appointment for the service - the next one is February 26!  I repeated the date to her with emphasis on the February and she said yes.  A conversation then followed about why have they not called us to do the service and I was told that it is my responsibility - never was before - why now?  The company was joined into another company and the new company has its own rules, but never told us about the change.  We buy our oil and have our furnace contract through membership in a non-profit co-op group and I have written letter complaining to same - after greatly complementing the old company which gave us great service and helped us out with two emergencies over the years, oh wait, I just remembered a 3rd emergency they helped us with.  I mentioned that my mother-in-law had a different oil company and the water tank for her furnace fell on it and broke it.  Her company told her that they don’t do replacements - too bad.  I called ours and within 3 days she had a new furnace installed - and they had a new customer.  A couple of years ago I found an oil leak in our oil tank - in our basement - at 1 am on a Friday night.  Someone was sent to plug the leak.  A huge snow storm was to hit on Monday - over the weekend a new oil tank was installed.  The one I forgot was about 15 years ago our hot water heater (which is natural gas not oil and not serviced by this company) died and flooded the basement also on a Friday night.  We had plans for Saturday and husband saw our plans gone and us spending the day shopping and making arrangements for a new water heater.  I figured I had nothing to lose and called our oil company - by 1pm we had a new water heater installed and we were off to do what we planned to do - late, but with plenty of time.  What a difference between the old and new company.

I have to make a call tomorrow - I had been called by the parks department that my embroidery group gets a room from for meetings.  I telephoned the woman back, got her voice mail, and left the information she requested - an email address.  It is time to do the renewal paperwork for the meeting room for next year and I figured I would be receiving it by email (and the town would save the cost of mailing it), but I have not heard back from her and will try calling her again and ask if she has the information to please either leave a message on my phone or send an email so I know she has it.

On the other hand, I waited too long to call about my eyeglasses.  Last year (2017) in June I bought new eyeglasses which change in the sun to sunglasses.  I have had glasses like these for decades and never had a problem with them.  These did not change.  At first I figured they needed some time - this has happened in the past - then suddenly it was this July.  I went back to the optician and was told it was past the one year for the warranty.  He did try to help me and said that the glasses changed a bit under his lights and I should try putting them in the freezer overnight.  I thought this strange, but saw it in articles and tried it.  First time the glasses changed to the lightest shade of grey.  Tried two more times and nothing happened.  He had told me to call him if it did not work.  Due to procrastination and life I did not have a chance to call him - until I was stuck in the house with husband - 3 months after I had been in.  So, now I have a spare of eyeglasses which do not change color - just stay the lightest bit of yellow and I will have to decide if I want to spend all that money again on a new pair that changes color and make sure it does or go back right away.  I figure I will wait until just before spring to decide as I won’t need them during the winter.

I also have to call our eye doctor and make an appointment for both of us to see him.  I had planned to call just about when all this happened last month.  Appointments for routine eye exams are usually about a month after I call.  Now I have a problem.  I am not sure if husband can deal with driving out to him - about 45 minutes to an hour - followed by our going to stores slightly further out near the doctor and walking around for a few hours until the eye drops wear off.  I hate to make appointments and then have to cancel them - but then again, if wait until January there may be snow and that would be a problem to drive out there in same.


THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Try not to procrastinate - we all do and I can be the queen of procrastination - believe me.  (I have to take 20 hours of online classes for work - this year I made sure to pay for them early so I would not be taking them all in November and December again - still have not taken any and they have to be finished by the end of December - or else.) 

Procrastination can result in an oil burner not being serviced and inspected for two years - two and half by the time they come.  If I wait to hear back about the meeting room - we might lose it and have no where to meet next year.  If I had followed up on the eyeglasses sooner I would have glasses that do what I need them for (or a refund) instead of a unneeded spare pair and having to spend more to get yet another pair.  And if I had called the medical insurance right away I would not be going back and having to explain the problem, as I am sure it has been forgotten by now as they are so busy at the pharmacy.