Hi Targeteers!

Super Granny On Duty Again!

Super Granny is parking her cape for about 3 weeks. It has been a very busy summer for me and I have just one more opportunity before school starts to wave my cape around one last time. That will come next month.

So now it is going to be more down to brass tacks and try to figure out a bit more of a schedule so that I can keep up with all of the outdoor chores as well. I have about 11 loads of laundry stacked up from this past week but that is just fine. I wouldn’t care if it were 111 because I got to spend a week with my daughter and her family. That baby is growing so fast that it is unreal. She is getting a head full of hair, has several teeth about to pop in and is working on both crawling and walking. She is 8 months old now. We had a ton of fun with her here. She LOVED swimming. She screeched, squealed and laughed so much in the water.

And, unfortunately I have to have the air conditioning company come back and COMPLETELY REDO the new air system we had installed last year. Living in north Alabama, we get quite a few excessively hot days when the heat is over 95. The person that sold us the unit sold it wrong for this climate/temps and for our house. I woke up last week at 3 am sweating and our bedroom was 85 and it was 75 outside!!!. Mind you, we generally keep both A/C units set on about 74.  I cannot tell you how displeased we were when the A/C company told us we had to have $3100 more work done and that that was their “at or below cost price with several items for free”. They are not even charging us for the labor for this round of work. You don’t even want to know all the things I told the manager when he came to the house…especially when he said…”well, Jaime was new.” … oh so that releases them of obligation to have provided us with an adequate system? I told him that the OLDER unit on the front side of the house worked just fine and that they needed to make it right or jerk their crap out. That just skims the surface of things that flew out of my mouth.

They are adding one, possibly 2 air returns, adding 2 more thermostats and zoning the 3 floors so that if one floor is cool enough, the ducts will have dampers and close and continue to service the other floors. I hesitate to clean the house because I am speculating that it will just need it again after they are done. But, something has to give. Our electric bill was $500 for last month – the highest ever. Running 3 window units as well as trying to get the central unit to work on the back half of the house has really jacked up the bill. We know we had some extra visitors, but we have never had it spike like this with just a few more people in the house.It was up 50%.

If you ever purchase a central A/C unit, please remember that they are SO efficient now that you need to make sure that you purchase one that will handle the worst case scenario of temps. Otherwise, it is like you don’t even have A/C. Thankfully we still had all 3 of our window units installed for backup. Just make sure you do your homework, shop around and hear the same story from several companies about what your true needs are and what it will take to do the job.

The pool sprung a leak. We lost about 300 – 400 gallons of water. Thankfully hubs can dive easily to the bottom and hold his breath long enough to  do some patching. We found two other tiny spots that looked iffy so he put patches over those too. We need about 2 years to save up for a new liner. We blew every spare cent this year on the carpet/paint. Crossing fingers and hoping that it will make it.

After my trip in August to watch the grand kids I am parking the SUV, closing the pool, and blogging for 2 months non-stop. Then, I’ll shift gears and look towards the holidays and start prepping for the ENTIRE CLAN to join us this year. It will be our first Christmas since we got married where hubs children and my children will all be with us at the same time for Christmas. It may never happen again so we are pulling out every light and decoration and transforming the entire house inside and out into a winter wonderland. Baking will start extra early too.

I could go on for another 10 paragraphs but you get the drift. It never stops and thankfully, I am still able to keep up with it. I will admit to being tired tonight and somewhat sad that the house is so quiet. I look ahead to more fun times with the grands, watching them grow and seeing their parents doing such a wonderful job with them. The kids are hard workers both on the job and at home. I am proud of them. Our two younger daughters are both in college and working hard to get their degrees and to mature into beautiful young women. I look forward to their futures, them meeting someone special and starting their families.

I better order a couple more Super Granny capes. Looks like I have about 30 more years of adventures. What’s up with all of you this summer? What’s good? What’s the bad? What’s the ugly? Tell us your adventures! I can’t be the only one this busy and tap dancing this fast!

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Tagged as: Ginger's Soapbox