When it rains it pours.

Can anything else go wrong around here? I hope not. I've had my fill of it. First the leaf blower died. Right in the middle of leaf blowing time. It's one of my favorite chores, and I love my blower. It's electric, light weight, and just strong enough to move them around without blowing down the fence. And it is much quieter than the gas ones. Then the can opener refused to open tomato sauce. Well, I'm making spaghetti sauce and I need that sauce for the base. Grandson brought up a hand held one and opened cans for me. What was next? Oh! We had the fire department out to detect where the smell of smoke was coming from early one morning. I was awake when the furnace started and immediately smelled smoke. The smoke detector battery was dead, and it did not go off. I called the kids downstairs thinking perhaps they left something on the stove, but no one was up. I went down, checked the stove and the garage, then woke people up when I could not find the source. I decided to call PG&E as it seemed to be associated with the furnace. They told me to call Fire Department. They were already on this block just finishing another call so fortunately they came without the fanfare of sirens. Some leaves had fallen down from the attic onto the part of the furnace where the flue hooks into the housing. Why are there leaves in the attic? A mouse? Hmmm... we don't know yet. They shut it down, said the leaves had caught fire and the furnace needs to be checked out by a professional. This is on a Sunday. Monday late afternoon a service person comes and says we need a new furnace. This one is old and the connection between flu and furnace has rusted out and can't be fixed. My son is working really long hours, so he has not had a chance to check it out for himself. And I turned the project over to him. He can book the appointments and get the estimates. It's too stressful for me trying to coordinate with him and his wife to get times when the right person is home. We are using space heaters and when he is free again after the holidays, he'll get on it.

One of the things I do when it's really cold and it helps keep me warm is bake. I started a new loaf of wonderful cranberry/almond extract bread in the breadmaker. Loaded it with good smelling cinnamon, nutmeg, butter - the works. Pushed the button and off it went. But sometime in the middle of the first cycle of mixing, the blade quit turning, it was locked up tight. I didn't know that until two hours later when it finished baking! A glob of goo and flour! It all had to be thrown away. all those wonderful ingredients. I can't move the blade. I can't figure out why it froze in position. But, I guess this machine is dead too.

At this point I'm almost afraid to touch anything electronic or mechanical. Hopefully this run of bad things happening is over. If not, I'll be back to complain some more.

We are all healthy and happy, so it could be a lot worse.