The Whammy!

The Whammy...

Sometimes life just throws you a curve ball. Since mid December I've been fending off the pitches and beginning to wonder when they are going to stop being thrown at me. The same week I was to leave aboard the Coast Guard cutter Stratton my youngest sister had a stroke. There wouldn't be any test results for a week so I went on the cutter. When I came back our family was told she had stomach cancer that was too advanced for any treatment. A blood clot from that actually caused the stroke. Our family made plans to bring her home to my nephews house and provide hospice care for her. I would go and stay down there during the week taking my turn with helping my mom care for my sister. My sister passed away peacefully about a month ago. I am thankful for the time I spent with her and would tell you if you ever get the chance to look after a loved one in the last days of their life to do it. It can be a lot of work but you will never regret one second of it. Having the chance to look after someone you love when they need it most is a blessing and if God ever offers it to you don't think twice.
Incidentally, I came back home after the first week down with my sister and got a phone call from a girl I worked with back in the 80's at Bell & Howell. She was 4 years older than me and became a good friend. Debbie had moved to Mississippi when she married and we still kept in touch over the years. She was calling to tell me that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was in hospice care at her home now. My heart sank. My good friend Debbie passed away just over a week after that phone call. It has been a terrible end of one year and beginning of another.

And life goes on....in the last two months it seems anything with wheels on it at our place has decided to break. First, my car has developed a crack in the exhaust manifold keeping it from passing the smog check...that's on hold. Linda's car started leaking water from what looked like a radiator hose so I replaced it only to find out it was a leak in the radiator behind the hose...so I put in a new radiator. While waiting for the radiator to arrive we used our truck to get around. The truck soon developed a bad misfire when going uphill. I installed new spark plugs, a rotor and distributer cap....problem solved!
A week later I walk out the door and notice a funny line on the inside of one of Linda's car tires...turns out the tire was showing the nylon cords there so I took it down to buy a new tire. Same day the dishwasher motor goes out...that's on hold.

 Radiator replacement fun. It is a lot easier to replace the radiator on my old van than it is on Linda's sporty little car. I'd have taken pics of all of the other fun stuff that has broken but I wasn't in the mood.

Oh no...not done yet. Two days ago Linda's car door window decides to not go all the way up. The next day the window drops down into the door on it's own! I took the door apart and find it has a stripped nylon wheel the window cables ride on but of course you can't just replace the wheel, we had to go buy a the whole assembly called a "window regulator". I just put that in with Linda's help this morning....and so we go inside to celebrate with a cup of coffee...that's right, the coffee pot is broke. Won't boil the coffee at all despite the lights being on. Drove to WalMart and bought a new one but that was nice since we didn't need to worry about the car door window falling down.

At this point I won't go into the lawn mower bearing going out a few weeks ago...
I woke up this morning and told Linda "don't touch anything!...don't even look at it". We are tip toeing at this point. I love to fix things but this has been like rapid fire lately. Of course, I brought that broken coffee pot to my studio and if nothing else breaks in the next few days I will pull it apart to see what went wrong other than it resides here at our house....where things, lately, have gone whammy.