Weekend Woes

Yesterday was J’s (oldest daughter) birthday. She became an official teenager (she turned 13). I thought the weekend would be a great one spent celebrating. Don’t get me wrong, we did have fun and celebrated J’s special day, but it wasn’t all fun and celebration.

Yesterday while hubby was using the steamer to cook his tamales, the stove caught on fire. Apparently some grease (from when he fried some tortillas for chips) had gotten on the burner or something. The fire was put out and no one was hurt, but my stove is burnt.

A few scorch marks on the stove don’t bother me, but when I was removing the stove-top heating elements to make sure the fire was out (I used potholders so I wouldn’t burn myself) I sort of pulled one out and think I ruined the wiring on it. Since it’s an electric stove and we don’t want another fire, we’re going to toss out the stove and get a new one today. In about an hour or so, hubby will call me and I’ll meet him at the appliance store to pick out a new oven.

It was an old stove that came with the house (we’ve lived in this house for eleven years and who knows how long the stove was here before we moved in) so I’m not broken up about having to replace it. Still, that means a day of not getting writing done because I’m moving out the old stove and cleaning (it’s amazing how much stuff gets under the stove) so the new one can be brought in (hopefully before dinnertime).

In addition to the oven fiasco, we discovered a leak under the kitchen sink. Hubby patched it up, but things were pretty wet so we’re still trying to dry them out (and trying to prevent mold). These things always seem to happen at once!

On the good news side of things, this is the first full week of school for the kids (they started last Wednesday)! I’m excited to see how it goes for them—and me. Those first few days of school, the teachers didn’t require much from the kids, but that will change this week. They’ll be sending homework home. Which means we’ll have to figure out how to get back into the routine of doing chores and homework. And I get to figure out if the old time schedule still works or if I need to make adjustments. I’m pretty sure I’ll have some adjusting to do since both of the younger kids will have to read 30 minutes each night instead of last year’s 20 minutes. It may not seem like much, but those extra 10 minutes end up being an extra 20 minutes for me since they read to me separately. *sigh*

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for reading. I LOVE READING!! But it’s hard on all of us to schedule that much time and still fit in all the other homework and chores and hope there’s enough time left before dinner for the kids to get outside and have some play time. I’m not sure teachers realize what they’re doing to us when they make such assignments.

Another fun thing that happened this weekend: one of my sisters introduced me to a fun new time waster game on the iPad. It’s called Jurassic Park Builder. Yeah. Like I needed another time waster. As I write this, my iPad is sitting next to me on the desk so I can periodically check on it and collect the money from my dinosaurs. I’ve rationalized it by convincing myself it’s not a huge time waster because it only takes a minute or so to tap on all the dinosaurs and collect the money. Still, that’s a minute I could have spent writing, I suppose. Hopefully I’ll get bored with playing it soon and get that minute back.

How was your weekend? How do you plan to spend your Monday?

Play Write on!