When it rains it pours...

Okay so have you ever had the rug pulled out from under you? Sure you have, I mean things are going well and then BAM! the car needs repair, BAM! the kids need to sport shoes, BAM! every organization you belong to has their dues due, BAM! your stove catches fire and you need to buy another one, but want to renovate your kitchen, but can't at the moment so you need to buy a cheap one knowing in a few years it will be resold on craigslist.  No, you haven't had those WEEKS?  Well consider yourself lucky - add in the visit from the in-laws and you have my week in a nutshell.  Not that I'm complaining, no sir, I have learned not to say, "this is the worst." Believe me their can be worse, so I don't tempt fate or God or whoever is the puppet-master of my life. My father in law once told me, never pray for patience all you will get is strife.  So therefore I don't speak of such things.

Let's start at the top shall we?  So the brakes were going out on the van, so Ryan the jack-of-all-trades bought brakes and went to change them, well lets say the van isn't as easy as the Tribute and past cars so we wound up at the dealer - now I don't normally swear on here, because well it's a child art blog first, personal blog second.  I am going to assume no one is letting their children read my blog, so I'll say it.  Their jackasses.  Period. JACKASSES!!! There I said it and I feel better.  They quoted us one price and then when Ryan went to pay they added a bit more - okay a lot more.  We are currently playing phone-tag with the GM and while that is fine and dandy, being Italian, I am thinking of our other "options," but don't have the right connections for that type of fix.  

Then we have football and soccer sign ups and of course new cleats because our feet have grown. Yeah! Now I know it could be worse, I could have more kids in more sports, don't worry that will happen soon enough, let me moan about my purchases now, okay? Okay. Then we have preschool dues, school dues, lunch dues, magazines that we give as presents due, all our museum memberships due (and they've gone up, bastards!) and that's the ones I can think of, ugh!

Then Sunday, oh sweet Sunday.  We had a lovely day planned, Ryan working on our TV room, me finishing up a painting, the kids playing, a sitter ready to watch Penny for a few hours so we can take the boys to see Harry Potter and then the BAM! of all BAMS! occurs.  I put a delectable lunch of corn dogs and tater-tots in my disgusting, crappy 24 year old stove.  It was so old that none of the dials worked other than the electric coil dials and those were inaccurate at best.  It had one setting - 350ish degrees so I've learned to work with that over the years.  I placed the kids lunch in the oven, fifteen minutes later I came up stairs to check and dark grey smoke is billowing out of the back of my stove.  I see a bright orange glow coming from the window and the light hasn't worked for as long as I have lived here, so I am pretty sure it wasn't the light.  I open the door and there are flames and the heating element is melting.  Okay, so I do what every mom does, I grab my pot holder and pull out the food because A. I don't have a lunch back up plan and B. that is my good cookie sheet.  It is remarkable really, I find myself able to stay abnormally calm during situations like this -perhaps I was a trauma nurse in a former life.  I call for Ryan who is just about ready to leave for Home Depot to return things.  I turn off the stove and Ryan comes in and pulls it out - we douse it with our fire extinguisher (I never thought about having one of those, but we've needed it twice in this house).  Our neighbor comes over and helps Ryan remove our smoldering stove into the garage, where Ryan proceeds to remove the back panel to find the source of our fire.  It seems over twenty four years that the connections lost their protection and in not one, not two, but three points the connectors had set fire to the insulation of the stove.  So it wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when.  In hindsight I thought perhaps I should have left it a bit - I might have gotten my new kitchen a bit quicker, what's the penalty for insurance fraud?  So we did what anyone else would do - we left the crappy stove in the garage and went to the movie to shake it off.

Pretty, no?

Kids don't try this at home

Now we have grand plans for our kitchen, so it isn't a matter of what to do, it is a matter of how do we pay for it?  So our grand kitchen sits on paper for now, but it includes a range and a double oven.  Neither of which our current kitchen can support.  So we face the same conundrum that we did three years ago when our original-to-the-house fridge went out - do we buy what we want or what fits and we can afford?  Well this one was a no brainer, so we wound up with a temp stove.  Now we did check craigslist, but to be honest there was only one worth inquiring about - and it was sold. So we headed to the Depot to see what we could find.  They had one and it was only 270$, not too bad, but it was so cheap I worry about fires in the first year, not in 24, so we went up one step and got a nice little black number that although is not the stove of my dreams it has a self cleaning feature and I am betting all the dials and displays work, so it is an upgrade.  I am also betting it knows the difference between 275 and 425 and that brings me a modicum of joy.  Ryan, of course, is taking this much harder than I, we're both impatient people, so with this economy and the lack of raises, bonuses and lets be honest still recovering from being laid off a year ago, the ability to renovate our kitchen is a touchy subject at best and seems further and further away each day that passes.

I will say that with all this chaos and fire extinguisher dust, my kitchen floor has never been cleaner and the Depot will haul our old stove away. You have to look at the silver lining. Right?

So farewell crappy-ass old stove, hello cheap (but not cheap enough), electric  GE number - I look forward to meeting you on Thursday.

Thanks!