the tale of the cracked drip pan

When we were cooking breakfast on Saturday, the fridge made a strange noise.  It kind of clanked for a minute and then we heard the sound of streaming water.

Matt and I dealt with it in our typical fashions: I turned up the music because I employ the same "if you can't hear the weird noise it's not happening" strategy in my car and it works just fine.  Meanwhile Matt pulled the fridge away from the wall to check for leaks and then got out the owner's manual.

After a few minutes we chalked it up to a fluke and went on with our lives.  Later that afternoon I ran to the grocery store and called Matt to ask what kind of fruit cups he wanted, and he said "peaches in sugar-free strawberry gel, but I gotta go, the fridge is leaking a lot."

It took me a minute to process the leaking fridge because I was trying to wrap my mind around his request of peaches in sugar-free strawberry gel.  But things really sunk in when I got home and saw a vast array of tools on the kitchen floor, a pool of water, and no Matt.

I figured he'd gone to the hardware store because desperate times call for a trip to Lowe's, and judging by the fact that the hunting knife he uses to clean pheasants was lying on the floor beside the oven, it seemed to be a desperate time.

He got home a few minutes later with a fix for the problem, which was a cracked drip pan.  I half-halfheartedly offered assistance, and when he didn't jump right on my offer I did what any wise wife would do and got the heck out of dodge.

I decided to go to the library and then for a walk around the grounds of a local cathedral and some old estates because one of us should be able to relax on a Saturday afternoon.

It was a nice day and I spent the time imagining that the rich people who lived in those mansions probably never had to worry about a cracked drip pan or be humbled by the amount of dust that gathers behind the fridge that you don't think about until you have to move it.

When I got home from my walk, the fridge was fixed and the kitchen was back in order.

So I guess our own little castle isn't so bad after all.

if you need me, i'll probably be sleeping

Since my Valentine’s Day flowers are still alive, it’s not too late to write about it, right?

When I got home from work on Monday, Valentine’s Day Eve, there was a vase on our front step with the most beautiful flowers and a sweet note from Matt.  He is a keeper.

 Matt is on a healthy eating kick and requested that I refrain from getting him candy for Valentine’s Day because that could throw a major wrench into his progress.

So I went the healthy route and made this.

 

Move over, Martha Stewart.

(I also got him a gift card to Cabela’s so don’t feel too sorry for him.  But he really does love oranges.  By my calculations we’ve eaten 11 pounds of oranges in the last three weeks.)

The real gift last week though was our new mattress. 

Several months ago Matt started saying that his back and shoulders were bothering him every morning.  I blamed it on the weather, the work bag he carries, too much work around the house, basically anything other than the 6 year old, bottom of the line, IKEA mattress we were sleeping on.

All the while, I kept quiet about my own back and shoulder pain because do you know how expensive new mattresses are?

Finally, my back pain overtook my thrifty tendencies and I came clean about how my back and shoulders hurt every single day and maybe we really do need a new mattress.

We did a little research online and asked around, and everyone we knew told us to get a Sleep Number bed, so we headed to the store on Saturday to test things out.  The salesman, Aron with one R, had us lay down on a mattress.  He said he would adjust it, and to tell him to stop when we felt most comfortable.

I could have laid there forever.

Of course the tester mattress is the fanciest and most expensive mattress money can buy, so after we got our ideal sleep numbers we walked ALL the way to the other end of the store where the mattresses in the price range of the budget minded shopper were located.   

It was like test driving a Mercedes and buying a Kia.

We made our purchase and were told to expect it via UPS in 5-7 days.  When we got the tracking number, Matt was like a kid tracking Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve.  He could not wait to get it.  It was in our town on Wednesday, but the UPS website indicated it was still at the distribution center and not out for delivery.  So, Matt went to the UPS distribution center on Wednesday night AND MET THE MATTRESS.

We put it together when he got home and at this point I was thinking perhaps we’d been the victim of a very expensive scam. 

After the air pump was on for a bit, it started to look more like something I’d want to sleep on.  I said to Matt, “You know, this is really just like a glorified air mattress.”

No kidding,

Anyway, I've been sleeping like a baby since we got the mattress, and I only have one negative thing to say about it.  It makes it even harder to get out of bed in the morning.

The 5am Miracle book I talked about a few weeks ago is definitely not going to happen.

if crown molding wasn't so expensive, i totally would have bought the time-a-tan

On the weather segment of the news the other night, the meteorologist announced that the dead of winter is officially over.  The coldest temps in Philadelphia are from January 5-26, so things will only go up from here.

I almost went upstairs and put on a bathing suit.

Later that night night I was working on a photo book of pictures from last year, and when I got to summer photos, I wished I could transport myself to New Jersey in June.

Yesterday Matt and I went to some thrift shops, before we came home and installed crown molding, and event which shall hereafter be referred to as "the night we surprised ourselves with patience while simultaneously vowing never to put up crown molding ever again."

We didn't get crown molding because we are sophisticated and high society, we got it because we had to cover up an awkward gap between the brick fireplace and the ceiling, both of which were added when the garage was converted into a family room by the previous owners.  When we moved in, there was an ugly piece of wood in that space between the fireplace and ceiling, but we pulled it down because we assumed it was purely cosmetic.  As it turns out, it was not purely cosmetic.

Crown molding is complicated because there's lots of angles and you have to cut things upside down and the whole process is very delicate with minimal room for error, even though Matt was using terms like "I'll just chop this end off" and "we can just slice and dice this corner."

Perhaps all the chopping and slicing and dicing is the reason why I wanted to call in an S.O.S. to Tom around 7 pm last night.

And by Tom, I mean Tom Silva, of This Old House fame.

We refer to him simply as Tom around here and were personally responsible for about 4783 views on his Youtube channel last night.

A few hours in, I suggested to Matt that perhaps we should go a different route and he said, "failure is not an option."

And so we persisted, and now I'm sitting on my couch and enjoying my view of the molding and feeling pretty darn proud of our handiwork.

Anyway, back to the thrift shopping.  It's hit or miss, sometimes you find nothing, sometimes you find a treasure.

I didn't get it, but I could totally use it at the beach in June.