A Lot of Little Things

Yesterday morning I was waiting for the coffee machine to finishing making the coffee, anticipating the first sip of my first cup of coffee for the day…The coffee machine finished, I pulled out the coffee pot to pour the coffee into my cup…and suddenly the pot cracked and a chunk of glass fell off the pot. I have been known to accidentally break coffee pots, but this time it was not my fault. The glass much have just gotten weak or something. Desperate for coffee, EJ made some coffee in the old percolator that he uses sometimes when we go camping. The coffee wasn’t as tasty but was better than nothing. Today he made coffee by putting a glass measuring cup in the machine and then holding open the doohicky that stops the flow when you take the pot out of the machine before it’s finished making. Later, we stopped at the store at our local gas station and bought a cup of coffee.

We would have gone to the to the thrift store yesterday for a used coffee machine, but we didn’t have time because we attended the New Student Orientation at the community college JJ is attending this fall. We haven’t bought a new coffee machine from a store in years. We always buy coffee machines from thrift stores or yard sales for a couple of dollars. We were planning to go to the thrift store this morning, but a lot of little things went wrong and we didn’t have time.

For the last week or so, our Internet has disconnected and reconnected frequently. Usually we just turn off and on the modem and it’s ok. This morning I wasn’t able to get on-line at all. I used the Internet Troubleshooting feature and was told that it was something to do with my modem. So, since it was time to pay our cable bill anyway, I drove the two blocks to our telephone company (it’s too hot to walk) and told them about our Internet problems. Our telephone company is also our Internet provider. We have one of the few privately-owned telephone companies in the country, which I think is interesting. Anyway, I was given a new modem. Yay! We’ve had our old modem for probably about 15 years. When I called the ISP tech support for an Internet problem a couple years ago, the guy didn’t even recognize our type of modem. The new modem at first didn’t seem to work, so I called support, and eventually it began working. Yay! The Internet provides our education, news, entertainment, and, most importantly, our connections to other people, and it’s very difficult to be without.

I went to wash my hair this morning, and the water remained cold. I told EJ and he said he needed to relight the pilot on the water heater. I accompanied him to the basement (a scary place filled with cobwebs and spiders) because he wanted to show me how to do it in case I ever needed to do it. He couldn’t get it re-lit. He said the water heater needed to be replaced. I was envisioning having to spend $$$ on a new water heater and was relieved that he had already bought a new one a while back. I didn’t want to have to spend $$$ because we are working hard to become debt-free. EJ took a vacation day off so he could install the new water heater.

Having the water heater go is kind of an inconvenience (I can’t wash my hair, or wash my hands, or do the dishes…), but it is actually a tremendous blessing. As EJ was unhooking the old water heater, he noticed that there was a hole where the exhaust pipe had rusted through. It could have killed us.

We found out about JJ’s financial aid this morning. It is less than we had hoped. Bummer. Now we are calculating how we can find the extra money we will need above the financial aid money, the money JJ has saved, and the cost of his classes.

I am very thankful for the dead water heater. And I’m glad we finally got a new modem. And we are managing (temporarily) without a coffee machine. And I think we can find the money for JJ’s classes. And the two days EJ has taken off this week has kept him out of the factory on these dangerously hot days–a blessing because it’s always 20-30 degrees hotter in the factory than it is outside. 

The problems are just a lot of little ones, and all in all life is pretty good.