2/15/21 Cold Don't Play?

     Even when you do everything right, the cold will still find a way to screw you.  I thought we got ready by going and getting plenty of food, filling our vehicles up with gas, I am not sure why that was important, wrapping our outdoor pipes and finally running some water to avoid frozen pipes in the morning.  Well, even with the water not just dripping but running as slow as I could set them as, I still had to battle with frozen pipes all morning until a while ago.

    I got the water running before we went upstairs last night in the kitchen and I thought that was that.  I told DD to run the water in the bathroom downstairs and I even checked it, water was running in the sink, both hot and cold water.  I then told Boy to get the water running in his bathroom upstairs.  He just turned it on and it sounded like someone was taking a shower all night, but at least I didn't have to worry about that one, he did both the tub and the sink.  I then had turned on the water in the bathtub in our bathroom and didn't worry much about the sink because it is not against an outside wall, it is on an internal wall.

    Well, I guess the kitchen faucet, which has one lever that mixes both hot and cold depending on whether it leans to the right or the left was leaning a little too much to the HOT, so when I wanted to get some cold water I instinctively pulled it to the other side and noticed that there was no flow.  I felt betrayed by all my efforts, I had even left the doors underneath open so that the space would be at the temperature of the kitchen.  I put our thermostats at 72, not to be a dick, but if we did have a power outage, we wouldn't be sitting in too cold of a temp to start.  According to Wife, the power outages we've been having have gotten as close as the other side of our community.

    Once I realized we had frozen pipes, I went and got a space heater and pointed it into the cabinet under the sink.  This was warming the area, but not necessarily the pipe, so I went and got Wife's hair dryer and pointed it at the pipe.  The cord was not long enough, the outlets by design are too far away.  I then thought of Boy's heat gun, which is like a hair dryer but gets a lot hotter.  I pointed this thing at the pipes for about 5minutes, then promptly burned my fingers when I touched the copper pipes to see if they had warmed up.  I then got frustrated and just left the heater on and about 5 minutes later the water started flowing.  I then did the same with the shower downstairs, where the water was also not flowing.  It took a couple hours with the space heater (in a metal pan to protect it if the water started flowing) and only about ten inches from the wall.  I took a nap and then awoke to a yell from DD that the water was now running in the tub.

    I am just going to say fudge it and run all the water sources all night long.  I would hate to have to tear open a wall or worse, break through tile to fix some busted pipes.  It is now 3:30pm and the yard is still covered in snow.  I can't imagine we are going to go to work until Wednesday or Thursday.  Wife just got out of a zoom session and she is not going to work until Thursday, the earliest.  Boy is talking about having to go tomorrow, but his ass is not going to leave with snow on the ground, I don't need to loose another car and his job is way up north.  Baby A doesn't even have classes, they were also cancelled even though he is doing remote learning.  As long as the power stays on, we are good in the hood.

2/14/21 Happy Valentine's Day?

     Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, if it is something you look forward to.  Normally, Wife leads this holiday and in the past she has made us, her boys, a fancy dinner so that we can all enjoy it together.  We have never been the kind of douchebag parents to ignore the kids because we have to go prove our love to each other off in some quiet corner by ourselves.  We express love to each other openly, and even include the boys by telling them regularly that we love them.  Wife is really the best because she shuns stupid displays of love, she has never put it to me that I should get her some expensive jewelry, or plan expensive trips for just the two of us, or anything silly like that.  She even considers flowers a waste of money because she sees that they die within a week, so what is the point?

    This year is a bit different because we are in the middle of not only the pandemic, but currently we are in the middle of an arctic cold front and it is the coldest it has been in a few years.  We are looking at lows on Monday below 10 degrees which I can't recall hitting but maybe once or twice since I have paid attention to the weather.  Because of this, I started planning the weekend on Thursday night.  I decided to go to the store and buy food to keep us fed through the weekend and a few more days.  We have been trying to get back on our low carb diet, but it has proven to be quite difficult, I just want to sit and munch when the weather is like this.  We talked about not getting sweets and no cakes or chocolates leading up to the weekend, but then Wife put it on me to "get myself a little something for Valentine's Day" when I went to the store for food.  Okay, I said.

    I looked at the cheesy big hearts in the Valentine's Day aisle and couldn't do it.  I know those things are barely half filled with chocolate and overpriced.  I decided instead to go get bags of regular chocolate bars of all varieties, like Snickers, Milky Way, Kit Kat, Baby Ruth, then I added Sour War Heads and chili mangoes, some Lindt chocolate balls, chocolate and white powdered donuts, a small Ferrero Rocher, and probably a couple other candies I forgot.  There was also the 7 pints of different ice cream varieties to sample.  I figured this way all of us in the house can enjoy as much junk food as we want, the boys have some of the stuff they like and this probably cost less than buying two big chocolate hearts.

    We have kind of been picking at the bag since Friday night, so some of the candies are already gone, but still, there is plenty left for the expected two more days we will be locked up in the house before the cold starts letting up.  For today's menu, I think we are going to try and grill the regular fajitas, chicken thighs, and sausage if the grill will work in this super cold weather.  I also have to rally and go outside to operate the grill.  Maybe I'll let Wife "Be the Man" and she can cook the food inside.

2/13/21 Why Do People Get All Uppity About A Family Making Babies?

     Like it or not, babies are a huge expense (my mom won't like it if I use the words pain in the ass) in today's climate.  I have two kids, honestly, both unplanned, but luckily, we have been able to care for them and give them everything they need and mostly want.  I have been listening to Dave Ramsey who does financial advice recently and a lot of couples are struggling financially yet talk about being pregnant and/or working on kid number four or more like it's part of their basic rights.

    Fuck all that nonsense.  Have as many kids as you can afford, specially if you are calling a financial advice show on the best way to handle your life with over $400k in debt, wife had cancer recently, but she is also pregnant with kid #4.  I understand he is living that life and can't stand far enough back to see the hilarity of his own actions basically digging his hole deeper as he speaks.  I forgive the chump, he is blind to his own stupidity.  My problem is in the comments section where people with common sense see that adding the fourth kid didn't happen overnight, he had to have impregnated her as she went into remission from her cancer, that just doesn't sound like the best time for a woman's body to be stressed by producing another kid.  Why do people feel a need to come to his defense when it comes to having more kids?  Kids are not that precious before they exist, they are just another spot in life that is going to cost x number of dollars.  Once they are born, okay, they are a human and we can form a bond with them and they start to matter.  Saying a couple has a right to have as many kids as they want can border on child abuse if the couple can't afford to feed them.

    At what point do we stop saying all kids are a blessing and start saying that kid is a menace to society?  Not all children are snowflakes that exist to make their parents life fuller, some kids are born into shitty circumstances and survive by sheer persistence only to hurt others or worse.  Do we still call criminals locked up from society God's little miracles or are we occasionally wrong on that one?  I hate the notion that all kids are special when it is just a matter of percentages that so many kids in any given population will turn out as assholes, no matter the amount of resources provided to said children.  

    I have always been pro abortion and I even like the idea of putting birth control in the water, we shouldn't be reproducing willy nilly.  Please, nobody needs to complain, most of you complaining drink water out of plastic bottles because this is 'Murica and you can afford it.  If you can't afford water from the store, well, that is a sign you can't afford kids either.  Hey, the alternative is we get a real version of Idiocracy with the dumb dums reproducing like crazy and the smart people wasting away while they decide the best time to have one kid.

2/12/21 Cold Long Weekend?

    I mentioned preparing for the cold yesterday, but even knowing about it and turning on the heaters upstairs and down, I am still feeling it sitting here in the kitchen.  I was just thinking I might be staying home on Monday when it is supposed to be real bad, but yesterday when I texted my supervisor about what the plans were, he said he was fixing to text me to just stay home.  I thought it was a bit premature to start "overreacting", but then I hadn't really paid attention to the outside world.

    Sweetie came home a little later and said it was really cold and dangerous, that a lady had spun her car on the road right in front of her as she was driving home.  DD came home and the first thing out of his mouth was that there had been a 26 car pile up in north Austin.  I had figured that the weather was predicting 34 for a high and gently sliding down to 30 overnight, so the roads would stay warm from all the traffic, but I guess that temperature fluctuated by where in the city you were.  Girlie, whose folks moved up to Taylor and she has been staying with them posted pictures on Snapchat and their cars were all covered in a sheet of ice which I was not expecting until the weekend.  Well, knowing how badly people drive and that my own boss was telling me to stay home, for safeties sake was all I needed.  I did run to HEB and stocked up with enough food for close to a week.  I am making some chili with cornbread this afternoon.

    I just checked on Boy, he left the house around 8:00am, it is 9:30am and he is still on the road, trying to get to work.  He works up north, he mentioned the freeways are closed, he is having to drive on the frontage roads.  I am so worried for him, specially with him just crashing another car last month.  DD thought he was staying home until at least Tuesday yesterday, but he just came out of his room and said he got a text to go in to work for a few hours.  Well, he didn't even get to heat up his truck, he came back in that they did cancel work.  It does look dry outside, so I hope it stays that way until Boy gets home.

    It's weird when I stay home and Wife isn't here.  I made some dinner for Baby A and me, he then went up to his room with the door closed doing homework, Boy in his room with Sweetie with the door closed and DD with his gf with the door closed.  I stayed on the computer in the kitchen until I got bored, then watched Youtube videos on the TV in the bed downstairs that I set up for my parents.  I was in and out of napping until 3:00am, then I went upstairs.  Today I am just taking it easy.  Baby A had his classes cancelled so I am sure he is still asleep, so I will make lunch for us then just hang out and wait for Wife to show up, making the chili in the slow cooker in the afternoon.  

2/11/21 Cold Is Coming?

     I guess this is the closest we get to feel like Florida does when a hurricane is approaching.  We are currently getting ready for some super cold weather coming down to Texas.  It is weird in that I believe it has been a good 3-4 years where we have a few cool weekends and then winter seems to go away.  This year, we have had a few cold weekends, but this one is going to be a doozy.  According to the weather app on my phone, it looks like we are going to see the teens at night on the weekend, but Monday it is showing a high of 27 and a low of 11.  Add in the 40-60% chance of showers and snow and I am pretty sure I am staying home Monday night.

    I have been slowly preparing by making sure the outside is fortified.  I double checked the water faucets were still wrapped, and then I verified that the pool pumps were all empty of water.  Knowing it is supposed to get colder and running down to a quarter tank of gas, I stopped on my way home and filled up the gas tank.  Last thing I want to do is to be filling up when it is raining and freezing.  I don't imagine we will even leave the house, but emergencies do happen.  This weekend is Valentine's Day and Boy had talked about going to Dallas, but we talked to him to drop his plans, it will be even colder and worse the farther up north one travels.  I don't like to "tell" him what to do, he is now an adult, but he did just crash our back-up car on Christmas Eve, if he were to get in an accident up in Dallas, what would be our options, and to be up there just for fun is not something I can be cool with.

    Wife had been here for her recertification of her CDL, yes the woman can do it all, even drive a school bus.  Of course, the way things work, she left tonight as the weather is starting to get bad.  Her plan a couple days ago was to attend her last class tonight and then come sleep here, but fearing that the weather would be ugly for the morning, she chose to drive to Crystal after her class figuring the cold hasn't frozen things yet.

    I wanted to get enough food for two weeks last weekend, but that seems about impossible as we seem to eat everything we buy quickly.  I will probably run down to HEB Friday early and stock up for the weekend and into Monday and maybe Tuesday.  It is kind of exciting and a little scary, I like when the weather forces us to stay indoors, that is fine, but if we loose electricity things will turn to shit in a hurry.  Our old house used to at least have a gas stove, this house only has electric power, so it has to stay on.

2/10/2021 Finally Refinanced Our House?

     Well, it took a good two months, but we finally got our house refinanced.  I don't understand why the process has to be such a long harrowing pain in the ass.  I wasn't even thinking of refinancing but I looked up something and realized interest rates had kept dropping since the year before when we had tried to refinance but didn't accomplish it.  The biggest reason I wanted to get this done is because about five years ago we had refinanced but the loan stayed at thirty years, so if we didn't do anything different, we would have been paying the mortgage into my mid 70's, if I am still around.  By redoing the loan to a fifteen year note, we should be done before my 65th birthday, so I should still be working, if Covid or my fatness doesn't do me in.

    I don't know how things work to refinance, basically we went with the same company who had our loan, Loan Depot.  Last year we got to a stalemate because they insisted we attach the solar panels to the loan of the house and I didn't want to because instead of being done in less than ten more years, we would be paying the amount for fifteen, and who knows if those things would still be good by then.  Yeah, the solar panels have been a complete waste of money, I do not recommend them to anybody.  This time around I said "fuck it", let's just do it, see what happens.  The discussion of solar panels never even came up, and here I am after signing everything wondering how the slid by.

    We did pull some cash and we are using it to pretty much pay all of our outstanding credit card debt that has slowly accumulated in the last 4 years.  Yes, we went through a credit debt reduction, but if you need stuff and you don't have cash, then out come the credit cards.  I really want to be different now, as one can see by the fact that I am still driving my Excursion and not something shiny and new.  I have budgeted our stuff and we should have more money coming in now, so we are trying to be more responsible and not get over our heads buying stuff we don't need.

    The signing itself was a little weird in Covid times.  We didn't even get out of the car.  The notary came out with two stacks of paperwork on clipboards and Wife and I spent about an hour racing through and signing everything that was highlighted in yellow.  It was a real pain in the ass doing it in our laps, but it gone done.  This was the same place we had done this last time, so it was kind of weird about that.  Wife was like we could have just done this online, the notary didn't even stay with us, it was a little cold, so she went inside and came out after we were done to get everything.  Anyways, the worst part is over.  We will now have a 2.75% interest rate instead of 5.25% that we were paying at, so that sounds really good.

2/9/21 Being The Heel In A Shitty Conversation About Equality?

     While driving around Sunday, Wife got on a tangent, bitching about the facilities sprawling up at Bowie High School.  They are building a three story parking garage facility with swimming pool and tennis courts for the kids.  She is disgusted by the way AISD splits the money seeing this monstrosity going up while our Crockett boys don't even have lights to practice football as it gets dark on their shitty excuse for a football field.

    I don't necessarily feel the same way, if I wanted my kid to have gone to a school with all those niceties, I feel it would have been on us to have moved farther west and implanted ourselves in that school district.  I don't think it is the government's job to provide for my son, if we want more for him, we should also do what we can.  She sees these things as being different arguments.  She works with the unfortunate and so, it bothers her that the poor always get the shaft.  I see and agree to her point, but I also see the other side.  My example to her was let's suppose there are ten families over on the west side paying $50,000 in property taxes, which adds up to $500,000.  On the east side, there are ten poor families paying a combined $50,000 in property taxes because most live in apartments and/or other situations.  Either way, to take the $500,000 plus the $50,000 add them then divide by two and give both school an equal amount of money does not seem fair from the eyes of those paying the higher taxes.  Wife still says in order to be equal, that is what should happen.  I know kids should all get an equal shot, but that really does not seem fair to the ones coughing up the money to make it happen.

    When bringing up the discussion at home, DD's girlfriend, who also works with the unfortunate, and grew up kind of like us it seems, says that kids of affluent homes also have the advantage of having "two pots", if the school falls short, the parents are always willing to provide what is needed.  I agree with all this, but I still can't wrap my conscious around having someone else providing for my son, if so, then why am I here?  This sounds awfully socialist to me.

    I guess because we (Wife and I) came from a technically very poor part of Texas, so we couldn't have had great schools, yet my brother and I both got into UT and got degrees and Wife has her Master's from Texas State yet we didn't have all the advantages of kids going to Bowie or whatever high end schools of the time.  I don't feel shiny computers and swimming pools make for a better education.  Sure, it's super nice and freaking cool, but who gets degrees in swimming?