G'day for Thursday. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the US.
Sharon/LDM, I heartily endorse this board as a blessing in our lives, too. Thank you for all you and your fellow moderators do for us.
We've had a busy day. I had my house help this morning. He's form an agency but he also lives in the village and is someone I've known for years, well before he began to work for the agency. As a friend I generally enjoy chatting to him, but as a house help he's fairly useless. I work alongside him partly to make sure he doesn't wreck things and partly because that way we get a lot more done. He helps by hanging out the washing, peeling vegetables and stirring pots then vacuuming the house. He's good at cleaning bathrooms as long as he doesn't hose them out.
Today he helped me get the crock pot out and peeled vegetables for me, I scurriedaround collecting and preparing other ingredients. Then I got him to stir it all together (needs strong arms which I haven't got) then I got on with some work on the computer while he got on with the vacuuming.
I had to go out to the dentist (emergency filling repair) and had to leave as soon as the cleaner did. Trouble was, he got on the phone to the agency and was chatting away, I had to shoo him out of the house because I was running late (and so was he). I quickly felt the crock pot - it was hot, so I knew everything was working. Or so I thought.
I was about ten minutes late for the dentist - it was way out of the village, 40 mins drive away, near the mall. After the dentist I dropped in on easy child 2/difficult child 2 (within walking distance) and together we headed off for her appointment with the welfare job assessor (to see how much help she needs in getting a job). She drove me back to my car, we had a good talk on the way. She has a job interview tomorrow, wish her luck!
So now I was back at the mall, it was 3 pm, no mad rush to get home because dinner was slow-cooknig and I could relax. I remembered husband had wanted me to do a little shopping for him, so I dealt with that (only visited two shops, they were near the car) then I headed home. Back in the village I dropped in on a friend to discuss arrangements for the village Christmas carols event. So I didn't get home until 6.30 pm.
And the crock pot had been unplugged the whole time!
But it had been hot to touch! Turns out, my ditzy cleaner guy who helped me set it all up, who plugged it in for me, watched me switch it on - he'd unplugged it so he could plug in the vacuum cleaner, and had not put things back afterwards!
I could spit.
husband is worried that the contents (1.5 Kg of beef) will have gone bad, but it smelt perfectly OK. I don't think the inside of the crockpot had heated up at all, I know the cleaner guy would have uplugged it within about ten minutes of me switching it on. So I turned it on high when I got home, it's now after 10 pm and it's had almost 4 hours. It really needs longer, but we'll turn it off, let it cool quickly and put it in the fridge until tomorrow evening, then assess it. I really hope it's not spoiled - there's a lot of vegetables in the pot as well.
I quickly made a different recipe and while it was simmering, I walked to mother in law's to talk to her about her out-of-order phone. It was probably yesterday's power failure that did the damage to her phone, a few people have the same problem.
Tomorrow we have to head out really early, difficult child 3 has an appointment in the city at 8 am! It's the next step in the oxytocin research, plus his therapist appointment (all in the same place). After that I have my chiropractor appointment and then somehow I need to meet up with easy child 2/difficult child 2. She needs some support in doing the necessary computer work on her backpay claim, she's got to get it done by the weekend and she's made no progress on it. I'd prefer she came back to our place, but it won't really be practical. I'll have to telephone her as we leave the city, we might be able to meet up somewhere in the suburbs. It's going to be hot tomorrow, I really want to get home so we can get to the beach for a swim. I need to get more safe sun time so I can build my vitamin D. I won't get much chance over the weekend.
We've been watching the DVDs that the TV network made of our old archived video tapes. It's interesting to look at difficult child 3 at the age of not quite 2, and see the signs of autism. There seems to be a lot of stuff missing, there's stuff I know was there that I just can't find. We might have to have a careful look ourselves, try to find a way of hooking the various appliances together to see what we can find for ourselves.
Thee's a flamin' big storm headed our way, the radar image on the satellite looks spectacular. When I was walking down to mother in law's I could see the lightning stabbing at the hills to the south. The storm cells are intense, but with the heat forecast for tomorrow, any rain is just going to turn into humidity tomorrow. I can hear the thunder rumbling constantly outside, like an old man grumbling about his missing dentures. I thought I'd post now, before the "old man" really loses his temper and we risk more power failures!
Enjoy your Thursday, everyone. Have a piece of pie for me.
Marg