Yes, I'm alive

Hi! I know it's been forever since I've blogged, but I have my reasons. Mostly laziness, but I promise there are others (such as trying to finish writing up posts about the road trip, so that when I start posting those, they'll already be done, so I can keep up with posting them until I'm all the way through...it's been slow going, though, considering there's 19 days to write about, and each day takes up an average of one page, minimum). And really, with only like a two-reader following, it didn't seem that important. Although, maybe my following is so small because I don't post on a regular basis?? It's possible. Anyways, I really am going to try to post more regularly, regardless of how soon I finish typing up stuff about the road trip.

So, the latest at the A.T. (Ashley/Travis) Crib is a full-on conspiracy of the electric appliances. If the bread machine stopped working, or the toaster died, or something else miniscule took a turn for the worse, I could handle that. Even buying a new one, $20-30 isn't that bad. However, those things are perfectly fine, they're not the ones that decided to break. Yes, ones, with an "S" on the end. Multiple mutiny. Exactly two weeks ago yesterday, the water heater stopped working, out of the blue. It's not old, our dad just bought it last year, but it quit. I went to take a shower, and waited the usual 45-ish seconds for the water to warm up, but it never did. Five minutes later, I finally gave up and tried the kitchen faucet, just to be sure it wasn't some weird problem only affecting the shower. Not a single faucet in the house would give me anything but freezing cold water, so I gave up and took a cold shower, hoping Trav would know what to do when he got home a couple days later. He got home and had a few ideas, which made me hopeful, but he's tried multiple things and made several trips to the store for new parts (four, maybe five??)...it's still broken. Rather than spend upwards of $100-200 on a repairman, we're waiting for our dad to get home (in "a few" weeks, who knows how long that is) and we hope he'll be able to figure it out without a repairman. Anyway, while this was going on, other appliances got ideas from it, too. The water heater's in the laundry room, so we think they were conspiring together, as about a week ago, the dryer joined the revolution. We're waiting for our dad on that one as well. Luckily, the washer still functions, so now whenever we do laundry, the house looks like a giant clothesline, with garments/sheets/etc. draped over every piece of (clean) furniture possible. This also adds to the humidity in the air (already high, due to rainy weather), making the swamp cooler practically useless, so we're having fun living in a hot, humid house. There's also a refrigerator in the laundry room, which isn't our primary one but we definitely use it plenty, so hopefully it doesn't start rebelling, too.

Cold showers and air-drying clothes...it feels like the pioneer days or something. At least we still have TV and the microwave! Although I probably shouldn't say that, or I'll start jinxing things, haha.

I'll keep updating on our dire situation, and more new stuff with us, so keep checking back!

Today's pix=my new (purple) hair! Check it out...

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