Stress!

#1:
We built this home and moved in last April, so it hasn't even been a year yet. As we built, we upgraded our carpet from the allowance we were given. I've had experience with carpet, namely that if you buy the cheap stuff, you can't stand what it looks like and are ready to replace it in about 2 years. So we paid more for our carpet.

I appreciate the ages my kids are now where carpet is concerned. My family room carpet has had popcorn spilled on it, but other than that, my kids know they can't have any food or drink on the carpeted areas in our house. They're old enough that I don't have any sippy cups accidentally left around, or baby bottles with milk, etc. The most care my carpets have needed so far is vacuuming. I haven't even had to get out my spray carpet cleaner. That's how I like it.

Sunday evening Sean's sister's family was at our house playing games. Five-year-old Baden, our nephew, became fascinated by something on the end table in our family room: my Scentsy jar. Scentsy is a new item available for those who want a nice scent, but don't want to bother with a match & wick. You put the scented wax cubes in the dish at the top; underneath the dish it's melted by a light bulb. Ingenious. Baden knocked it over somehow. Purple wax splattered all over my wall, baseboard, and mostly, my CARPET.

Of course, Melissa & Andy were horrified and apologized profusely. They went right to work cleaning up the wall & baseboard. They probably thought it strange that I hardly said anything. Little did they know that if I talked, I would start crying.

Monday morning I got on the internet and read suggestions for cleaning wax out of carpet. The suggested method is this: heat your iron to a medium temperature. Get a couple rolls of paper towels. Place a padding of 2 paper towels over the wax and iron it into the towels. Once the wax gets onto the paper towels, get fresh ones so that the wax keeps coming up.

Several hours later on Monday morning, I had gone through 1 1/2 rolls of paper towels and was sitting on the floor by a stack 6 inches high to go in the garbage. The wax isn't gone yet, but I'm seeing improvement. Maybe in a week or two.

*****
#2:
I'm the counselor over the Beehives in Young Women's. Our activity Tuesday night was to go meet the newbie girls who will be turning 12 this year. The snow was a couple inches deep as we started, and it was still coming down in buckets all evening. In the car between visits, the girls were having fun texting each other on their cell phones, and making sure their numbers were in my phone so they could text me.

About halfway through the visits, I realized I didn't know where my phone was. I asked the girls, but they hadn't seen it. I decided it must have fallen down under or between the front seats, and I'd look for it later.

When I'd dropped the final girl off at her home, I got out of the car and searched all over. Nothing. Panic set in. I'd set my phone on vibrate before Young Women's, so it wouldn't embarrass me by ringing loudly in the middle of something.

I tried calling it once I got home, but still couldn't see it. A flashlight under the seats revealed nothing but a dirty sock and some candy wrappers. It was gone. The next time I tried calling my cell phone, it went immediately to voice mail. That proved it: it was in someone's snowy driveway somewhere, waiting to be shoveled into the nearest snowbank.

I called everyone we'd visited that evening, but nobody had seen it. Gone. It amazes me how dependent we are on technology that barely existed a few years ago. I love my pink phone; I felt like I was mourning a friend who had died.

Sean came to my rescue, by reminding me that we have a new phone, sitting in a box, which I think came as a freebie the last time we bought phones. Yesterday's task was going to the Sprint store to have my number transferred to this new phone. After several technical difficulties, including having to call Sprint later for troubleshooting, my new black phone began working at about 5 pm.

I'm feeling warmer toward this phone with every number I enter into it. I don't anticipate feeling as attached to this one, but sometimes functionality has to take the place of a friend.