8 days in

2018 is only 8 days in and already a mixed bag.  Last summer I had septic tank woes, had to have all the fruit trees pulled out and the tanks, a series of 3, cleaned out. Cost a bunch, thanks to my sons, they loaned me the money to pay for the repairs. I am getting down to the last 4 payments to each of them to pay it off. So yesterday, Doug was out in his yard and heard something. Found water spewing out from under my house.  Turned off the water to the house, didn't stop the water. Ended up having to shut off the well pump. Did get a plumber, nice young man from Iowa to come out this morning and repair the damage, it was a broken water pipe to my outside hose, nothing to do with the house.  Not too pricy. BUT, he found another problem, the sewer line to the septic tank has sprung a leak.  It's too cold to dig it up right now, and I will have to figure out how to pay for that anyway. So it seems the prolonged very cold weather is doing a lot of bad things to a lot of people.  And Doug's truck clonked out on him on the way to town this morning, after just having it repaired a week or two ago.   Well, there have been good things too, like the week before Christmas, I got a message saying my kids in NE were sending a package I was to watch for, the Saturday before  the holiday, they said they had mailed it late but expedited shipping had been applied. So I watched., It was getting late, and I decided to go to bed. There was a knock on the door, I hurried out to open it, package had arrived. There stood Brian, Erin and Sammy, smiling from ear to ear, I should have picked up on some of the clues but didn't.  One of the best holiday surprises ever, so glad to see them.  They left just ahead of this really cold weather. I have not been out to shop or to church since mid December. Hoping to get out the next few days as we should hit 61 by Thursday.   I want to ask a question. Have any of you entered the Publishers Clearing House contest?  Figured what the heck, the money would sure help pay off all these bills, couldn't hurt so I entered on line. And promptly started getting emails out the yazoo, do this, order that, search for this. After a few days I got sick of it and unsubscribed and added them to the junk mail list. How come you can;t just enter the contest and be done with it? They bug you incessantly. I wonder if anyone ever won anything really or they just use shills to say they won.  Now you are warned. And if you won or know someone who did, I would like to know. Thank You. The kids in our area got an extra long Christmas vacation, still out, we were to have an ice storm today, we did not get it here , just rain. It didn't start raining til late morning and the temps had warmed up by then. Thankfully. Lots of days left in 2018, wonder what they will hold.  Guess we will find out. Long cold winter?  (Global warming)  Anyway, our winters tend to end in March for the most part, have daffodils along the roads and forsythia blooming by then so we are only 8 weeks away from that. Planning to stock up on things I can eat til spring if need be.  Stay warm, hope you have nicer weather  coming  to you too.  Who knows what this new year will bring, hope lots of good things.