Did I mention I hit a pothole and blew out my tire?

The last day of radiation treatments (Friday, June 28), I hit a huge pothole on Ward Parkway and blew out my front right tire.

If you don’t live in the Kansas City area, that won’t mean anything to you, but if you’re a KC person, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

You can see more about those infamous potholes here, here, and here.

I actually live in Kansas, but I work in downtown Kansas City, which is in Missouri. So, I pay for the privilege of driving on Kansas City, MO roads every year. Those taxes are supposed to go for the wear and tear I inflict on those roads. This entire idea is a complete joke, and the potholes on Ward Parkway and really on most KC MO streets are both gigantic and prolific.

And that Friday morning, I hit one. I knew immediately it was bad and in fact it was so bad the tire deflated too fast for the low tire pressure light to come on. I was able to get off Ward Parkway and onto a side street, and even better Kent was still at home and came out to change the tire.

Yes, I do know how to change a tire. But as Kent said, the lug nuts were on so tightly that I would never have been able to get them off. He kindly changed the tire and I got to work. But because the spare is a donut and because it was under inflated, my steering was all messed up.

Keep in mind, we knew that Chloe was not doing well and I suspected we would end up taking her to the vet the next day but hoped she would somehow rally.

As I left the office that afternoon to head to my last radiation treatment, I really thought the car wasn’t going to make it there (some three miles away). That’s how bad the steering had gotten and how low the tire felt. I called Kent and told him I was taking it directly to the dealership after radiation, even though we didn’t need to have the car there until the next morning. I feared that the donut tire would completely deflate overnight and then we’d really have problems.

So I never did celebrate the end of radiation. That next day, we said goodbye to Chloe, I shelled out nearly $500 to fix my car and we zoomed around like crazy people getting ready for our trip.

More about the trip another day.

What a week

Last Saturday was freaking hot here in Kansas. Kent and I decided to get all our normal weekend chores done that day anyway—he mowed the yard, I weeded, we did a Costco run and a Home Depot run, and a couple of other errands I don’t remember now. It was so incredibly hot—how hot was it? We hit 98F, with a heat index of 115. I'm so glad we did all that Saturday because we sure couldn't have done it Sunday.

Heat like that fuels massive thunderstorms here and last Saturday’s storm was epic. We lost power at 10 PM, and got over 2 inches of rain. In a most annoying twist, the street to the north of us never lost power, nor did neighbors two doors up and on the other side of the street. But we were in the dark with over 100K people.

We hustled and moved our brand new giant container of feta cheese (thanks Costco), and the unopened yogurt into the freezer and left that shut for the next 53 hours. Fortunately, our trash pick-up is on Mondays always (even if Christmas is on Monday, our trash gets picked up) so Monday, we tossed food we knew would spoil that morning.

External battery, love it!

We were hot, and so were the cats but mostly we were bored. I had some books on my Kindle, and we had our phones but we didn’t feel like we could leave the house. We needed to be there when the power came back on, and we couldn’t leave the cats. I was so very glad Ben and Jen had given me an external battery—mine has a ton of capacity and we used it to charge our phones multiple times. That helped so much.

At the same time, KCP&L (our electric company) had tweeted that they were giving out dry ice to people without power. Kent decided he’d go, so he loaded our cooler into the trunk of his car, came back for something, went back out to leave and then came back in to tell me his car battery was completely dead. And his jumper cables were in his trunk, which requires electricity to open. And of course the cooler was in the trunk.

OK, we have two cars so he took mine. But all the dry ice had been handed out in 15 minutes, so he couldn’t get any. But he did pick up a set of jumper cables powered by a rechargeable battery, which he decided he would use once we had power again.

Our power came on at 3 AM Tuesday morning—hallelujah! I got cleaned up and headed to work, and Kent charged up that battery for the jumper cables.

This is where the week ended up being almost comical. He said the jumper cables worked like a charm and he drove around for a bit to get the battery charged back up. He got back home and realized that no, the car battery wouldn’t hold a charge. Then he decided he would charge the battery again, take the car over to the Volvo dealership and catch the shuttle back home (remember, I was downtown at work).

The back of the bill--ouch

The next message I got from him said his car was possessed and random lights were coming on—but the car wasn’t turned on. The next message said he’d tried to move the car and the power steering died and he was calling a tow truck. Turns out his Volvo (and any Volvo with a satellite radio installed) drains the battery because even if you aren’t a subscriber, that satellite radio scans and looks for a signal, which just kills the battery. In fact, there’s a class action suit over it. This is the second battery we’ve gotten for his car in the last 26 months.

Oh but wait, there’s more. Thursday, our internet went down. Kent called our provider, who wanted to ship a router. But that wasn’t the issue, so Kent pushed hard for a service call which was supposed to be today. Yesterday, the router we didn’t need arrived, and to no one’s surprise the service call had been cancelled. The issue still isn’t the router, and now we have a technician scheduled to be here Monday.

That was my week. How was yours?

2015 in review

I'll go ahead and use mostly the same questions I’ve used in previous year end reviews.

What did you do in 2015 that you’d never done before? I am now managing a team that’s partly comprised of associates based overseas. That’s a new one as was traveling to India twice as part of being their manager.

Did anyone close to you give birth? As with last year’s answer—yes. We have friends squarely in the kids stage of life so that’s not a surprise.

Did anyone close to you die? No one close to me has died; all’s quiet on that front.

What countries did you visit? Mexico and India. We didn’t take any Crazy Trips™ this year, mostly because we had a lot of expensive home repairs/maintenance this year. Edited to add that we did go to Miami over Memorial weekend, but that wasn't a crazy trip.

What would you like to have in 2016 that you lacked in 2015? Cheesy but true: I lack for nothing and I’m grateful.

What dates from 2015 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? No specific date for me again this year, just a handful of events:

• Kent got a new car so now we’re all matchy-matchy with our Volvos. I know, that’s pretty cheesy.
• My low frequency hearing loss got worse and I shelled out the cash for a hearing aid.
• I had and am recovering from sinus surgery.
• Kent started working on his MBA.
• I didn’t really sew at all this year. Neither did Kent. We’re both overwhelmed with our jobs and when that happens, the creative hobbies take a hit.

What was your biggest achievement of the year? This isn’t an achievement, but maybe the best thing that happened all year was the unexpected positive outcome of my younger son’s deployment. I’ve always liked and loved my daughter-in-law but in my son’s absence, it seemed as though our relationship got even better and I feel like today that relationship stands fully on its own merit.

Did you suffer illness or injury? Not really, although I guess the sinus surgery sort of counts.

What was the best thing you bought? I got yet another suitcase which seems to be my magical unicorn suitcase. You can read about it here.

Where did most of your money go? Home repair and maintenance. We replaced our HVAC and our dish washer and did some expensive foundation repair.

What did you get really excited about? I’m going to sound so very lame but I was stoked when we ran the new dishwasher the first time. You would be shocked at how very quiet it is.

What book(s) did you love this year? I read Justin Cronin's The Passage: A Novel and The Twelve, the first two books in a planned trilogy. I absolutely loved them and pre-ordered the third book the instant it was available. The City of Mirrors comes out in May and I cannot wait.

What song will always remind you of 2015? Definitely this one

A marketing department's dream

I was flipping through the new Ikea catalog the other day, and sort of idly wondering why it is that particular brand appeals to me so much. That got me wondering about the handful of brands that I identify with and tend to stick with, and thinking about why it’s those brands and not others that I prefer.

For example:

• Membership clubs: Costco always, the rest never. I have tried Sam’s and considered BJ’s because there was a BJ’s near my office in the Boston area but no. I really prefer Costco.
• Super cheap store: Target over WalMart unless we are in a one income situation.
• Cars: For years—I mean years—I was loyal to the Honda brand. I bought a Volvo in 2012 and I’ll never go back. 

And then there’s Ikea. I’ve always liked the furniture with the clean lines and generally fun colors or fabrics. And the soft goods like towels or curtains are just wonderful. Plus you can get the meatballs for lunch or dinner with some mashed potatoes and lingon berries as a side—YUM. And this year, you can watch their hilarious ad:



The Kansas City store opened today and in typical Ikea fashion, they opened 20 minutes early because there were so many people waiting outside in the rain. I can’t wait to go, although not just yet. While I love Ikea, I don’t love crowds.

Days 9 and 10

Day 9 

I am so very glad Kent and I can cook and moreover that we enjoy cooking. I was thinking about that at lunch yesterday. I'd reluctantly gone out to lunch with some co-workers and my reluctance wasn't about the company but about not having my own yummy lunch that I bring every day. And a tiny bit of it was also that if I'm going to spend money eating out, I'd rather do it at dinner, with Kent.

Anyway -- we do love to cook, and even when we get in cooking ruts (we are in a pizza rut right now), it's still really good food, it's far cheaper than eating out and it's almost certainly healthier too.


At the risk of sounding very shallow, Day 10's topic of gratitude is . . . my car. Yes, yes, I know. An inanimate thing! And yet I love my car so very much.

I got the Volvo just over a year ago and I got it because I felt really unsafe in the Fit (you may remember I'd gotten hit by another car, well actually the other car's door). My Volvo isn't a lot bigger than the Fit was but it's sure heavier. I'm confident that if someone opened his door in traffic the way it did when my Fit got so damaged that the door-opener's car would suffer more. In the case of the Fit, it barely damaged his car.

I've never loved a car before. I liked my CR-V a lot, it was the first car I'd had that had power everything and I loved that the car sat up a bit higher. But it was green with a khaki interior and that just never felt like me. Plus it was humongous, at least to me. But it was roomy, handled well in snow and ice and it served me well for nearly 10 years.

This Volvo, though, is just amazing. The seats are so comfy (and heated! and NOT leather!) and it's unusual looking but not a freak show car, and my MP3 player works in it and -- well I could go on and on but why? You get the idea.

I guess the true upside of me falling in love with a car is at least now I get it when other people wax poetic about their own vehicles. I'm not judging them now.