Well, we are still thankful...

Well at the last minute (Last Night) my mom called to say my sister just got in from Charlotte where she has been away on business. Finding out that Amy was actually going to be home this year for Thanksgiving My sister didn't want to just cancel and reschedule thanksgiving like we had planned. She decided she wanted to drive down here and take us out to a buffet dinner for the holiday since it's rare that Amy is home on a holiday....so we made the plan to go out, everyone got in to bed a bit early. My son wakes me up saying he was sick to stomach. Because he has some serious social anxiety problems and rarely leaves the house we considered nerves, gave him some belly stuff and waited a bit...still sick and had evidence to prove it. So..we arranged for someone to be here with him and Amy and I would go out to dinner with everyone. Don't worry...I wasn't leaving a young child.  My oldest son is a handicapped adult and with another adult nearby to help out he's perfectly okay to be left with a minor ailment...just didn't want anyone reading this to think I was leaving a sick little one at home.

We knew we needed some slime/fix-a-flat because Amy came home from work saying the tire was bad.  ThenI told her that sucks because my sister was coming down to take us out to dinner.  So in the middle of the night we call my sis who was going to bring us some slime tire sealant when she came down.  Amy goes out the truck to get something before taking her shower and the tire was flat, flat...on the rim and you can't use slime that way cuz there is no way to pump the tire. 

 

So...we consider popping off the tire, having my sis come down, we will slime the tire, pump it up at Amy's gas station, bring it back pop it on the truck, check on the kid, if he can't go we will go on to dinner. 

Well..... 

All we had was an old bottle jack for a car we used to have and a scissor jack that goes to the lumina that isn't running anymore...no clue what is wrong with the Lumina this time.  Anyhow we tried the bottle jack and had to put it so far under the truck to hit a flat point that we had to use my crutch to jack it up...it wouldn't go high enough!  Crutch however worked quite well as an emergency jacking tool.

We tried the scissor jack and the truck fell off the jack twice because of the angle we had to get the jack because in this case the jack was too big to fit under the only area that would work as this jack has a lip that is suppose to go into a slot on the Lumina.  The truck has no such slot so we had to find a piece of solid looking metal where the lip would overshoot and not leave an unlevel jacking surface.

So since the scissor is too tall


 

We Get Amy and the Neighbor kid (my youngest son is with my mom and sister 2 hours away) to each use a jack. We will raise the truck high enough with the bottle jack to get the scissor in a better position and hopefully finally jack the truck up. 

Almost there...bottle jack raises the truck, scissor goes in, cranking it up...the side support we used isn't strong enough it bends and drops the truck, gotta bottle jack it up to get the scissor jack unstuck and out of there 

DEFEAT! We don't have a truck jack because the truck didn't come with one and we haven't been able to afford a replacement jack.  The truck is grounded till we can find someone with a truck jack to come up here and get the !@#$% Tire off....so we ate oatmeal for thanksgiving dinner cuz yeah we are at the end of the month and out of food and we were thankful that nobody got their head crushed under the truck when it dropped that last time. 

Joey...my sons friend learned a valuable lesson in how NOT to jack up a truck. Of course we knew this was dangerous, but when you rarely have the right equipment for a job you do what you gotta do and you hope to come out of it with life and limb intact.  Nothing new for us but hell I felt like venting today cuz I really wanted something better than oatmeal!

So now THIS tire which is not the previously slimed tire that blew back in September while hauling floor repair lumber, no this will be my newest tire running on slime hoping to make it till income tax time so we can buy 4 used tires. 

How as your thanksgiving??

Please tell me it's time for a break

We have been doing pretty good for a little while, I guess it was time for something bad to happen.

My last update was around my birthday which in spite of a sprained wrist went pretty good. Shortly after my birthday Amy got some fleece and had spun some yarn during a nice peaceful outing at Hopeland Gardens. Life was pretty good through August...what happened?

The other night my son went to do a load of laundry and heard hissing coming from the area where the water heater is tucked away. He pulls away panels to find the outlet pipe spraying water and the floor soggy. Uh...that's not good. Have no clue how long it was leaking but we do know it put the floor in the utility room in a very unstable condition. No shut off valves...do they do this in all mobile homes? We had to cut all the water from the curbside tap.

Next morning we go off to building supply to get new pipe and a piece of wood to repair the soaked area. Josh was doing a great job, got most of the fittings in place and was shifting the water heater back into it's cozy little nest when the bottom pipe decided to fracture dumping gallons of water and the tank was in trouble. Particle board does not hold up well to flooding. Josh yells for help and of course I can't get in there on wheels so Amy runs in, he tells her to get the garden shears and hacksaw, he's got to cut everything loose before we lose the water tank.

Amy runs...then falls and scrapes up her knee...does manage to get the shears, She's cutting the electrical while Josh is frantically sawing off water pipes to haul the half full water tank out to the porch to finish draining.

Well...we knew we needed to replace the utility room flooring due to a pipe disaster a while ago, now we have no choice but to replace the floor...right now. No time to raise the funds, that comes out of grocery, bills....uh...wherever the money usually goes it's not going there this month because now we have no water and a floor too unstable to be safe.

Off to the lumber supply today to drop some of our bill money on building supplies we couldn't afford for the last year...and still can't afford...but have no choice. No time to look for salvage lumber, no time to look for sales we need it now.

So we get there and manage to get the lumber, stared wide eyed at the cash register like children wondering how those things can count that high then get outside with our neat carrier filled with stuff we couldn't afford to find A FLAT TIRE!!!

My Goodness how many FLATS have we had!!!!  Tire salesmen can eat healthy on the amount of rubber we keep buying

So here is how our day went...We got some plywood, some OSB, some nails, tons of plumbing fittings including a freaking shut off valve, some lengths of pipe, throw my wheelchair on top and limped on a flat tire to the nearest gas station.



It's not too bad, not riding on the rim yet...I figure we can slime it and get it home.  We don't want to call a wrecker and don't want to buy a brand new tire after unloading money two days in row to the tune of $160 at the building supply.  So



We slimed her.  After Amy pulled the bottle away she got spit on by the tire blowing green florescent slime at her just to add insult to injury to the lady who has a scraped up knee, little sleep, in the hot sun after loading up wood, late for work in a parking lot with a flat tire.  My poor wife has had a BAD few days.



We did manage to get the truck home safely and Amy took the car into work.  Right now my boys are pulling up the vinyl flooring to tear out all the wet wood.  We are rebuilding the utility room floor.  We will tear apart an old stove that we were suppose to haul off to the dump ages ago.  Glad I never did.  I keep these things because there is a wealth of reusable material.  Why do you think the recycling centers want them?  Anyhow, we will tear all the metal off the stove and sandwich metal between two sheets of plywood to go under the water heater and washing machine.  The metal sandwich will offer strength to these heavy appliances and if any of them should leak again it won't be leaking onto particle board but onto a 3/8 sheet of plywood with a metal barrier underneath.  It's much easier, cheaper and safer to replace one single 3/8 sheet of plywood than to replace a whole huge section of waterlogged subflooring.

The OSB will be used in the areas that are not holding weight or subject to water pipes or water appliances.

Hopefully out of all this crap a few healthy mushrooms will grow, in a few hours if all goes well I'll have a new laundry room floor to show off.
 
While the boys were tearing up floors I sent MicroGiving a cell photo showing the damage and have some nice fresh pics to send off.  Will try for some video soon but since I couldn't have a wheelchair in there I couldn't stand long enough than to snap a few shots give orders and leave.  They are going to try to find a spot for one of my older chairs so I can be in there to get some video of them rebuilding the floor.