Sure, my health has been “one thing after another” over the last year and some-odd months, but, poor Steve, too, despite me being on bed rest and such, he’s also had a ton of junk to deal with.

Torrential winds have not only ripped off one of our shutters, but broke it in two pieces. How, I have no idea. Especially when considering the uber-lightweight patio furniture wasn’t even moved that same day. I haven’t bothered to look, I doubt he’s been able to fix it – he doesn’t even have a ladder that tall and would have to borrow it from his friend and I know he’s not done that.

Two weeks ago his truck broke down, stupid clutch again. I am beginning to hate that truck. It’s 20 years old this year and we’ve been wanting to get him a work car instead but he refuses to go spend the money. I’m sure we could do it just fine, but there’s always something going on which makes him say, “not right now, we’ve got….” And I think the recent me on bed rest and soon-to-be extended hospital stay is now what he’s got in mind. Thankfully that day, though, his brother was able to pick him up and the truck and bring them both home. But he spent the next two weeks driving the Jeep to work. Finally, last Thursday, he, his dad, and two brothers, were able to get the truck into the garage so he could work on it. He spent Friday until 1 am getting the parts out, went and traded them in on new parts (he buys the kind where he gets discounts for bringing in the old ones), and spent all day Saturday getting it put back together. Finally, he’s now finished! It’s not a big deal, really, for him to drive the Jeep, especially with me not needing it, but we don’t want to put all those miles on it (something like 130 a day).

Tuesday the Jeep also broke down! Thankfully here, this turned out to be a small and easily fixable problem, but when he was rolling into town, he didn’t know that yet. He called the dealership where we got the Jeep and the lady told him she’d have someone in the service department call him back but they never did. When he tried again an hour or so later, they were closed. So that made him mad. He went into the dealership of the same type, up the road here, and they told him that they were too busy, it would be a couple of weeks before they could look at it. The owner, who he knows, didn’t seem to care, so Steve left. He was a bit mad about that (but said, “well if they don’t want my money, then fine”). So he started looking at it himself and found the problem, a big fat stupid hose that had a rip in it so it wasn’t sealing and the Jeep had no power. Turns out that this was a simple thing, but it’s also something we’re told shouldn’t have happened until the Jeep was much older. But, whatever. So he starts calling parts stores around here and no one has the blasted thing. He starts calling parts stores up north a bit and no one has it up there either. Finally someone tells him that it’s a dealer part, you have to get it from a dealership. I don’t even know where he ended up getting it from but that night he was finally able to temporarily patch it up with duct tape (lol) then got the part the next day on his way home and spent time Wednesday fixing it.

And now! This morning a bit ago, I was simply walking out of the bathroom when I heard a crash and the distinct sound of glass breaking in the basement. Without even thinking that, er, derrrr, maybe someone could have broken in or some large animal or something, I head down there. It was none of that, though, but a rather large fluorescent shop light. One end of it fell and one of the two long tube bulbs in it shattered. Little… tiny… minuscule… pieces of glass… everywhere. Ugh. I tried to unplug it, the plug is from the (low) ceiling right next to the end of the light that didn’t fall, but it’s zip tied really close and I couldn’t pull it out. I wasn’t going to really try, either, since I’m not supposed to be doing stuff. I called Steve though, since my boys were on their way to church, and he said that it won’t come on anyway, so don’t worry about it and don’t go down there. This is the sort of thing that’s his area in the house anyway, whether or not I’m on bed rest, but still, it’s like….

The poor guy barely has time to go to work, eat dinner (not to mention if he has to cook something), then relax for a few minutes before he has to sleep and start all over again, let alone be fixing all this crazy stuff right now. The list really doesn’t end right there but that’s the biggest stuff, I think. I mean, it will be grass cutting season very soon again, there’s other stuff around this house that needs to be done, etc. Sometimes I think it would just be so much easier to rent from someone and make them do everything. “Oh, hello, Mr. Landlord? Yeah a light bulb in the basement shattered… fix it!” Heh, but I know it’s not that easy for renters either, and I’d rather own. But it gets frustrated sometimes, especially when I can’t do anything myself to help.

Then there’s all the stuff that is usually done by pregnant women in the “nesting” stage. It’s going to either have to be done by someone else or wait until I actually get home with the baby…