Author: Yajaira

One of the worst things that could possibly happen in this household has happened.

Our electric ceramic-top stove has died!

Mario wanted a potato and egg taco for breakfast (he requested it around 1am last night when I felt him slide into bed) so I got started on it after I got home from dropping the kids off. I turned the right front burner on to heat the pan while I washed and peeled the potato. I noticed that around every 8 seconds I’d hear a ticking sound. I got closer and noticed the tick was coming from either the top of the stove where the knobs are, or from the front burner itself (the one I use the most). The potatoes finished cooking, I drained the olive oil that was left and added the egg, pepper and garlic powder. I took the pan off the burner when it was done and placed another pan on top of it to heat up the tortillas while I went to wake up Mario.

He gets up, I go back to the kitchen. I notice the red light that indicates that theres a “Hot Surface” isn’t on at all, yet I’ve had the stove on for a while on ‘6’. I switch to another burner, the left back one, put it on ‘9’ and nothing. I freak out and run into the bathroom where Mario’s taking a shower and yell, “OHMYGODTHESTOVEISN’TWORKING!” I explain about the ticking and how it was probably telling me it was dying and he says he’ll check it out when he gets out.

Not much he could do…he’d have to take the whole darn stove apart just to check the stove top and he still had to eat breakfast and get his stuff together for work. And I was finally going to make lasanga tonight, darnit! How the heck are we supposed to eat? I don’t buy microwavable food! Even the stuff that can be “heated up”, like pot pies and pizza, require an oven to cook them. The oven isn’t working either *pulls out hair*.

I wish I knew what caused it to just take a crap like that. We’ve only had it since February 2003, which is 3, almost 4 years. I can’t find any of the pamphlets and god only knows where I left the receipt for it. I know for a fact that we were idiots back then and wouldn’t register anything, so we probably don’t have any type of warranty. We paid cash for it at Sears, so they most likely didn’t take our info down, I think? Argh! I told Mario, “Dina’s (Jorge’s mom) had her flat top for years; how come hers hasn’t died?”

He smirks and says, “Because she probably doesn’t use it as much as you do.”

“… Great. I killed it. For cooking too much.”

I don’t know what we’re going to do, where I’m going to cook (I really don’t want to be cooking at my mom-in-laws then lugging everything back here), and who will fix it. Mary’s calling around and I need to ask my dad-in-law if he knows anyone who’ll fix electric ceramic tops, so we’ll see. Appliances and cars have great timing. Here we were excited about buying baby things and Christmas presents and now we have to fix a stove. Lovely!

I have no idea what the heck is wrong with my toilet (lovely way to start an entry, no?). It’s either the water pressure is super low as always or (gulp) one of the children dropped a wash cloth in there and it’s now clogged to hell. It already overflowed all over my soft, light blue bath rug. I’m afraid to pee, which really sucks because I need to pee all the time.

Today was a really low-key kind of day. I didn’t go anywhere today, which is a nice change. I spent most of the day cleaning house which was way overdue, heh. Jason came over with his laptop in tow and connected everything to play Xbox Live with John and the boys. Gave me time to do everything I needed to do without being interrupted.

I wrapped and boxed my breakables that I still had strewn around my bedroom so I can take them to storage. I’ve just realized that it’s November and according to my Last Menstrual Period, I’m 7 months pregnant as of today (Tuesday, if we go by Alaethia’s size). If I recall correctly, every year it seems that once November gets here the new year gets here just as fast. At first it felt like the pregnancy was slithering by, but just today I started getting that panic-y feeling like, ‘Shoot, I need to hurry up and get everything ready!’. Now that Alaethia’s constantly moving around and that her elbows and knees are clearly visible as she moves them across my belly, reality’s set in. I’m going to be the mother of 3 by the end of January!

I need to make a list of all the stuff we need to get. I need to finish organizing our closets. I need to get rid of that darn dresser. We need to put the crib together. I need to go through storage boxes and get all the baby stuff I need out of them, plus unisex stuff like onsies all washed and ready. I’m getting incredibly excited and nervous! And on top of it all, we definitely need to start Christmas shopping! I seriously can’t believe it’s already November!

I have my 28 week doctor’s appointment this Wednesday; let’s hope all is well. I wouldn’t doubt if this little lady already turned (Jaylen turned by 7 months) what with the way she kicks me in the ribs O_o. I’m also looking foward to Tuesday, which is when Mayra will hopefully come over to visit for a while :). This is going to be a great week!

P.S. Desperate Housewives was so awesome tonight. I watched it after spending about an hour outside with Mario while he waited for the fire to successfully start so he could bar-b-q. We had a talk yesterday about how our relationship’s been going lately and we’re doing better than before now, thank goodness. When I came in to watch Desperate Housewives I remembered he likes peanuts with his beer, so I took him some. He calls me from his cellphone and says, “It’s nice how you brought me peanuts. That’s why I’ll never leave you; because of the little things like that.” Aww :).

Anyway, the woman who got killed was totally not who I expected it to be. I thought it would be Edie Britt for some reason. I didn’t watch TV for most of yesterday so it was a surprise when I turned the TV on this afternoon and Doogie Howser’s gay and Sadam Hussein will be hung?! Crazy!

We didn’t do much on Halloween night. It was actually kind of, dare I say it, boring?

I made the worm cups, which sadly were only enough for the kids since I didn’t buy enough chocolate pudding. Mary made Mummys, which are weeners surrounded by Pilsbury croissants. Mario said he’d try his best to get out of work early, but of course that didn’t work out so we didn’t end up going trick-or-treating. Every Halloween, when we’ve taken the kids trick-or-treating, Mario’s the one who drives and tells us which houses to avoid. I don’t know who the heck to trust in these neighborhoods, so I didn’t even try it. The kids didn’t mind though–Elda invited them to go trick-or-treating at her Grandma’s and other places, but they didn’t want to go. Instead we (Mom, Mary, Noelia, the boys and I) passed out candy to the kids of the neighborhood. Eenan was on a sugar high so he was screaming, “We have candy for sale, People!” and we kept correcting him that it wasn’t for sale and he was scaring the people away by screaming but he didn’t care. Jaylen saw a classmate and later on during the night Jason and Mireya brought Brianna over, who was a little Geisha and looked SO cute and like the real thing!

There weren’t any more trick-or-treaters after 8:30, so I brought the kids in and bathed them and put them to bed (which was really hard considering how much candy they’d had).

I can’t remember much from Wednesday and Thursday (damn this pregnancy amnesia). I think all I did on Wednesday (or was it Thursday?) was go to H-E-B to pick up the Whipped Cream I was missing for the pumpkin pie I was craving. Since I had Jaylen with me, he of course just *had* to ask for something so I got ice cream (chocolate chip cookie dough) and ice cream cups. He apparently forgot about them because he hasn’t asked for any till this day.

All I did on Thursday was accompany John and his death mobile car (with Jaylen in tow) to the Lube place to get some things done to his car. Of course it overheated on the way over there and that’s because we didn’t go far at all. Total of the three things John got done to his car? $59–and he still needs to get his radiator flushed which is another $65. I was so afraid we wouldn’t make it home on time to pick up Eenan, but thankfully we did.

I was so relieved when Thursday night came around because that means that Mario’s off on Friday and I’ll only have to cook enough food for dinner for only that night; I usually have to cook a meal plus some for Mario’s lunch the next day for work. It also means one more day for the kids to have school before the weekend comes along.

I made nachos that night (not regular nachos, these have beans, cheese, veggies, and ground beef) and had the kids fed by 7:30 (we usually eat at 8pm). I get a call around 8:30 from Mario: he’s done at work but is going to Jorge’s. NICE. I hate it when I make the effort to cook (which is like, every night) and he calls and tells me he’ll be home late. At least give me a damn courtesy call letting me know that I shouldn’t slave over the damn stove and the kids and I should have sandwiches or something.

I did everything that needed to be done that night, took a shower and was in bed trying to sleep by 11pm. I was exhausted but no matter how much my eyes wanted to shut and go to sleep, Alaethia was kicking and thrashing around in there like crazy so I could not sleep! I was up till 1:30, just laying in bed, wide-eyed hoping she’d get tired soon but she was just too active. I called Mario at 1:40 and told him to get home because he’d be dropping the kids off the next day since I hadn’t been able to sleep. I assume it would be okay since he’s so darn used to sleeping late and waking up early for work. He got home at 1:53, and I didn’t end up finally falling asleep till 3:30am.

The alarm went off at 6:30am the next morning. What does Mario do? Turns off the alarm and goes back to bed. I’m pissed of course because I’m so darn sleepy but get up and get the kids ready and drop them off. I was so mad at him, but the kids were more pleasant that morning than they had been all week so I stayed calm. I came back from dropping the kids off and took a long, much needed nap.

Mario and I both woke up at 11:15 and went to pick Jaylen up. Mrs. T. said she owed him a special present since he helped her with a bunch of posters. I don’t know what it was exactly that he did, I think it had something to do with coloring, but he was beaming with proudness. I’m so glad he’s comfortable with school now and actually enjoys himself :).

We picked up some Burger King for lunch (because it finally opened!) and came home. We chilled out, Mario and I had an argument, we cleaned out the turtle tank and then it was time to pick Eenan up. When I got back from picking him up, we went to Home Depot to get a new spray hose for the kitchen sink. The old one had totally died and stayed on making the water pressure an annoying drip. Mario installed the new one when we got home and it worked perfectly again.

Eenan slept over at Mary’s and Jaylen fell asleep early. The kids had eaten dinner early (Star’s burgers and an ice cream cone they had coupons for for having perfect attendance) and we ate some turkey pot pies. LOVE those things. We watched the most recent episode of Heroes and then put our three-shelf bookcase together for our bedroom. We’re getting a little more organized in there which is a huge relief. I still need to buy some baskets to organize the closet shelves better and some kind of vertical rack for my pj’s and t-shirts so I can get rid of the extra massive chest of drawers we have. We just aquired a brand-new bassinet from Yadira and a playpen from Big Mario’s friend (which is great since I lent Ricci the boys’ playpen back when we were still in speaking terms and never got it back) so we need all the space we can get. We’re doing pretty good right now. I still need to get the rocking chair back in there–eek!

We woke up early and I saw Mario off to work, then got the kids and myself ready so we could accompany Mary and Mom to the new Premium Outlets in Mercedes. It took forever to get there, a while to find them, and a bitch to find parking but it was worth it. The stores we got to see were great and we got great deals at KB Toys, where we found toys like Sonic the Hedgehog ones that the kids LOVED and had been wanting for a couple years now. I was disappointed that Old Navy wasn’t open and there won’t be a Sanrio store at all, but it was still cool.

We came back home to drop the boys and Mom off, then Mary, Yadira, Angela, Matthew and I went to Danett’s babyshower. It took so long to start, and there were ladies who were being evil about the games (Jesus, some people take shower games so seriously!) but it was alright. The food was great and we got to see Annie’s sisters, two of which are pregnant (one was the shower girl).

And now we’re home, and I should be getting ready for bed. Goodnight!