Good-Bye, Fiona

 At last! Our decrepit vehicle, purchased over a decade ago, used but little, is finally gone. This housewife says, "Hooray!"
We named her Fiona back then. The only service she ever gave us was as a college car for our oldest child for about a year, but she gave us more terror on the road than relief.
Adam donated her to a Veterans organization to be sold.

 Fiona sat in our garage and was full to the brim of MICE. Oh yes. I don't know if you can see him in the photo below, but as the car sat on the flat bed of the truck, a large rat scurried around, wondering how his life was disturbed.
I thought I could hear him muttering, "Anna Maria! Anna Maria! We are discovered and interrupted!"

 My hens are laying in a haphazard way -- one egg one day, three eggs the next. A few days ago I was left the most monstrous-sized egg! It's over 3" long.

 It weighs in over 3 oz. A "jumbo" egg is 2.5 oz. What do we call this? Monster egg!

Adam baked a lovely chocolate cake for our church Valentine's supper. In the middle is chocolate ganache and raspberries. Chocolate buttercream is on top.

I'm over my bout of flu, but I still don't feel 100%. My tummy is quite easily upset after almost every meal. It didn't keep me from that chocolate cake though! I hope you all are well, friends. Thank you for stopping by!

My Husband, the Neurosurgeon

Meet the patient, currently admitted into the E.R., also known as Our Garage. Her name is Fiona.

She needs a new neurological system, an entire nerve transplant, also known as a new wiring harness.
Here's the new donor organ (graciously given by a car that died many years ago) ... errrr, wiring harness, currently lying in Fiona's backseat.

Adam's doing the wiring on the front end of the car mostly, so he had to remove the entire dash first. He's done this before on Fiona because he redid the wood of the dash before, remember? And here?

He did beautiful work on the wood of the dash, and reassembled it perfectly. But that surgery compared to this one is rather like getting plastic surgery compared to  a brain transplant.
Adam jiggles the dash to get it loose:

Here's the crash roll, which he removed first, along with a sheet of paper with all the matching screws taped to it, telling him exactly how to reassemble it.

More jiggling ...

More parts (the back of the radio, I believe?) with screws on paper ...

Success!

Poor Fiona and her innards:

It looks scary to me.

This is just the first step in the surgery. His goal is to be finished in a couple of weeks, I think. We do need a second car fairly often, and Fiona is it. The new wiring will make her reliable. As she is now, she tends not to start an inconvenient moments, like in the pouring rain on the side of the road :)
And another update:
Remember how we were concerned about the brick house being moved? Adam wondered how they would keep the brick from cracking and being damaged in the move. Well ...

 They solved that problem!

The took all the brick off! Plus the front porch. This house looks like it might be ready to roll down the road soon. Now we all get to wonder what kind of siding they will put on, once it reaches its new location.

Anna's New Car

Sorry to be so absentia lately -- we're just too busy! One thing after another, each day fills up and we find ourselves running back and forth. Part of it is having two college kids here for the summer. But part of it is being off of school. School is a wonderful organizer of life. Home school is a wonderful organizer of home life. I don't go anywhere before 2:00 during the school year. In the summer, my schedule, every hour of it, is up for grabs! Yikes!

Anyway, the car:

 Cute, isn't she? Anna needs to give her a name.

 She's a 2000 Ford Focus, great gas mileage, with just over 100K miles on her. Very good deal.

 Anna's tickled. She was home for only 24 hours, on a break from camp, and was hungry. So she's holding a little skillet of stir fry rice, and posing with her new car.

 The inside was nice and clean. No nasty smoke smell. She bought it herself, with cash, from a dealership, so they had cleaned it up well.

Car insurance (like all insurance) is outlandishly expensive these days, so we could never afford to buy insurance for our teenagers. Thus, they got no driver's licenses. Thus, we bought them no cars. But the upside of that is that they saved their own money and bought their cars themselves when they're older. They buy their gas, pay for repairs, pay for insurance, and learn to care for and appreciate their own cars. I really, really think this is a much better way to go, than handing over the keys to a brand new 30K vehicle to your sixteen year old on his birthday. That doesn't foster any good character traits that I can think of. Just my personal opinion. Lots of families I know do that, because they have the money (or ... er ... the debt!) to do that. We don't. And at this point I think I can say I'm very glad for that. It's sweeter for them to wait for it, save for it, and see the fruits of their labors.

Philip's New Car!

It's a 1998 Ford Escort.

Runs fine. No A/C (yet).

Gray interior.

Stick shift.

Philip is 21 years old. We told our kids many years ago that we could not afford to pay for their insurance or their cars/repairs. Philip has worked hard (especially this summer) to save money for all that. It shows maturity on his part, and we are very proud of him! And because he's had to work for it, he will treat the car well.

Hammocking

Before we left Brevard, I found this little hammock at Safe's Attic, for $1! Yep - another great deal!

 It's not sturdy enough to hold me or Adam or Philip. But it works great for Julia -- her own little hammock.
Or Sandy. If Sandy liked it ....

 Which she doesn't. She jumps out as soon as she can.

 Then Philip decided to order himself a hammock too. I must say, the weather here is just perfect hammock weather. He got a very nice one. He says now he can hang his hammock on campus next fall, and join all the other hammocking students that he has previously derided - hahaha!!!

Adam has spent a little time under the hood of Fiona, getting her in smooth running order. I've lost track of all the things he's replaced, cleaned off, or cleaned out.

I'm currently laid up in bed with a hurting foot. I haven't a clue what I did to upset my foot, but it's telling me, "I'm not going anywhere today!" I couldn't put any weight on it last night, but after sleeping all night, it's much better. I hope resting it all today will make it well again.