Little things adding up

Things are good, it's been a good week. But it seems like a bunch of little thing are adding up to a "What is going on here?" type of feeling today.

*My kids have been healthy all week, no runny noses, no fevers, no tummy aches. And we had two days of being completely snowed in, so it seemed like a low germ-exposure week. My mom and Greg arrived late last night for a weekend of wedding prep, and as we were heading to bed, Katy woke up having a breathing attack that I've not witnessed before. It's croup, I know it's croup. Both of my kids have had croup a few times and it usually goes away on its own within a couple of days, but I've never had the struggling-to-breathe attack in the middle of the night before. It was quite scary. I took her outside, steamed up the bathroom and got her to calm down, until she didn't seem to panicking to get air. Then I had a fitful, worried night of sleep, but she did fine the rest of the night and today is just hoarse. I know that there's potential for more trouble tonight.

*I mentioned before our skunk issues, and how recently it had come to a new level of "bothersome." We had tried several home remedies (moth balls, barricading the points of entry, blaring loud music), with no avail. Several people have told us that we could buy a trap and catch the animal(s) ourselves, but there is NO part of me that feels comfortable approaching a trap with an angry skunk inside to take it anywhere and do anything with it. I've smelled their fire and I don't want to be any closer to it than we have already been. So we bit the bullet and hired professionals. They set the traps yesterday and are leaving them open over the weekend, then on Monday they'll set them to catch. Once they are certain there's nothing left under there, they'll put a barricade all the way around the porch and assure us that nothing else will live there for five years. It's more money than I would prefer to spend on such a problem, but that's the least stressful way to get the smelly (apparently mating - ewww) varmints out from under our porch. And the smell out of our heating vents.

*All the sudden the washer is skipping the spin cycle, and I have to go back and manually set it to spin again. Weird.

*When we bought this house, we knew it needed a new roof. In our first offer, we tried to get some cash toward a new roof written into the deal, but there were so many bidders on the house that it was a dealbreaker, and we had to take it out or loose the deal. We've been saving up and planning to get a new roof this summer. Ends up we should've done it last year. With all the ice and snow, we're having some water leaking issues in a few places throughout the house. They are all indirectly related to the roof, and Brian has spent the afternoon with a neighbor's help coming up with some temporary solutions until the weather breaks and we can get roofers up there to fix the problem.

Much of this comes with your first winter in any house, especially one that is a little older (although quite young compared to our former house). And they are not major problems, hopefully, and they'll be fixed soon.

March is such a welcome month. Come, March, come!!