Well, Almost Two Out of Three Isn't Bad. . .

Well, instead of just whining about my broken things, like I did in my last post, I decided yesterday to, you know, do something about them. I'm really good at whining, and you know what people say about following your passions. But there sometimes come times when you have to stop whining and do something about your situation.

Part of the proactive stance was forced upon me. Aubrey has discovered Netflix watch instantly on my iPod Touch. This is bad. I showed it to her once in desperation for a little time to do some school, and she figured out how to get there on her own. Now she will use any means necessary to watch. Yesterday, we got in a slight tussle over the iPod. She was reaching for it, I was on the laptop, I was trying to get it first, and the screen took a nosedive backward and broke its spine, from which it would never recover. It was still basically functional, except for the part where the screen wouldn't stay up unless propped against the wall.

This is Aubrey today. I'm using our point and shoot. This reminds me why I never, ever use it to take photos of the children. The delay is like 20 seconds. It's pretty much useless for shots of toddlers. Although this one cracks me up. And yes, she is eating a cookie in my bed. This is even my side of the bed. I live under the thumb of a tyrant. Someone send help.

I really thought I had this parenting thing down until I had my younger two. I was a fool.

Oh yeah, the point of all of that is that I have a new laptop! I spent only about 8 hours (maybe more?) a day on the thing, and I just don't want to sit at a desktop for all of that. My bums falls asleep. Between all the school and the blog and the general surfing of the net, I'm always on the thing. It's a HP Pavilion dv7-4061nr Entertainment Notebook if that means anything to you. It doesn't really to me. I just like that it turns on and the hinges hold up the screen. They seem nice and sturdy.

Pretty, huh? It's actually got swirly, wavy things along the back. I kinda wish it was pink or light blue, but I can deal.

On to the almost 2nd thing I fixed. My sewing machine! I got it out and wiped all the dust off of it. I got out the foot petal and the cord. It looked like this:

Not good.

I took off the bottom and there were two little screws with metal bits (shoot, should have taken pictures). I unscrewed those, put the ends of the wires under them and screwed them back down.

Then I opened up the top of my sewing machine and took out all the things my children had stuffed down there. There were a few Cheerios, a crayon, a hair band, and even a pen (!?!). I turned it upside down and shook it a bit. Then I cranked it a bit to see if turned. It seemed to do ok.

Then I plugged everything in, and pressed the foot petal. Success! Everything looked like it was moving correctly. Except. . . something still didn't seem quite right. Here's my machine. It was manufactured in the late sixties in all probability (from my internet research).

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Oh yes, where is my foot? I have no idea. Did my children take it off and lose it? Does my mom still have it? Will I be able to buy a replacement one if I can't find it? (It's not in my sewing things, I already scoured them). Yes, I have fixed my sewing machine, but I still can't sew with it. So, I'm only counting it 1/2 fixed.