So, it’s me again.

I wonder if you were glad to see your teacher again after Christmas break?

I received my letter from you the end of last week.  Of course, like usual, I waited to open it for a while just so I could make it last a bit longer.  And, of course, I was very satisfied with the contents thereof once I had opened it.

I never heard, did you ever try my suggestion of getting the cats out on the ice and making them chase a string?  Or the peanut butter on the roof of your dogs’ mouth? 

I just got through petting Lexi’s cat for her.  Even though she has never asked me to pet it for her, I do, because the joke is actually on the cat and her.  The cat likes me better than her.  It’s totally true, even though neither of them want to admit it.  Tonight, when I was petting him, he kept taking little nips at my arm; I guess biting is his love language.

I had the stupidest thing happen to me this last week.  It’s rather embarrassing besides being stupid. 

Shall I stop now, or do you want to hear the rest of it?

Okay, I’ll tell you the rest of it then.

When Bryce got married, they got this swanky vacuum sweeper.  Since their house wasn’t ready for them yet, they stored it at our place.  Well, one day Bryce takes it out of the box to see how it worked. 

I was super impressed with it.  So much so, that the next time we needed to vacuum, I got his sweeper out of the box and was in the middle of vacuuming the house when he walked in.  I think he got a little mad at me, so I cleaned it all up, even washed it with water, and put it back in the box for him. 

But, I decided it was time to update our vacuum sweeper, and I ordered one just like his. 

Except when it came it wasn’t exactly the same, it was a cheaper, smaller model, so, I packaged it up and sent it back. 

Mama J ordered the right one the next day and, in a week or so we had it and started sweeping up all kinds of dirt and crud that we didn’t even know we were the parents of.

I really liked to vacuum with that sweeper, until the brush roll stopped working on it after we had it, maybe two or three months. 

I looked online for a fix, and found out that the brush roll on these sweepers had this exact problem. 

But it kind of worked and kind of didn’t and then we had a big relighting job at a church where a lot of insulation fell down from out of the attic when we cut the holes for the lights.

We worked the peewiddlin’s out of that sweeper on that job, and I told Mama J since it was kind of on the blink, I thought the business could buy her a new sweeper after we almost used that one up on that church job.

We got a new one, just like it, and everything was hunky-dory.

Except in two months it wasn’t.  The brush roll had quit on the second one. 

I read online how a person could rewire it so it worked, and I went to town and got some special tools to take it apart. 

But, I must be getting old or something, and I didn’t see a little spot that was still fastened when I took it apart, even though I was wearing my reading glasses, and it broke.

We threw that one away, and we said, “We’ll give these things one more try.  Maybe it was coincidence that those two had brush roll problems.”  Besides, if we got it from a store instead of off of Ebay, we could get a five-year warranty and be good, right?

You guessed it.  Vacuum sweeper number 3 developed brush roll problems after we had it about two months. 

“Okay buster,” I said, “It’s the warranty job for you.” 

I got on the phone to get permission from the company to send it back.  They said sure, but they wanted to change over to video to make sure I had a problem.

“Sure,” I said.  I knew we had a problem, because I had tried it right before I called and it still didn’t work. 

Ok.  Here’s the embarrassing part. 

It worked fine during the video call.

I heard the nice lady on the other end of the line try, not very successfully, to suppress her giggles.  I didn’t even try to suppress my stutters.  I was on the verge of mad and didn’t really care what she thought.

And then, I had a lightbulb moment. 

I realized that I was using a different receptacle than the one I had used every other time I vacuumed.

So, I went out to the receptacle we normally used, and tried it. 

No worky.

I went back to the receptacle I had used during the video call.

Worky, worky, worky.

I think maybe I should call an electrician to come look at our receptacles, don’t you think?

Anyways,

Till next time–