What we have here is a failure to communicate

The last couple days have been full of things going wrong (other than Christmas itself, it should be said... we had a good meal Christmas Eve, and yesterday morning was lovely - thanks to Michael, Deanna got a few things she really loved, and I got a new microwave to fix the one that broke!)

But check this out -

1.  Christmas Eve, we make a quick run to the store for a few last minute items, and some ancient man in a car tries to back into us as he's leaving his parking space (and it was one of those great situations where there was no way to back up to avoid him).  After getting honked at he stops... and then apparently has no idea what the honk was, and tries to back up again.  When his bumper was about a foot from my head, he finally got the point and stopped.  A minute later, he drives past us and glares with all the Christmas Joy of Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life.   Near Death Experience #1 for Christmas, woo hoo!!

2. A frozen pumpkin pie in a box... thought it was precooked because the sole directive on it was 'refrigerate after thawing'..no cooking instructions.  So, I take it down to thaw, then go to open it, tilting the box to get at the pull off strip... and thawed raw pumpkin custard goes all over the box.   So no pumpkin pie for us.  I am promising to make one homemade for New Years Eve.

3. Christmas Day - no plan to cook because we're going to my daughter's MIL later and Michael has to leave at 1:00 to catch a plane to go visit his family in Florida.  But, breakfast is requested and I decide to try these awesome little sausage balls.  I used a couple Pyrex containers instead of a cookie sheet (I am so very tired of washing my cookie sheets was my train of thought).  The sausage balls smelled incredible.  I'm almost positive they'd have tasted incredible too...

... had my casserole dish - that i have used and loved for many, many years - didn't EXPLODE on me.  I had just taken it from the oven and set it down there on the burner (NOT a hot burner, but not freezing cold, either - believe me I've run through all the possible things I might have done wrong here, but this is a mystery).  I was bending over into the oven to retrieve the other batch (the pyrex pie plate you see to the rear) when BLAM, right next to my head, and glass rubble was all over the place.  I have no idea how I managed to not startle badly enought to fall into the stove or drop the hot pie plate, but I didn't.  I also by some miracle had no glass in my hair or clothing (or embedded in my flesh like some Christmas Day Horror Movie), even through the floor was so full of glass I couldn't move at all without stepping on some, so had to have my daughter sweep her way to me to clear a path.

Then we had to hustle the animals away to keep them from getting cut, and wait for the glass to cool enough to try cleaning up.  Not that they needed encouragement to stay away - for the record a loud kaboom and me screaming does NOT lead to Lassie-like heroics.  It leads to animals prying themselves under the nearest piece of furniture and covering their eyes.

I bailed on going over for Christmas dinner yesterday, and spent the afternoon emptying counters and scrubbing, and checking everything for bits of glass - the pieces ranged from very large all the way down to dust so it had to be a very thorough job.  Before I started cleaning, Deanna took a couple pictures (demonstrating that a good cleaning was seriously called for, glass or no glass... I'd just sort of hoped I wouldn' have to do it on Christmas!)

But this picture reveals something that turned this from a highly discouraging 'now I have to clean all day AND I lost one of my favorite dishes AND we didn't even get to taste those sausage balls' highly annoying but not catastrophic event to 'woowwww... I could seriously be really dead right now' moment:

You can see the rubble on the door - that had to have gone over my head to get there (remember, I was leaning into the oven pulling out a pie plate when this happened)... but the real story here is that gigantic butcher's knife sized section of the side of the casserole dish that is on the rack itself - for that to have gotten there, it had to have missed my head by less than inches.  How that didn't wind up stuck in my neck or face or taking off my scalp, I'll never know.

Looking over all the possible ways this could have occurred (extremes in temperature - going from freezing to hot or hot to freezing - is the typical culprit), the only thing the manufacturers have to offer is that invisible fractures can get water in them and lead to this.  And that's probably what did happen... but having no idea how one goes about checking for invisible fractures, I'm now worried that my remaining casserole dishes may need to be retired from service.  I'm pretty sure I'm not lucky enough to survive this twice.

4. Not deadly, but annoying:  my cell phone service came due yesterday - which I knew but I tend to think that if a bill is due ON a certain date, that means it needs to be paid sometime by the end of that date - not so Virgin Mobile (new phone so I'm not yet familiar with their quirks) - which I discovered yesterday morning when daughters started sending me photo texts of their Christmases, and got nothing but a rather rudely worded noticed that someone was sending me something but because I'm a big slacker and don't pay my bill first thing in the morning, I'm not getting it, nyah.

So everything else comes to a halt so I can go online and pay my bill, which I do, confirm receipt, and carry on, phone working, so lots of calls, lots of pictures, lots of holiday cell phone merriment.

Until today, I try to send myself a photo and get a low balance notice - go back to the website, and wow!  I think what's happened is they didn't apply my money to the monthly fee, and instead piecemeal spent it all day yesterday!  And now they want more money!

I hate cell phone companies! I have an email into them, but it IS sunday and the day after Christmas, so I'm pretty sure I'm out my paid-for phone until Monday.  I like my phone, and am happy with their service, but I really hate dealing with their website - this is the second time I've had difficulties managing to pay them without issues, and they talk like you're late on paying when you're not.

I may have to hire someone to pay my bill each month, because if this keeps up, I'm going to go insane, just see if I don't.

So... Mercury retro until the 30th.  At this point, I'm wondering if I'll survive that long!