It's Fri-YAY Again!

 Happy Fri-YAY again! It has been a week as they say! And, once again, plans go from one thing to another! I don't know why it surprises me anymore, but, somehow, I am always still taken aback.

This change wasn't anywhere as fun as most of my changes usually turn out being. The week had been going along with me pretty much staying on course and making my list for when I finally ventured out. I used to LOVE shopping and constantly being on the go. That is not how I feel any more-I still love shopping but I just don't love getting there! That has a lot to do with the large amount of traffic and crowds that my once sweet, small little city used to have to the mass of people and cars it seems to be these days. The other part of my liking to stay close to home has to do with my car.

Now, this is a LONG story that goes back so many years. I must preface this by saying that I LOVE everything about my car. I know every detail! It is like another child-I know its symptoms and when it is really "sick" or when it is just milking the situation. Lol

I won't bore you with all of the details but, many years ago it started giving me issues with not always starting. At that time, the starter-or something else in that area-was replaced but the mechanic told me it could be a larger electrical problem which would cost a fortune to remedy.

I tended to ignore a lot of things because I didn't want to face the next decision and over the years, things happened that kind of supported that theory-doors locked or unlocked when I hadn't pressed the fob, radio stations changed on their own, the telescoping steering wheel lost one of its functions, etc. And yet, I forged ahead.

Many times the car wouldn't start on the first crank but almost always started on one of the next few...until the other early morning when I was all ready to head out to a day FULL of errands. No matter how many times I tried, it would not start and there were lights flashing and clicking noises coming from every corner of that car!

And, at this point I could keep my head in the sand no longer. Of course, as things always do, this couldn't have happened at a worse time. One daughter was already out of state, the other was flying out soon and my brother and sister-in-law-who seem to bail me out a lot-were soon to head of on their long planned autumn trip.

And so, with no one else to bother, I called one of my sons-in-law and even though he had a full day ahead of him, he came over. His go-to answer is always "the battery" even though my battery was only two years old-but, I didn't argue. He ended up taking my battery to our mechanic rather than just one of those automotive parts stores and left it there when the readings were a bit contradicting.

And I waited....until much later that day when he returned with a new battery and the news that the mechanic said that he couldn't get any charge into the battery. He put the new one in and that car fired up stronger than I think I have ever heard! And the answer for now seems that I just don't drive my car enough and every time I do start it the computer pulls too much charge from the battery and the kind that can't be recovered...and so, I am killing my batteries from underuse. Not only that but the general opinion now seems to be that I have been worrying too much about the electrical failure and the draining of the battery has been the culprit all along. I'm still not 100% sold on that answer because of all of the other weird stuff that has transpired that all seem to point to electric but I headed out yesterday to get those much overdue errands run and my car started up every time with a strength that I haven't felt in awhile. I guess the moral of the story is that I am going to have to do a bit more driving in the future-not a favorite pastime of mine but we shall see.

In any case, I do have a list a mile long of little things I need to do today so I thought I would just give you a quick peek at the primary bedroom for this year. There is a bit more decoration in here than usual but that is just because of my photo overload for Halloween. I just have to display them somewhere and this is prime real estate. lol

The bed is now dressed in its autumn/winter finest. I used to have four seasonal changes but I gave in on that and just kept my two favorites. They were all Ralph Lauren as his patterns have just always spoken to me so it was really hard to weed out two others but I did. sigh

The nightstand to the left holds some of the pictures of my favorite costumes that my husband and I wore-although upon reflection, this group is missing our Miss Piggy/Kermit collaboration that I absolutely loved. 

And I couldn't bear to put away those beautiful "coffee" tulips so I just placed them on top of the jewelry armoire that sits in the corner. That picture above is a painting that our girls had done for us on one of our anniversaries.

And while we are here, I thought I would show you a few of my purchases from yesterday. One of my stops was Walmart. There were two Christmas pictures that I am still looking for and I was able to find one. I'm hoping I will find the other when the Halloween stuff is finally cleared out and maybe more Christmas will be loaded except that the one I can't find is a "My Texas House" and looks like it might already be sold out everywhere.

I love the arched frame on this one. My new Christmas stash is starting to grow but I really don't need even one more thing so I need to start to rein it in! Lol

And then I did something I really shouldn't have. LOL I think I told you that the black garland out front is really showing its wear and I have already put my new hanging black garland on the family room mantle-and, those of you who have been around know that I seem to always have trouble getting garlands just as I want them on that mantle. And, once I finally got that FR mantle just as I wanted, I realized that it really doesn't show up as much as I would have wanted. And so, I thought of swapping the two hanging garlands to the outside and then just getting one more to put in the FR with maybe just some creepy cloth. And, I discussed that idea with my sister-in-law the last time she was here and we both decided that to swap all of that out would be more than needed for this year-especially since I'm not even going to be here the last week of so of the month And, I was good with that until I saw just one more of these left on the bottom shelf at Walmart:

My "fear of losing out" took over and I had to bring it home with me...and, of course, now that I have, I'm having a hard time not tearing everything apart. At this moment, I'm not sure how this will play out but I guess you will know when I show you the family room in a few days. Lol

So that is it for me. I'm off to get those little things done before the weekend gets here. And, I need to spend some time with this guy who has been very patient watching over me as I write this.

I'll be back soon if I can find any time between driving my car around hither and yon and filling said car up with gas from driving around hither and yon! Life just got so much more complicated. LOL Stay safe and stay tuned.