Little Susie Homemaker

No school today because of the -10 degree temperature and black ice on the road. E and I were bored and made a blueberry pie for Howie. When I was little we used to make "pinwheels" out of the leftover crust. Butter, sugar, cinnamon onto the rolled up crust, cut up and bake right along with the pie. (Really, really healthy.) So that's what I was going to do with her, but she was having so much fun just playing in it that I just let her go. She's still playing as I type this, and I just avert my eyes from the flour covered floor and rug. The apron my mom made for her at Christmas. I have a matching one, but she looks much cuter in hers.

As far as the other kitchen goes, we decided that we better have the furnace inspected before we go tearing the kitchen apart so that we weren't in for any suprises. Well SUPRISE!! We need a new furnace. Some nonsense about cracks in 2 of the 5 heat exchangers and carbon monoxide being dangerous and blah blah blah ;). I watched the guy basically do a colonoscopy on the furnace, and I saw the cracks through his little camera, so I am glad that we found out now rather than at an inspection. So needless to say gutting the kitchen is on indefinite hold.

While the furnace guy was at house, I had to leave for 15 minutes to go get E from school. When I came back, as I drove over the little hill leading to our house, I spotted a Sherrif's Deputy Vehicle in my driveway. In probably 5 milliseconds time thoughts ran through my head like " The furnace guy has a deputy that's a friend",
" The furnace guy found illegal drugs in my house from before we moved there." ,
" It's illegal to have cracked heat exchangers and he called the cops". I couldn't possibly make my brain rationalize what the heck a cop was doing in my empty house. So after the 5 milliseconds, I pulled up to the curb and greeted the nice lady cop. ( Can I say lady cop? Is that like stewardess or actress anymore? ) Anyhow, she wanted to know if I knew a Howard Brown. Instant panic. Yes I know a Howard Brown. Is he dead? Injured? In trouble for the illegal drugs the furnace guy found? None of the above. She wanted to know if he owned a red Dodge Shadow with front end damage parked on a street called Shady Creek. Um, no. Now I myself know 3 other Jen Browns, so I figured that they had the wrong Howard Brown. So she emphasized that she was looking for a Howard W. Brown II. Not so many of those around, just my husband, as far as I know. But we have never owned a Dodge Shadow. ( Those of you that know Howie know he would rather ride a bike to work than own a Dodge.) My brain is still working overtime as I'm talking to this cop. We did own a red Acura Integra that was hit by a drunk driver early last year. It was parked in front of our house and totaled. We got a salvage title and sold it to a guy who works at the local Honda dealership. He was going to use it for parts. So the cop called over on her little walkie-talkie on her shoulder to see if it was an Integra. Which it was. With the plate "6ntwins", which were our old plates from a Toyota Supra he had that he slapped on the Integra and forgot to take off when he sold it. So this guy had pushed it out in front of his house to make room in his driveway for a party. Some neighbor complained that it was just sitting there, and they ran the plates, which came back to us. This is tax money at work, let me tell you. Scaring the crap out of me because of a damaged car parked in the street. I got ahold of the guy at the dealership, who was very apologetic and promised he would move the car. Otherwise it was our responsibility to take care of it in 24 hours. Moral of the story, if you sell a car, make sure you take your plates with you. Otherwise you might end up on the next episode of "Cops".