First off at Chez Lopez, the freakin phone is missing.  This irritates me no end as I have to carry the remaining downstairs phone around with me everywhere I go or sprint from one end of the house to the other when the damn thing rings because I will, inevitably, be where it’s not.  It doesn’t make much difference if I’m not expecting a phone call.  They can just leave a message or not.  But when I am waiting for the nurse to call me back or one of the kids to call or some such thing, it is damn inconvenient.

Have you seen this phone, except with “Handset 1” on the screen?  I will pay you to tell me where it is.  No, that’s not like a ransom… that would be desperate, and hey, I’m not desperate.  Not at all.  NOW WHERE IS IT!

The last time it was missing I found it in the window sill in the bathroom.  Yeah.  In answer to your question, oh obvious one, I don’t know.  Since I refuse to take it in with me to potty I am assuming it was hanging on my waistband when I went to empty H’s pee can, but who can really be sure?  Not me.

This is where it was before and now it’s not and yes I looked inside that candle thing.  It’s not there.  I have also looked all the other places.

Oh, by now you realize how serious this is to me and are thinking, “Gee, Krissa, why not just page it from the base?”  Well aren’t you brilliant?  (Ooo.  Did that sound snarky?  I’m a touch irritable today, bare with me.)  I will tell you why.  The ringer is turned off.  This is a gift(?) from my husband who hates the phones ringing and turns off the ringers when he comes home from work because the kids are the only ones getting calls on them by that time anyway.  They answer them upstairs.  This is the second day it’s been missing, so it will be dead soon anyway.

So I am awaiting that info on the phone location and will take anonymous tips if you are too scared to tell me you took it.

You should be.

Moving right along.

Remember this?  Well, it turns out that the $10.00 wine cooler/chiller (whatever!) was missing a little pin in the top of the door to hold it on the hinge.  No biggie, right?  So John and I hunted around at the local hardware store for something that would work and we picked up a little 49 cent deal that looked like it would work and, indeed, it fit fine.  However it would shimmy up, out of the hole a bit every time the door was opened and closed.  So I went online to Emersonradio.com, got the phone number and called.  The guy made no promises but told me that they had some replacement parts in the warehouse to send out, but the things are made in China and he kind of doubted that the door hinge pin was one of the things that were kept over here.  In the good ol’ US.  So he was going to put in a request and if they had it they would send it to me.

I never expected to hear from them again.

Well, yesterday Fedex dropped this on my doorstep.

I mean, can you see why I had no idea what it could be?  It is, quite literally, the size of my toaster oven.

Filled to the top with the huge-bubble bubble wrap.  (The kind that is REALLY fun to pop and scare the dogs with!)  And nothing else.

At least that’s what I thought at first.  And then on closer inspection, MUCH closer, I finally found a teeny-tiny pin for the door hinge.

Here it is.  In place and holding the door perfectly.

$10.00 for wine cooler.

Free shipping on the free pin for the door.

About $12.00 for the two bottles of cheapish wine we got on sale inside it.

This is where I’m supposed to say something is “Priceless”, but, really?  Who am I kidding?