DIY Skirt from PJ Pants

On Sunday, when we were having my father-in-law's funeral/burial, the weather was pretty ugly: rainy, wet, chilly. I decided I wanted to wear these boots to keep my legs and feet warm and dry for stomping around at the cemetery.

I was originally wearing a basic knee-length black skirt, but when I put the boots on I thought, "These look like Scottish boots to me. I wish I had a tartan/plaid skirt to wear with them."

I had a turquoise skirt that was a little longer and maybe in a vague way resembled a kilt-like skirt with the two darts at the waist. I wore a dark brown, suede-type material long-sleeve shirt with it.
I guess it looked okay, no one told me I looked cute.
(When people tell me I look cute, they're really saying I look worse than usual, but they're too nice to actually say I look worse than usual, so they say I look cute. Trust me, I never look cute on my best day.)

Anyhoo. Couple days later, J brought in the bags of his Dad's clothes and personal items from the nursing home/hospital to go through and decide what to do with it all.
I was washing the clothes to be donated to a thrift store.

When lo and behold, what fell into my hands: (A pair of red plaid men's lounge pants)

I thought to myself, "I wonder if/I bet you can, make a skirt from pants," so I searched the internet to see if/how hard such a thing would be to do.

*Please note - this isn't a tutorial because I pretty much had no clue what I was doing. If you want to turn a pair of pants into a skirt, Search the 'net and find a site of someone who knows what they're doing.

I looked at some photos of it (I tried to read some How to's, but I'm not a sew'er so I don't understand a lot of the instructions and then I just get lost....) anyway I managed to get an idea of what I thought I might could try.

First, I cut the legs off.

Then I used my seam-ripper to rip open the legs seams. (Mostly. I don't really have the patience for that, so I just ripped some of the longer ones apart.)

I forgot to take a picture after this, but I turned the opened legs upside down, so the narrow'er ends were at the top.

They measured approx. 18" across, for a total of 36" around at the butt/top of the thighs.

I laid the legs together with wrong sides facing out and sewed the seams up to make the skirt part.

I turned the top part inside out and sewed new seams, taking a couple inches off each side, so the top part was (approx.) the same width, 18-inches across, as the legs/skirt part.

I turned both parts inside out and pinned the edges together, intending to sew them together that way, but when I turned it back right side out to check it, that didn't look right.

I ended up hemming the top part, then sewing it to the bottom/legs/skirt part.

I cut the bottom off the skirt straight(ish) and hemmed it,

And, to my amazement, I had made a skirt,

 

Here's the thing.
I love the bottom part of the skirt. It's swingy.

I would like you show you the top part, that should have gone around my butt/hips, but no.
Let's put it this way: after sewing, the butt/thighs part came out approx. 35" around, and turns out my big 'ol butt is more like 40".

Arrrrrgggghhhhh!!!

Last Thursday

After I smudged at the end of last month, things seemed to even out somewhat around here.

There was the weather - bitterly cold (for us, here in the South) - and the whole maybe-it-will-or-maybe-it-won't ice/snow forecasts. 

I've tried to keep a positive attitude about it - it's Winter, it's supposed to be cold. If it wasn't, something would be wrong.
And, although sometimes it seems like it's been cold for so long, it really hasn't been but a few days all told.

Even though I realistically know that even if we get snow/ice storms, it'll be gone in a day or two, I still worry, and prepare for Major Winter Weather events.
Preparing helps to calm me.

The only thing I can't really prepare for/control is my son and husband having to drive to work in bad/icy weather conditions.
I try to, I try to get them to go into work early, the day before or hours before. But with so many hit-and-misses in the forecast, they get aggravated when they went in for nothing, and could have been at home, relaxing and resting instead. I can't blame them for that, I certainly prefer to be home.
So I try to not worry so much about it.
I remind myself that J drove to work in some pretty rough conditions last year and it was okay, and R got new tires on his 4-wheel drive Pathfinder, he'll more than likely be okay.

A lot of people wouldn't think it because I'm generally pretty mellow these days, que sera sera and all, but no, actually I'm a natural born worrier. I get anxious, suffer anxiety.
But used to I just worried, and that's all.
At some point I guess I figured out that I could do things to ease the worry. Either deal with/fix the issue, be prepared for the worst, or explain to myself why all that worrying is a useless waste of effort and energy.

No, it's not nearly as easy as it sounds, but I try.

Preparing helps calm me a lot.
I'm one of those nuts that everyone likes makes to fun of for making sure I have an extra jug of milk and loaf of bread if it's going to snow. I don't even know why that's so important, but it comforts me, so people can kiss my grits.

By last Thursday, we were on our about 3rd or 4th Winter Weather Advisory for freezing rain/sleet/ice/snow.
In retrospect it wasn't really much different, no better or worse, than the previous Advisories I don't think, but for some reason I took it a little worse, and prepared harder. I spent the day in the kitchen making a huge pot of vegetable soup, a big pan of cornbread and biscuits, and a chocolate cake...to get ready.
(Which, I even said at the time, was pretty silly, considering I have a gas kitchen stove - an older one, with a standing pilot light that doesn't require electronic ignition to work - so I could have cooked all of that even if it did get bad and we lost power.)

I guess, though, it had been a hard week.
Not for us, particularly, but our family(s), and other people I have a connection with, tenuous as it may be.

I can't even really remember all of it at this point.
My diabetic Uncle is having a lot of trouble with infections, and has to go to the hospital for IV antibiotics every day for 6 weeks.  (My Aunt laments this everyday on FB. Not that I can blame her, I'm sure I would, too! But we offered to help, to take him sometimes, and she won't call on us.)
Some of my fire wives and facebook friends were having health and home issues.

People were dying....I can't even recall who all has died at this point.
One of my fire wife friends lost her Aunt tragically.
An old acquaintance from high school whose husband had been battling cancer passed suddenly.

One of my Dad's long long time best friends passed suddenly, unexpectedly.
My Dad was(is) in a MC before I was born/when I was a baby/kid, so his friends were in my life as I was growing up, like Uncles.
This particular one was closer than the others, his wife was my Mom's friend and my Aunt's sister-in-law, their son was about the same age as me, we spent a lot of time together as familys, outside the Club.
He's the reason I have (had) good posture/stance (better when I was younger).
After I got older, doing my own thing, I didn't hang out with my parents or their (old) friends - (haaa, their "old" friends would have been younger than I am now) - and after I married and had kids of my own and all, I pretty much lost touch with most of his friends. I'd see them here and there, over the years, but rarely.
But even so, it felt like a great loss.

Mom had texted to tell me about him being found dead, and how upset my Dad was.
She said he'd lost another friend the weekend before, and one of her old school friends had passed away. I knew about him, my Aunt had gone to his funeral.

Then I was like, holy hell, my parents are at the age where their friends are going to start dropping like flies.

The hospital J's Dad was in called and told him they'd moved him to ICU because he had fluid in his lungs, so that Thursday, J and his brother went up there to visit him, while I tried to assuage my worry over the weather - particularly R having to drive in it - with cooking.

J texted later and said they'd thought his Dad had had a light heart attack. I was like, Oh, hmm, but not especially concerned because light heart attack. People have major heart attacks every day and survive. Light heart attacks aren't big deals these days, are they?

At some point that day, my fire wife friend who'd lost her Aunt, came home after the funeral to find out she'd lost her job without any warning. Holy crap. Who does that to someone??

Then....a guy I'd gone to school with, hadn't seen in 30 years, or probably spoke with either, but we've been "friends" on FB for a couple of years....he did something terrible, didn't say exactly what, but broke his wife's trust to the point she threw him out and his kids aren't speaking to him.
He's tore up, broken hearted, crying, wondering why he doesn't just end it all, begging forgiveness, etc etc. all on his FB page.
If he did what I think he did, I don't want to have any sympathy for him, but he's just so darn pitiful.

At this point, I was literally crying for all these people and everything. I don't cry easily.
And, I hate to cry.
So I decided it was time for a facebook break awhile.
Whooooo weeee!

I got in my pajammies and took my kindle and was just crawling under my electric blanket when I heard J in the livingroom talking to someone on the phone. Nothing unusual about that, but then it sounded like, from what I gathered from his end of the conversation, that it was a nurse or someone from the hospital where his Dad was, and she was asking him to make a/some decision he didn't want to.
He said, "He wasn't that far gone when I was just up there earlier," and, "I'll just come up there. I'll be there in about half an hour."

I was already getting dressed when he came in here, knowing it was bad.
He was in denial. He lives in denial pretty much most of the time, but I guess I assumed with him being so "medically trained", even he would see when serious was serious.
His Dad was all but dead when we got there, and I can't imagine he went from "Okay" to that condition in the few hours since they'd visited him that day.

He passed away about 3 hours after we got there.

Then we had to plan a funeral - or as I call them, torture sessions - over the weekend.
With potential snow/ice weather coming.

Luckily the weather wasn't bad after all, and we got through the torture session funeral.

A distant cousin of J's had passed away on Saturday. We didn't really know him, but his daughter is with the local Forestry unit and works with J and also R out here on big brush/woods fires, so J went to pay his respects last night.

Yesterday the weather prediction was for freezing rain/sleet/rain.snow again overnight into this morning.
I wasn't too worried about it....until it actually started sleeting.
Even then, the temps were above freezing, and it alternated with rain, so no big deal.
But every time I tried to go sleep, ice pellets would start hitting the window.
Around 2'ish am I gave up and got up and sat in the recliner and read until it was time for R to get up at 4am.

The temps were still right at freezing at that point, so I was pretty sure the road temps would be warmer and wouldn't be icy. R texted when he got there and said it hadn't been any problem.

I went to bed after that. J got up, he had to work at the ambulance today. He woke me up later to tell me it was snowing, it was accumulating, and he was leaving early to make sure he had plenty of time to get down there.
I may or may not have grunted at him.
Anyway I woke up later to a dusting of rapidly melting snow/sleet.

Which brings us to Round 3. The Good One, they're saying.
(No, not compared to Up North..but for around here, where snow is generally atypical.)

We're under a Winter Weather Warning this time, starting tomorrow at 10am, through Thursday at 10pm. Expected to get anywhere from 2" to 6-7" inches of snow out of this one.

J & R are both off tomorrow, so that's a good thing.

R called while ago, leaving work, and asked if he needed to stop and get 4 loaves of bread and 16 jugs of milk.
I said, well, I felt like I needed him to.
Even though I already have milk & bread.
Apparently the actual milk & bread itself isn't the....thing. The soother. I don't know.

Anyway, he's not stopping to buy more, and (unless I break down and send J in the morning) I may be making it through this big weather event without buying more milk & bread.

Then I just have to not fret about them making it to work on Thursday.

Or wondering who's going to die next.

Troll Doll Planter

Pinterest idea project.

Bought this little fellow at a thrift store for 50¢.

Used my X-acto knife to separate it's hair from it's head. It's glued on there pretty good. Use fingernail polish remover (acetone) to remove residual hair/glue.

Used a dremel tool to carve out interior of head (hair holder).

Add soil and succulent or air plant. 

Pie Crusts, Chocolate Pie, and The Feels

After J left for work this morning, I laid in bed and read for a little while, 'til I dozed off again a couple of hours later. During that little nap, I had a bad dream.

I don't dream much, or don't recall it if I do. Or I dream in weird, short snippits that aren't really about anything.

This morning's dream was long, went on a long time, with a lot going on, and I thought I had watched my Mom get killed in a plane crash.
Turned out she wasn't on the plane that I watched crash, though, so it was all good.

I finally got out of bed, and decided to make the pie crusts I've been planning to make for awhile.
I needed some pie tins (my old ones are in pretty badly used shape) so I finally picked up a couple of 3-packs when I went grocery shopping yesterday.

I had the recipe from when I made homemade pie crusts before, using Self-rising flour, but this time I had some All-purpose flour, so thought I'd give a try making them the recommended way.

I had found a Crisco Flaky Pie Crust recipe, but noticed it called for Bleached flour, and - of course, because isn't it always the way - mine is Unbleached.

So I went online to try to figure out what is the difference, and the King Arthur Flour website says Unbleached is okay to use in pie crusts.

I had copied the Crisco recipe, and the King Arthur "Generous Version" recipe, since I was making several crusts, I figured I could make more at one time. (Bad idea.)

Eventually I used my original recipe, substituting 1 cup Self-rising flour with 1 cup All-purpose Flour and 1 tsp. Salt,
1/3 cup of Crisco shortening  (chilled in freezer)
and 2 Tablespoons ice water.

Usually I work in the quiet, or whatever usual noise there is. I don't typically need outside noise, because it's always so noisy inside my head.

But today I thought I'd turned the TV on to one of the music stations, because music is always (usually) nice to work to.

I turned on the 80's station, being that was my Era. I was a teen/high schooler in the early 80's. Loved the music of the time, still do.

Turns out, though, the music is a double-edged sword.
I had some good times in the 80's....
but I made a lot of bad decisions. Have a lot of regret.

A particular song came on that reminded me of someone I miss a lot.
Which led to more memories, and it was all down hill from there.
Duh-press-sing.

Finally I went and turned it to the 50's channel.
I miss the 50's.

Got my pie crusts made, flash frozen, wrapped in foil and into the freezer.

R had requested a chocolate pie recently, so while I was making crusts anyway, I made an extra to make him a pie.

My Mom was the chocolate pie maker....as far as we knew.
Until I asked her the recipe. She said she got it from (my Dad's Mom), who got it from her Church recipe book. (So much for Family Heirloom recipes, LOL.)

(I'll try to remember to make a printable recipe later.)

Separate 3 eggs. Beat yolks.

In saucepan combine:
3 beaten egg yolks
1 cup Sugar
3 Tablespoons Cocoa powder
3 Tablespoons Butter
2 Tablespoons Flour
1 cup of Milk

Stir until thick, stirring constantly.
It should be thick by the time it boils.

Remove from heat, add 1 teaspoon of Vanilla.

Pour into baked pie shell.
(Pre-bake the pie shell. I sometimes forget I'm supposed to bake the pie shell before adding the filling)

The recipe didn't come with instructions for pre-baking the shell. I just put it in on 350* until it seems baked enough.

To make the meringue, beat the egg whites with electric beater, adding about 1/4 cup sugar gradually.

Spoon/spread meringue over pie and bake in oven 'til browned.
I use 350* for a bit, then Broil for a bit. (Or a little longer if I don't stand right there and keep an eye on it.)

I think the crusts made with the All-purpose was a little harder to make, maybe took a little more physical effort.

At any rate, it seemed like a crap load of work for 7 crusts and a chocolate pie.

Between that, and the emotions, I feel like I've been through the wringer today.

Go Smudge Yourself: The Clif Notes

(Summary of my rambling, long-winded previous post.)

In my last post I talked about how much I/we had gotten accomplished during the month of January, and that it had been a good month.

It had been a good month as far as meeting my personal goal(s) and not letting the cold weather get to me, making me depressed and lethargic and all.

But, other ways, it wasn't that good of a month at all.

It seemed like a lot of things we tried to do was a huge pain in the ass.
Projects wouldn't go as planned, have to be re-done sometimes.
New problems with the house found while trying to fix old ones.
I was trying to Save money, extra expenses kept popping up.
I found out our camper roof had started leaking.
J was dealing with his Dad's illness, the nursing home, insurance, finances. He took some days off work, and was home more than usual.
R's car projects kept going wrong. Forgot to get up for work one morning - like his second or third day on his new job!!

 I decided it couldn't hurt anything to try the smudging ritual.

I lit the white sage smudge stick and started in the corner at the front door, moving clockwise around the room, and downstairs floor.
Upstairs doesn't have a circle floor plan, so I did my best.

I waved the smudge-smoke with the feather, intoning random chanting:
"Bad energy, leave this place. Only good energy allowed in this space."
"Bad, bad, go away, we only want good here today."
"Out with the negative, bad, painful, soul-sucking, evil energy. Only good, prosperous, helpful, loving energy is welcome here." 

I did the entire house, and even out in the carport, back porch, around our cars, campers, and what I could out in the yard around the outbuilding.  Just in case.

I did the Smudging on January 31st.
It's now February 8th, and maybe it's just coincidence, but things have really turned around this week.

J's Dad was moved to a better facility, and the financial issues were cleared up - like magic. No joke.
J's shifts at work fell to where he was at work more than at home (always a good thing).
R's work on his car started working out with no issues. Things he'd been trying to do, giving him trouble, suddenly went exactly like they were supposed to. 
One unexpected bill came in the mail, but turns out it's one I already paid. My payment wasn't applied for some reason, but I'll call tomorrow and get it taken care of.
I received a $50 rebate gift card in the mail. It's always nice to get money instead of bills.

Read the Instructions

It's not even like I think, "Nahhh, I don't need to read the instructions. I can figure it out."

It's as if there never was such a thing as instructions to be read, even though I might be holding the directions/recipe right there in my hand. Like with the cookies.

I mentioned this thing back in September, when I first started making Putz houses, that I'm not too good at reading directions...
"I read like the first line, then the rest is blah blah blah..."

Actually, as far back as January 2012, when I made my first batch of canned jam...
"Apparently you shouldn't read only like the first five words of a sentence of instructions. Apparently all the words they write there are important."

Gah, no telling how many times it's happened that I don't even know about.

I need to work on improving this, but I'm not sure how?

It's not like I can say, "Slow down, take your time, pay attention"...because if I went any slower, I'd be going backwards.

I'm very rarely ever in a hurry anymore. No need to be. I have all the time in the world.

Oh well. I'll have to try to remember to remind myself to Read the Instructions every time I do something.

Chocolate Chip Cookies, Revisit

I decided to try to bake homemade Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies again.

I didn't do too good with my last batch. I thought I'd try something new this time: following the directions.
 Apparently you aren't supposed to toss all the ingredients into the bowl together at once.

First, my butter is supposed to be softened/room temperature.
Then I mix it with the 3/4 cup of light or dark brown sugar, beating until completely mixed and fluffy.

*Confession: I eat brown sugar by spoonfuls. It's soo delicious. 

 Added my egg and vanilla, then stirred in salt, flour, and the chocolate chips, and scooped the cookies onto a parchment lined cookie sheet.
I baked them at 350* for approx 10 minutes and....

Voila' !

Much better cookies!

And so easy.  The recipe isn't at all complicated (if you actually bother to read it) and there's only 5 ingredients, all of which I always keep around here all the time anyway.

Go Smudge Yourself

Recently I took a personality test/indicator, and my type turned out to be INTP (which explains a lot).

More about that later, but as applies to this post, basically this:

• Open-Minded - INTPs couldn't make these connections if they thought they knew it all - they are highly receptive to alternate theories, so long as they're supported by logic and facts.

I've struggled with the....unexplainable for most of my adult life. Religion being the biggie, ghosts/spirits, majick and various other forms of woo-woo and hoo-doo-ery.

I've personally seen and/or experienced some, as far as I can determine, pretty unexplainable things in my life.

• INTPs are known for their brilliant theories and unrelenting logic - in fact, they are considered the most logically precise of all the personality types.

Unrelenting logic is dead on.
Probably one of my most-used phrases is, "That's not even logical!". Sometimes I say, "That don't even make sense!", but means the same thing.

Logical thinking/processing isn't something I do, it's more like something that happens. 
Lot of the time I don't even know it's happening...until an anomaly catches my attention.


I don't...process the unexplainable very well. Unexplained things don't make sense. I need things to make sense, so I look for a logical explanation.

"What was that noise?" 
"What was that flash of light?"
"What did I see out of the corner of my eye?"
"What the f--- is the cat staring at??"

Sometimes I figure out the answers - something fell. A reflection of a car passing by. Probably a nerve twitch in my eye.

And other times, I never do find an answer.
Not that that doesn't mean there isn't one. Just that I can't find it.

Or, maybe there isn't one. Maybe there are things that can't be explained.
Or, rather, just can't be proven.

I wrestle with the subject almost constantly.
To be(lieve), or Not to be(lieve).

I'm sure if I hadn't experienced things personally I wouldn't believe.
Heck, I have experienced things personally, and I still have a hard time believing.
Probably there's a logical explanation of what happened.

So, even though a lot of the things don't seem to have a logical or factual explanation, I feel it necessary to keep an open mind about unknown or unexplained things.

With that likely rambling and over-long explanation, I'll get to my point.

In my last post I talked about how much I/we had gotten accomplished during the month of January, and that it had been a good month.

It had been a good month as far as meeting my personal goal(s) and not letting the cold weather get to me, making me depressed and lethargic and all.

But, other ways, it wasn't that good of a month at all.

It seemed like a lot of things we tried to do was a huge pain in the ass.
Projects wouldn't go as planned, have to be re-done sometimes.
New problems with the house found while trying to fix old ones.
I was trying to Save money, extra expenses kept popping up.
I found out our camper roof had started leaking.
J was dealing with his Dad's illness, the nursing home, insurance, finances. He took some days off work, and was home more than usual.
R's car projects kept going wrong. Forgot to get up for work one morning - like his second or third day on his new job!!

We were all like, "Damn! Damn! This is how 2015 is going to go? Take it back!"

I kept trying to remain positive. Concentrate on the good - ignore the bad. It's bound to get better, right?

At one point I made a comment to the effect of that I needed to "Smudge the place". 

Essentially, a smudge ritual or a smudge ceremony is performed to correct the energy in a home, in an office, in an object, or even in a person.

I had learned about smudging some time ago, at another pretty bad time in our life.
I didn't know if I really believed in such a thing, but was desperate enough to order some smudge sticks off ebay.

I never did light them that time. I think I just waved them around the room and said "Go away, bad energy." (Obviously I was really into it, lol.)
I can't recall what happened after that, but I'm supposing things turned better.

In which case, I suppose I didn't believe the sage sticks had anything to do with anything, since I hadn't done it right, but things got better anyway.

So, anyway, at some point last month, I made that comment, but didn't actually follow through, and just hoped whatever bad mo-jo would pass.

Then there was the day....I was working on my Putz houses near the fireplace in the livingroom.
I'd get up and go to the kitchen to wash out my paintbrush, to get a drink, whatever.
When I came back into the livingroom, I'd be looking...different directions, no where in particular - ahead, to the side, down.

That day, every time I returned to the livingroom, something there in the corner where the gun cabinet and the china cabinet nearly meet kept catching my attention.
From the side of my eye, I'd see something. Some one? Standing? there.

But of course when I jerked my eyes over to see (what? who?), there was nothing (no one) there.

Of course I pooh-pooh'ed it, saying it was probably a reflection in the glass.
Probably it was, even though it didn't happen the next day, nor has it since.

The next thing that happened, I didn't witness or experience myself, but it was so out of the ordinary, and timely, it's kind of hard to just dismiss out of hand.

Two days after whatever was going on in the livingroom, my youngest son had taken a plate of food and a glass of sweet tea up to his room, as usual.
He sat the plate and drink on a side table and turned/stepped away to sit down. At which point his tea glass fell off the table, and shattered to pieces - pretty much exploded apart a few feet in every direction - when it hit floor, despite landing on carpeting.

Of course I asked, had he set it too close to the edge of the table? Did he bump or knock the table when he turned away? 
He showed me where he'd set the glass, by the plate, not close to the edge of the table.
He'd turned and stepped away from the table, not to or beside it, to have to bumped or rocked it.

The...weird thing was, after the glass had fell, he'd come back downstairs to get towels to clean it up, he told me grumpily, "I think there's something in this house that don't belong."

I hadn't even mentioned my experience - of what I figured was probably a reflection or something equally explainable - in the livingroom to him or anyone else.

I'm still not sure what happened with the glass of tea, but whatever, that was the last straw. Enough was enough.

Hokey-pokey-hoo-doo or not, I decided it couldn't hurt anything to try the smudging ritual.

I apologize to my great Ancestors in advance - no disrespect intended - but I'm probably the least....ceremonial person there is.

The red bird bowl and the turkey feather doesn't has any more particular meaning than, it's what I had.

I lit the white sage smudge stick and started in the corner at the front door, moving clockwise around the room, and downstairs floor.
Upstairs doesn't have a circle floor plan, so I did my best.

I waved the smudge-smoke with the feather, intoning random chanting:
"Bad energy, leave this place. Only good energy allowed in this space."
"Bad, bad, go away, we only want good here today."
"Out with the negative, bad, painful, soul-sucking, evil energy. Only good, prosperous, helpful, loving energy is welcome here." 

I did the entire house, and even out in the carport, back porch, around our cars, campers, and what I could out in the yard around the outbuilding.  Just in case.

I did the Smudging on January 31st.
It's now February 8th, and maybe it's just coincidence, but things have really turned around this week.

J's Dad was moved to a better facility, and the financial issues were cleared up - like magic. No joke.
J's shifts at work fell to where he was at work more than at home (always a good thing).
R's work on his car started working out with no issues. Things he'd been trying to do, giving him trouble, suddenly went exactly like they were supposed to. 
One unexpected bill came in the mail, but turns out it's one I already paid. My payment wasn't applied for some reason, but I'll call tomorrow and get it taken care of.
I received a $50 rebate gift card in the mail. It's always nice to get money instead of bills.

There's coincidence, then there's coincidence.
I mean, what are the odds, that after a whole month - 31 straight days of aggravation and irritations - that I'd wave around some burning sage and things turn better as soon as the next day, for no reason? 

If it's not simply coincidence, then it's unexplainable. 

Or, maybe it is completely explainable, by things we - people - simply aren't able to explain.

I'm open to there being...things outside the realm of our world or whatever.
But I need to be able to see/prove/explain the things.
Otherwise, my mind continues to reject the things as making no sense.