What the Junk?!

I hope to sleep tonight. My house worries are over / just starting. What do I mean by that? I got a certified letter today that my house is going up for auction in January.  I have no idea how I'll be able to get anything else as I'm on disability. I will be looking into section 8 and my options. I am glad it's finally over (the worry about losing the house) but I'm SO DAMN UPSET about losing it. NEVER trust family. EVER. It's going to be hard to move the ridiculous amount of stuff I have in my house. I am just so upset. I didn't sleep a wink last night because I knew something bad was coming in the mail today about the house I just didn't know it was going to be that bad. I will survive, though. I hope. I have a friend who will help me move and said he'd rent a truck to help me, so that is a relief.  He is the one I go thrifting with and that I go to the beach with. I still can't believe this is happening. Now that I know the worse, maybe I can sleep tonight. We'll see. :(

I went to bed early last night, but it was hot in my room. I got up and turned on the fan since I'd long since taken my air conditioner out of the window. It didn't help much. It was frustrating when I really needed sleep as I'm stressed and I wanted to sleep and try to not be stressed!  When I woke up (a million times) and finally got up this morning, it was cool in my room. Ugh. I was hot under the covers, but it was cool in my room. So frustrating! At least it's not supposed to get really warm today, hopefully, my room will be cool enough to sleep tonight. I really need some sleep.  I have my writing done, but I still have my other Sunday chores to do. Boo!

I am still using the 13" MBP. I plugged in the messed-up drive. The Mac doesn't recognize it in Disk utility nor does it show on the desktop. It DOES show up if I do a search in the Terminal. I don't know how to get it to show up. I tried a few different ideas I found online, but nothing has worked yet. I will continue to try later. I need a good night's sleep. I went to bed early last night and still didn't sleep well. Also, I hurt my shoulder area somehow. I don't know if I slept wrong or what the deal is, but I can't move certain ways as it HURTS! Ugh, one more thing to deal with. ~_~;

Well, nothing has been fixed. Luckily, I have my 13" MacBook Pro to use. I'm on it now. I  just NOW gave up working on the other one. I will work on it more tomorrow, but for now, I need a break. I was able to get onto the 15" once and grab the important folders in case I have to reset from the factory. Looks like I might have to do that. I so wish I could afford a newer MacBook. I have been looking at the 2019 models. I REALLY want one of those.  I just can't afford one. It would make my life so much easier to have a newer Mac. Oh well, for now, I'll use the little one. At least I can write. That is important!  I haven't written today. Of course not, I've been trying to find solutions. I am going to write after this. Even if it's just a few lines, I will have written today. I'm so frustrated, a few lines I probably best.  I do not do my best writing when I'm stressed!  This little MacBook Pro is great and works well, but I am used to BigSur now and this is running Catalina.  Oh well, I will make due.  I am so glad I have my backup!

I am posting this from my iPad Mini because my MacBook is not acting right. It started to get weird so I restarted it. That took a lot longer than it should and then nothing wanted to work right. It’s annoying af! I have been working on since about 5 or so today. I’m tired of messing with it. I’m rebooting it one more time now and I’ll check on it again tomorrow. At least I can post to my blog with my Mini and my bluetooth keyboard! Ah!  I hate having computer issues. I’ll try again tomorrow to see if I can’t figure out the issue. I’m going to pull out the 13 in MBP and have it ready so I can search and troubleshoot. Wish me luck!

I haven't heard anything else about the house situation, but I totally screwed up my hair tonight. It's been getting ridiculously long because I haven't been to a salon since before Covid. I got irritated with it tonight and chopped it off. It's uneven and looks horrible. I was going to go to Great Clips and get it fixed (if possible) but they closed in less than 30 minutes when I got done. I'm stuck with it until tomorrow and I am not sure I can even afford to go in then. Not to mention the total embarrassment of how it looks. I can't win. :(

I actually had no plans to go to Starbucks today or to even leave the house but I got a reminder on Facebook and it said that I visited Starbucks for the first time twelve years ago, today. :) I went for my anniversary! I have been in a state of stress most of this week and weekend.  The only thing that gave me a lift was finding that Instant Pot on Friday. I may lose the only home I've ever known because I trusted my sister. It's a long story and I don't want to say ore as I'm still upset but I'm trying to keep calm. I saw a lady with realtor tags taking pictures of my house on Wednesday and I went out to ask what she was doing and all I got was 'she was taking pictures for the company' I was going to ask 'what company' but another neighbor came out and said she wanted to know that too and they lady drove off. ~_~ I have no idea what to do, I've lived here my entire life. I am disabled and I can not afford to live anywhere else. I was supposed to be allowed to live here until I die.  I am not sure what is going to happen, but I really do not want to leave here.  What I have learned from this? Don't trust family. Ever.

Okay, sorry for the depressing post. I didn't mean to spill all that out.  I haven't seen or heard anything since then and since I have no clue who that lady was with, I can't find out more info. So, if you've ever enjoyed my blog or given me a small thought, please send all the good thoughts my way. I want to stay here in my house as I was promised.

In other Sunday news, I did all my usual chores. The only thing left is to get the bed linen from the dryer and get it back on my bed.   I haven't slept well in days, obviously, but I'm hoping to be able to tonight. Fresh bed linen is so comforting and nice.

So Saturday, I was using my computer just fine.  I had to restart it and then that was when the problems started.  It did the exact same thing it did in November. It was showing no bootable volumes.  I thought, at least I have my Time Machine backup.  Guess what didn't work?  YUP.  The backup did not work at all and it erased the drive to do the backup so I was left with a clean drive and no backup. AHHHHHHHH!  I tried everything I could think of and worked on it all day Saturday.  I borrowed a drive from a friend and tried a few more things and nothing. I had to just stop and give it up for the night. I was tired and frustrated and nothing was being accomplished.  I didn't sleep well as you might imagine.

I woke up around 7 and decided to re-install my OS.  I knew I would have to install the long-ago version and then start updating until I could get back to Catalina.  I got that on and then tried to clone the drive and put it on the empty internal drive.  That worked fine! So, I have no idea why it died in the first place but I had Cataline. I installed a few things I needed and did the patch to get Big Sur back because by now, I was used to it by now.  That took all day on Sunday.  So, today, I got the old drive and the backup drive to get files off. The backup drive is now just null.  It lights up when I plug it into the computer but it isn't recognized.  I contacted support as it is under warranty. I'm hoping they know of some trick to make it work. I need the information that was on there. I'm still very upset that I did my backups weekly for no reason. :(

Today, I was able to get some things from my old drive, but a lot of stuff is on the 2TB drive I got in November that I can't access.  It's driving me nuts that it's just 'dead'. If my stuff can't be recovered (please let me recover it!!!) I hope they will replace the drive.  I spend the day running recovery on that old drive. It took over 5 hours and I didn't get everything I needed, but I got a lot.  The newer stuff was in the Time machine backups. It's driving me crazy to have this happen again so soon after the last incident. So, now I wait for tech support on my drive and hope I can get things going again.  This time, I think I'm going to clone the drive weekly on an external drive.  That way I know it will be backed up.  At least I truly hope so! This whole situation has been so frustraing!

I did get to write a little tonight and that was great. I haven't written in several days because of this mess.  It was nice to get those words down! 2178 words is not bad after not writing in a few days! :) I am again grateful to Evernote for being my daily writing backup site. I didn't lose any writing because of it. Thank you, Evernote!

It has been a hectic 24 hours for me.  Last night I did a write-in for NaNoWriMo and that was fun!  My computer was slowing down terribly so I went to restart it.  I was smart enough to back up the day's writing in Evernote.  Good thing I did because my hard drive failed quite spectacularly!  I went to Target and bought an external hard drive and I was able to re-install Lion (SO OLD) and then I was able to upgrade to... I think it was El Capitan and from that, I was able to install Catalina.   I currently have Scrivener, Chrome, and Evernote on here.  I am going to try to save my files from the bad hard drive, but for now I'm satisfied.  I have my first two days of NaNo writing and I can keep on.  I haven't written today because I was trying to get my MacBook Pro back to a working laptop.  It is and I hope tomorrow to get the files from the dead drive. It's there, but I'm going to have to do so work to get my files back. I'm just happy to have a working laptop for now.  The other stuff will come later.  I'm going to get my daily word count for NaNo and I'll feel so much better.  Wish me luck in getting all my files back!  

My lawnmower is currently dead.  I need a new part for it.  I would have used my backup mower, but I didn't have long enough cords.  My backup mower is electric.  I had the right amount of cords, but one of them got messed up so now I need a new cord or a new part for my mower.  It's so frustrating as I needed to mow earlier this week. Ugh.

So, my friend got off work early today. He hadn't heard back from the dealer but decided to go anyway. We drive all the way up there and the lot is EMPTY.  The dealer is gone.  No cars, just an empty lot.  WTF?  So we call the number and it's out of service. D'oh!  There is a lot next door, so we go and look at their cars.  The guy comes out and my friend tells him that we had been looking for the lot next door and the guy says they moved.

He gives us the new address and we head there.  Nope, that isn't the place. We go back and they say that it was the correct address but the car we were looking for was not there and we still don't think that was the correct place.  He said they moved and re-branded.  I think he was full of it! We did get to visit a few Goodwill stores, so the trip wasn't totally wasted.

I found a Fossil bag and a cool Gumby mug in the Goodwill store in Roanoke.  All in all it was a frustrating day.  We drove all that way for nothing.  Oh well, the search continues.  I didn't sleep well at all last night. It was extremely late / early morning when I finally got to sleep and I woke up before my alarm at 10:30, so I'm super tired.  I hope to sleep well tonight.  

Yes, it was a pretty stressful day. I am not going to get into all that, but I will tell of the good things that happened.  I got my order from Etsy. It's e-reader sleeves. One is a Pacman design and one is coffee.  They are actually bigger than my Kindle, but they will still work for that.  They also will fit my bullet journal so I can use them for that too if I want!  I took a picture.  It's not the best because I waited for them to be delivered all day.  It never said they were but I checked and they were on my porch. The tracker still says 'unable to deliver'. This is twice that has happened with something I ordered.  I don't know what is going on with that.

Anyway, I got them too late to take a picture in natural light so here is the compromise for now.  Aren't they cute?  They are reversible too!  

The color is way off in this photo. They are way prettier in person. I'll get a natural light picture tomorrow but I wanted to share how cute they were tonight!

Yes, it's Monday.  I was up way too late last night.  Why?  Well, I went to put my bed linen back on the bed.  I was struggling with the fitted sheet. It likes to come undone all the time so I was working at getting it on their more securely when I fell on the bed and heard a thump.  I thought I'd knocked the box springs through again.  I pulled everything off and realized I hadn't. ~_~;;  My bed doesn't have a lot of space under it, so I have two little mini bricks under each leg.  That raises I up enough to use under the bed boxes and such.  One of those had fallen.  Ahhhhhh!  So, I took the bed apart for nothing!  

This is how it went.  I started at 11:45 pm to put my bed linen back on the bed.  It was 12:30 am before I got everything back together and the bedlinen on. Sheesh!  Of course by that time I was tired, irked, and out of breath! It took a while to cool off and get myself back to normal.  I'm hoping tonight is an easy night for sleep!

I finished my puzzle today.  That bottom part was intense.  All the pieces looked a lot alike.  I'm happy to say that all the pieces were included and no extras this time! ;p

Well this hasn't been the best day.  It started out okay.  I got up and did my usual things.  I tossed my bed linen in to wash, I washed my hair, I pulled out a puzzle.  Well, I didn't start on the puzzle.  I also didn't get my letters done.  I was going to do both, but my friend texted in the afternoon and said he was coming to put a part on my car.

He came and put the part on and we took it out to drive.  It did great.  The shuddering and skipping were gone.  It got over 40 mph too!  It still felt like it was hesitating when he would stop and the gas light came on.  He stopped and got me some gas and then we drove it a little more and realized that the speedometer isn't working. ~_~;

I checked and Google Maps has the speed on it so I turned that on and it showed the speed we were going so we didn't have to worry about a ticket.  Well, he left and I did a few things around here and then  decided since it was running so well to take it out.  It started right up and drove easily up the street and down the road.  Then I got to the place where it usually likes to cut off when I pulling out in the road.  Guess what? It turned off. ~_~;  I started it back up and got going.  I'm glad the shaking problem is fixed, but it seems the cutting off is still an issue.  It's still got an overheating problem too.  As we were bringing it back in from the first run, the needle was starting to go over the half way mark.  Oh well.  I guess I should have known that it was too good to be true that my car would be working well again.

Hopefully he can get the speedometer fixed. I'm not driving it very far from home until that is fixed.  It is hard to see the speed on the phone.  I need to see if there is a way to make it bigger.  I don't think there is and I'd rather rely on the speedometer in the car itself!

I officially hate this puzzle. lol It is taking entirely too long to work.  I am going to try to continue on though.  We'll see how that goes! I swear the pieces all fit funny and it's just weird.  I think if I can get the tree section of it done tomorrow, that might help a lot.  Here's hoping!

I didn't sleep well at all last night.  I was up far too late because I wasn't sleepy and then when I laid down, I couldn't get to sleep.  Then, I slept a bit and kept waking up.  UGH!  So frustrating.  I hope to sleep well tonight.  I have clean bed linen on the bed, so that should help. I just have to let my hair finish drying.  I have a load of laundry in the dryer, but I think I'll wait and get it out tomorrow.  Until tomorrow, here is the small progress I've done on the puzzle.