Mental Junk

Amazing time!   Thanks guys.  Glad we are able to get together more often now….

The boys decided to get into the Vaseline late last week.  Mic contacted me at work to find out what would work the best to get it out of their hair.

The only thing I can say is that I am glad I was working at the time… that and I am surprised they still had hair when I got home.

I am also amazed how much different shampoos and soaps really smell bad when mixed together.  The boys probably had 10 different cleaning products used on them to get them semi-degreased by the time I got home.

So, for the past two or three weeks I have been living with a sick car.

The engine light kept coming on and the ODB2 reader displayed codes that referred to multiple cylinder misfires.  Looking that up on line and in the manuals, it suggested that the cam shaft sensor may be faulty, the oxygen sensors or even a vacuum leak.. all of which are pretty expensive and time consuming repairs.

Needless to say, I've been avoiding the issue since I haven't had the time or finances to perform a proper repair since being between jobs and not knowing where cash may come from.  That is… until this past Friday.

Michelle went to a Midnight Madness sale and when she came home (after midnight) she woke me up to tell me that the car was on fire.  Oh boy.  As it turned out – nothing was on fire – the catalytic converter was running red hot.  Scratch that – cherry red hot – near melting point hot.

By the time I got out of bed and looked, the converter had cooled to a dull red glow – so no immediate danger, but definitely lost some life if it didn't melt.

Yesterday morning I started the car and she ran fine, but just as rough – the engine hesitates and lurks forward during gear shifts – normal activity as per the past few months.  If there is no shortening of life for the converter, I'd be lucky.

I have been avoiding the issue for the above mentioned reasons, but this was just too much.  If the catalytic converter metls or takes out the oxygen sensors – I am looking at a more costly repair than just a faulty cam sensor, so this morning I started some minor troubleshooting.

Since it seemed to be the one converter only (the car being a six cylinder, has two converters) I wanted to look at the plugs on that side of the engine to see if their was a dead cylinder.  All plugs seemed fine – just way out of gap.  I re-gapped them and.. guess what?

It runs fine.

I've known it's needed new plugs for a while – it has 135k on it, but never considered that the trouble I've been having is due to mis-gapped/old plugs.  I just considered – hey why spend $60 on new plugs when I am probably looking at $125 or more for a faulty sensor?  I can just put off the plugs till I get the actual fault fixed.

Well, there is one for me.  Why look for abnormal faults when the common one is more common.

Who knew.

Well… it happened.

Cameron was at least shown how to open his bedroom door.  Nate?  No.  He figured it out on his own.

At 7 in the morning.

I thought I heard footsteps in the hall, so I checked on Cam – nope.  He was still in his bed.  Michelle got up to look down the hall and found a small little boy slowly creeping down the stairs.

Oh well.  We will miss the by-gone days of them staying where they were put.  It wasn't all too long ago he wasn't able to walk or even crawl.  So, if we put him on the floor, we knew he would be there for a while.

Fairwell peaceful nap time!

Fairwell restfull night sleep!

Is it wrong to put locks on their doors?   Hmmmm…..