In need of warmth and sunshine.....

Its been a long cold wet winter down here is what is supposed to be sunny Florida ~ those of us who live here don't do well without sunshine. If its cold outside but the sun is shining, it keeps us from complaining too much but let that sunshine disappear and a lot of us hibernate~and moan.

I'm moaning today...its raining, its gray and its cold! I'm trying to my best to stay upbeat....I'm putting a positive spin on it....like.....the potato plants just became visible in the fields....I'd take a photo but its too dark and gray outside.....see, I'm trying......but it all comes back around..its a vicious cycle, LOL.

Trying to be productive despite my gloomy mood, I decided to look into the Amish Fireplace this morning. We've seen the commercials several times over the past few weeks as our downstairs heater struggled to keep us warm and we'd put some serious thought into buying one or two of them as part of our overall project budget this year. We loved the idea of a space heater that could sit out all year instead of having to put it away once the season ended...and we thought "hey! we can pretend that the p.o's didn't take out the fireplace in this old farmhouse" while we waited until putting one back in became part of some future year's project budget.....

My google search didn't turn up much of anything good.....the distribution company has an "F" rating by Consumer Reports because of the length of time they've been in business, the size of the business vs. the consumer complaints, and some "iffy" advertising.....in their favor though, they've resolved all of the complaints in a relatively short space of time.

We try our best to "buy American" - and one of the cons of this product is that the heater is imported from China...now I don't know about you, but I'm getting quite *wary of things imported from that particular country...dog food, baby food, vitamins and toothpaste issues should make all of us *wary.....

And, apparently, until very recently the "all wood" mantle built by the Amish wasn't actually "all wood"....which I guess means that they used an oak veneer on the things until Consumer Reports got onto them about it.....

And the only way the thing actually saves you money is if your regular heating source is NOT working....which would have been great for us on at least four days this winter because our heat source was definitely NOT working....but Consumer Reports is investigating the "uses about the same energy as a coffee pot" claim.....and although we could have used it a couple of times this year, overall we wanted it to enhance the warmth in a room not be the only source of heat.....and our goal is to use less energy, not more of it....

The old adage of "if it sounds to good to be true, it is too good to be true" is once again proven....

So, we won't be pretending that we have a fireplace after all.....instead, we'll be designing our project budget around completing the insulation (blowing in more in the attic), finally taking down the too damaged to be fixed plaster in the closets and re-insulating the walls etc, and putting in a large padded area rug in the Master Bedroom (which is directly over the front porch and a very, very cold room!).

All of this to be done when Spring finally rolls around unless our ship comes in early.......all I have to say is...come on Spring!

*The word is "wary" folks.....have you noticed the number of commercials and regularly scheduled programs which are using the word "weary" in place of the proper word? It drives me crazy!

Todays English Lesson:

wary A adjective 1 wary marked by keen caution and watchful prudence; "they were wary in their movements"; "a wary glance at the black clouds"; "taught to be wary of strangers" 2 leery, mistrustful, suspicious, untrusting, wary.......

weary adj. wea·ri·er, wea·ri·est 1. Physically or mentally fatigued. 2. Expressive of or prompted by fatigue: a weary smile. 3. Having one's interest, forbearance, or indulgence worn out: weary of delays. 4. Causing fatigue; tiresome: a weary wait.

And don't get me started on the corruption of the correct context of the use of the word "bring".....or my own increasingly frequent use of run on sentences....LOL.