That's One Way to Get the Birthday Person to Do Chores on His/Her Birthday...

First, I need to go back to September.

Word for the Wise: Beware of really loud, noisy ______. This could happen to you:

Still need a better view, those of you playing my little guessing game?

Yes, my vacuum blew up on me while I was vacuuming. You see where there's a big chunk missing? Now you see the chunk just sitting there above the motor to the left? Yeah, that's the chunk that belongs in the obviously broken spot.

Okay, so here's what happened. Our vacuum had gotten really loud for some reason, I mean REALLY LOUD!!! Jeremy, Mr. Handyman, checked it out and couldn't see anything wrong with it to fix, so we just figured oh well and kept using it. This went on for awhile. Well, one day back in September, I was just minding my own business vacuuming the living room when all of a sudden BANG!!! It scared the crud out of me, actually making me jump back because it was so loud. I immediately turned off the vacuum and had Jessica unplug it really quickly. It started to have a burning smell, kind of like it would have if a belt broke, but I really didn't think it was the belt because I'd never had a belt break make such a loud pow like that before. I looked down at the back of the vacuum where there was a panel with screws and noticed that it was kind of bulging and more dusty than usual. It looked like it had literally blown up inside and like the pressure caused it to bulge. (Sorry, I wish I'd gotten a pic of that, but Jeremy already had it apart before I thought of it.) You know, y'all are really lucky that you even get to hear this story. It could have blown up beyond the bulging panel and blown my head off or something. I may not have lived to tell about it! ;-) Phew! Close call! :-)

I wasn't about to touch that thing to explore and find out for sure if my suspicions were correct, other than to move the vacuum out of the living room. I had a feeling that this was the end of our first vacuum. Jeremy was out of town when it happened, so I just left it for him to deal with when he got home. When he opened it up, well... you can see above what he found. One dead vacuum!

Not long before this happened, Jeremy had bought a vacuum and a shop vac at an auction. I thought it was silly he'd bought a vacuum since we already had one. As it turned out, it would have been great... except for the fact that it turned out that vacuum was broken as well. He had checked it out before he bought it, and it ran, but there was something broken inside it that made it so that it didn't work. We were, however, grateful for the shop vac, which saved us after our vacuum died. We also borrowed vacuums from friends and neighbors a couple of times.

So now we come back to more recent days... my birthday! My husband surprised me. A few days before my birthday, Jacob tried to get me to follow him to the garage, saying that Daddy got a red vacuum. I told Jacob that I thought he might be spoiling something and to stay out of the garage. I was out there several times after that for various things and never noticed anything (of course, I didn't look very hard because I didn't want to spoil anything either, though I didn't think Jeremy would dare to get one without me anyway), so I figured Jacob must not have known what he was talking about.

I told Jeremy what Jacob said, and being the good liar that he is he said he didn't know what Jacob was talking about. Then he made comments a few different times over the next few days about going to Amarillo to shop for a vacuum, maybe on my birthday. I didn't really want to go to Amarillo just before Christmas anyway, so I figured Jeremy and I could call getting a vacuum our Christmas present to each other and look after Christmas when shopping wouldn't be quite so crazy and when there might be sales.

On my birthday, Jeremy asked me whether I wanted my birthday/Christmas present on my birthday or on Christmas. I told him it didn't matter, that he could do whatever he wanted. A little while later, he had a note for me that said, "Go to the Winnie." I thought he was just making the note for a Christmas surprise we had for my brother's family. (The Winnie was what my family called our Winnebago motorhome, where we often found big presents on Christmas day after doing some sort of scavenger hunt to get to it.) So Jeremy asked me if I saw the note, and then pointed out to me that I needed to find out where "the Winnie" was. He'd taped a sign to the garage door that said, "The Winnie." When I opened the door, there in front of me was a beautifully-wrapped-in-black-garbage-bags-because-it-was-too-big-and-not-in-a-box present for me. Upon removing the black garbage bags, this was revealed:





I was totally surprised! He really had fooled me. At first, though, I was a bit hesitant and a little annoyed he made this major purchase without my input. After looking it over and him telling me all the little things about it and why he chose this one over any others, I was quite pleased. Even better, I did not have to shop for a vacuum! :-) The only downer that I could see was that (being the BYU fan that I am) it was RED, not BLUE! At least it's a deep red, not a bright one. I guess I can deal with that. After all, I'm not in Utah now. ;-) Actually, it's quite a nice color.

I asked him where he'd hidden it since I hadn't seen it, and he told me that since it was obviously a good hiding place he wasn't going to tell me so that he could use it again sometime. :-)

So, seeing as I had just gotten this brand new gift (which became my birthday/Christmas/Jeremy's Christmas present), I had to try it out, of course. ;-)

That's One Way to Get the Birthday Person to Do Chores on His/Her Birthday...

GIVE HIM/HER A VACUUM! :-)