Pretty, Funny, Happy Real

I'm still at the "why do we not have a fainting couch" stage of recovery so, today will be a happy and a real.  Hopefully, next week will find me up for the full compliment!

Happy

Charlie yawning, about 1 week old

Charlie turned 6 on September 7th.  Allen's birthday is September 11th so Charlie was Allen's birthday gift for a couple of years.  Charlie was actually born 3 weeks to the day before his due date which was a shock- who ever hears of a first baby coming early?  Plus, you know how when someone's water breaks on tv and it's this big, dramatic event and that never really happens?  Yeah, that happened, too.  Luckily, I was at home.  As an added bonus, we also had water.  5 weeks before, we discovered that our well was tainted and that the only real solution was to tap into the city water system.  36 hours before my water broke, we were finally hooked in.  The house was a disaster as I was in the process of both catching up on 5 weeks of regular cleaning plus having to run every piece of clothing through non-tainted, lightly bleached water and every dish through the full hot cycle of the dishwasher.  I couldn't exactly putter about, waiting for labor to really get going what with the dramatic issue- I couldn't even put away the cleaning supplies I had just dragged out from under the sink!  Thanks for cleaning up while we were in the hospital, mom! Anyway, on to the present...

A fun time was had by all with a celebratory meal of BLTs, salad and cupcakes.

Real

This is the programmable thermostat for our house.  Since the nights have started getting into the single (Celsius) digits and the days are starting to hang out below 12 the house can get a bit chilly.  Our strategy thus far has been to turn the heater on manually for an hour at a time.  This has it's drawbacks, though.  Once the heater is on, if the clouds suddenly part and the house starts warming up, there's no way to turn the heat off.  Plus, I'm never really sure how cold the house actually is so I have to go by the inexact science of watching to be sure Noah's lips aren't turning blue and that my toes aren't going numb.  And, if I happen to be doing some baking, the kitchen can be quite comfortable while the family room is frigid.  One could argue that we could invest in a thermometer but that's just crazy talk.

So, I asked Allen if we could venture to set the thermostat.  I assumed it was like the US version where you set a temperature and the heater magically maintains it.  Instead, you set it to come on for periods of time i.e. you want heat (and hot water) for washing up around 6pm and then in the morning around 7 to make getting out of bed not seem like such an impossible feat .  Theoretically, the temperature is monitored at the individual radiators.  Does this seem like an idiotic method to anyone else?