Mockingbird Hill Cottage

I looked at the calendar and realized that Easter is not that far off! So it’s time for some egg cups, don’t you think?

Life has been stressful lately, so I’m recycling photos.

These, of course, are my prized Snow White and the 7 dwarfs egg cups. It took me 17 years to complete the set. I have a book on egg cups that I purchased early on in my collecting. This set was pictured and the author made it clear that the cups were very hard to find. My friend, Nels, who passed away earlier this year, had a massive collection of egg cups and had been collecting for years. In the days before eBay, finding any of them was much more difficult. He paid a LOT of money for some of them – several hundred dollars – and could only shake his head when the prices eventually went down due to increased accessibility on eBay. But even with the alerts I had programmed on eBay, it still took me years and years to find them all. I think I paid between $30 – $75 for them, Snow White being the most expensive. That’s pricey for an egg cup, but much less pricey than when they were going for hundreds of dollars.

Doc was my first buy, then Dopey, and then Bashful. Much time went by before I found more. Somewhere along the way, I found Grumpy. Then, one day, I was on the FB egg collecting group and a woman from Orillia, Ontario posted that she was selling her set. (Since both my mom and grandmother were born in Orillia, I felt it was meant to be.) Long story short, I persuaded her to sell me three of them – Sneezy, Happy, and Snow White.

Last to arrive, after a long, long search, was Sleepy.

I suppose the set is worth at least $350 to $400 – but that fluctuates. I’ve heard from some other collectors that some of them came in cereal boxes (in Canada.) I don’t know if that’s true, but they were certainly inexpensive in the beginning.

My set is in great condition with no paint problems or chips.

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The car: yesterday Don drove well over a hundred miles and nothing changed re the calibration. So he called the Honda dealership and a tech told him to get on the interstate, set the cruise control at 65 mph, and drive for about 20-30 minutes. Exit, and turn the car off and let it cool down. Then, turn around and do the same thing until you exit the interstate. Then, drive to our local guys who are doing the inspection and, hopefully, it will have re-calibrated.

Exhausting.

I mean, really, this is ridiculous, And we’ve put more unnecessary mileage on the car as well as spent money for gas. But Don, bless him, is currently making our second cup of coffee so that he can put his in a thermos and start this little journey. Fingers crossed there’s nothing that forces him to stop the cruise control…

It’s supposed to hit the seventies today. Whoo hoo!

I did do some clean up work outside yesterday. Boy, do I need to get in shape!

Update: It worked!

Stay safe.

Happy Saturday.

 

 

Proof that there are signs of life on our property. The lilac has buds.

I’m not all that into astrology, though I do follow a couple of people on YouTube who are quite insightful. One thing I do know: Mercury is retrograde now and one of the consequences of that is tech problems. As you know, I’ve been dealing with tech problems with the blog for about 3 weeks. And yesterday? A new one.

I took our car in to be inspected. Don went with me. We waited quite a while and then the manager called us over. There was a problem getting the emissions part of the inspection because – get this – when my battery was replaced in January, monitors in the car had to be recalibrated. This apparently takes time, driving time. Something about 5 recalibrations and two of those have not completely recalibrated and until at least one of them does, they can’t run the test on the state’s computer system. What the ????? I have never heard of this before. The deadline to have it inspected is on Monday, the last day of the month. (I had to have them explain all this a couple of times because my non-tech brain couldn’t take it in.) It’s supposed to be taken care of after 100 driving miles, but it’s taking longer with our car.

So now, we have to drive the car over the next couple of days and stop by the service center every day to see if one of them has finally done its thing. My next question was “What if it doesn’t?” Then they have to wait until Tuesday to ask for a 10 day extension. Apparently they see this with older cars and our car, though low on mileage, is 13 years old. And, of course, we’re trying not to add too much mileage because we want this car to last and here we are, doing exactly that and spending money on gas in order to get the inspection completed.

I have to tell you, I was so over all of this that I lost it when we got home. It’s just been too much. I feel like I’ve been dealing with so much tech stuff that I haven’t had time to just be and mourn Jan’s death.

I think cars were better when they weren’t controlled by computers. The problems with Don’s car also involve computers.  I don’t want a computerized refrigerator or car or anything other than an actual computer.

Anyway, that’s what we’re dealing with. Don is going to drive it up the thruway this morning – he likes to get out for a drive – and then stop by the service center on the way home. Cross your fingers. I’m going to do some laundry and work outside. I desperately need to do that after the past couple of weeks. I need to get out there and do some clean up and get away from all the crap.

I did a little tour of the china cabinet in the den about a week ago. If you’re interested, here is the link.

Okay, my friends.

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.