Lost My Marbles

I haven't written in a long, long time, haven't had a lot to say, haven't been working on the house at all. But all that is about to change. In a moment of sheer silliness, for lack of a better word, I volunteered to have the photo club Christmas party here. At my house. In Dec. Also now that my teenage daughter has gone to college and my husband is needing an office, there is going to be a whole lot of shaking-er rearranging going on around here. So cracks will be filled with joint compound, new paint will be going up, heck I might even paint my bedroom at long long last! And lets see...(mutters to self) I'm
gonna need new blinds for the mudroom windows, definitely some more Christmas decorations, and that reminds me, I don't have a Christmas tree anymore...*sigh* yup, it's official. I have lost all my marbles.

Splish Splash...

So I'm sitting on my bed on Sunday night. The housework is done, the Mr's bag is packed for the airport in the morning and I figured I would get a few Facebook minutes in before sleep. I opened my computer and log in and in a minute or two I am absorbed. The Mr. is at the sink. He has a box of Just for Men mustache/beard dye in his hand and he is reading the label. I watch him out of the corner of my eye for a second as he sets the box down and picks up a pair of dog clippers (don't ask)(and don't worry he cleaned them first) and proceeds to shave half the hair off his head. Again absorbed in my Facebook world I hardly hear him as he interrupts my status update. "I need your help" he says. I glance up to see him looking at me with the clippers in his hand and half his hair gone. He can't reach the back. With a sigh of irritation I set the laptop down and walk over to the sink. I have never shaved anybody's head before and I haven't got a clue how to do this. I gingerly touch his head with the clippers and shave a little off. He watches me in the mirror. Bolder now, I shave a little more and then right as I get the hang of it I pause. I hear water running in the shower next to where we are standing. "Are you running water in the bathroom?" I ask him. "Yes" he replies, "I'm steaming my work clothes." Ummm ok, I'm thinking to myself as I resume shaving his head,  But then I pause again. I hear water. And not from the shower. I hear splashing. "Umm are you running water in the other bathroom?" I ask him. He looks at me in surprise and then panic and then makes a run for the hallway as he hears it too. And then I hear the loud "OH NO!" "HELP!" "GET TOWELS!" "NOW!" followed by an "I'm so sorry". Now this is never good. Never ever ever a good combination. From the first "oh no" my heart sinks. I know that somewhere in my house there is a flood, but I'm not sure where yet. Is it the toilet in the other bathroom overflowing again? NO this is worse, much much worse! The bathroom in our bedroom, the one he is steaming clothes in sits right over the staircase. As I round the corner and look down the stairs I can see that there is a flood of water coming from the ceiling of the stairs, the floor of the bathroom above and soaking the wooden floors/stairs/landing that took me two years to refinish. I am sick. Really, really sick but I'm not wasting time thinking about it. I run back in the bathroom to see why it's overflowing. I step in the room into two inches of water on the floor. The shower is completely full and overflowing onto the carpet in our room. How did we not notice this? I turn off the water and see that the drain is covered by something keeping the water from escaping. I reach down and pick it up and stand there disbelievingly with what looks like a (now wet) square of toilet tissue in my hand. I don't have time to think about it as the water immediately starts draining and I grab towels and run down the the stairs, the site of the disaster, to help the rest of the family in their fight against the flood. I soon realize that this is fruitless, the water is still pouring from the hole in the floor above the stairs where the piping enters the bathroom and connects to the toilet from inside the wall. It is running down the hole, over the electric lights and pouring off the plastic light shields that cover the fluorescent in the hall. I look over at my husband with his half shaved head in his shorts and yell "upstairs, stop it upstairs!" He gets it. Running upstairs towel in hand he begins to stem the flow of water from above. After a few minutes we regain control. The towels are in the washer, every single one we own, there is a trashcan to catch the water with a trashbag on the floor underneath. The floor is dry. The stairs are dry. I turn on the light and inspect the wood. I am really relieved, so relieved, there is no damage. All the layers of varnish I put on years ago have done their work well and protected the hundred year old wood. I'm not exactly smiling as I head back up the sparkling clean staircase, after such an incident, which probably knocked a whole minute off my life, but I'm not too upset either. As I take up my post in front of the mirror, dog clippers buzzing in my hand, husband expectantly waiting, I feel the grin emerging. What a strange wonderful, and sometimes a little bazaar life.

Keeping it in Check

Seriously. I know he (my daughter's boyfriend) must have thought I was crazy. I was standing in the mudroom in full temper tantrum yelling at the vacuum cleaner and swinging the hose around my head as fast as I could swing it and telling it in no uncertain terms what I was going to do to it if it didn't unclog itself right this minute!
The vacuum cleaner hose didn't seem to care what I thought of it and promptly wrapped itself around my leg with a painful SNAP as it hit me on the knee at approximately sixty mph. I promptly burst into tears.
I'm sure he didn't know what to say, the poor guy, or what to do to help this poor mentally deranged mother get a grip on herself before she committed vacuum cleaner murder. Or Eureka-cide as I like to call it.
Usually I am pretty good about keeping my temper in check when there is company in the house...mostly. Today I got up early because the family was coming over for Easter and the house needed cleaning first. I woke up the kids and set them to work cleaning up the mess they and their friends had made in the living room. The living room didn't smell so good. The cat box, (I know, I know, why the living room you ask? Because the cat has decided that's where she wants it, and I am not going to argue with her on that issue. I tried and found out real quick that she means business about her business. So the box goes in the living room.) The cat box needed cleaning. I got a walmart bag to empty it into and quickly did the job. Everything was done, I was thinking, as I walked from the living room through the dining room, and into the kitchen. Even the house smelled better...I was interrupted by an urgent "MOM!" and as I looked behind me I was horrified to realize that the trusty walmart bag had a large hole in it. And there was dirty cat litter all the way from the living room to the kitchen. All.over.the.carpet. I quickly got out my vacuum cleaner and broom and set to work. First I swept up all the litter. Then I vacuumed up all the litter in the living room. I just had one little bit to suck up, so I reached down to unhook the hose from the vacuum...and all.that.cat litter...came back up out of my vacuum and sprayed all over the room. Dirty cat litter. Clean room. Company coming...You can see where this is going...Dragging the vacuum behind me by the hose at an angry trot I got to a place where there was no carpet so I could figure out the problem...kitty litter leaking behind me all the way...What an unbelievable mess.
And it gets worse before it finally gets better...The next few minutes find me in full "shaken vacuum cleaner" mode as I shook it as hard as I could and yelling at it as loud as my voice would go. But I finally got all it all out. I never did figure out what caused all that litter to collect in the bottom of the hose. I just calmly collected my vacuum, put it all back together, apologized to my daughter's boyfriend, who was kind enough to not hold it against me. I cleaned it all up, the family came over. We had a great time.
Fast forward several hours. Late afternoon. I'm standing outside. One of the girls comes out and says "The upstairs toilet is overflowing (again!) and is running down the hall into Matt's room."  At a full run I'm on it.
As I gallop up the stairs I can see that my son already has a handle on the situation. Having dealt with this problem multiple times he knows exactly what to do. This particular toilet seems to overflow about every six months, usually when we are having company. (last time my husband's eighty four year old grandma flushed the toilet and it overflowed and scared the poor woman half out of her mind!) When it overflows it runs out the bathroom door and down the hall and into my son's room. One time we didn't catch it fast enough and it ran all the way to the edge of the floor, under the baseboards and down the walls into the dining room below coming out through the window casings. Did I mention that I have been meaning to get around to getting rid of this old rocking and rolling toilet? I even have the replacement out in the garage. Have had for a year, just waiting for the right time to put it in. I decided, as I stood in a puddle of water with every single towel in my house employed in the cleaning thereof that now was that time. No matter that it was almost dark, no matter that it was Easter Eve and I definitely had other things planned. It must be now. I had had enough of that toilet.
So. After cleaning up the huge mess and carting down and entire basket of wet towels to the laundry I went out to get the new toilet. The box was heavy and I wasn't in a lifting mood, so I opened the box and took out all the pieces, one by one, and brought them up to the house. Now to understand what I am going to say next there must be an explanation. I have three bathrooms. The tiny downstairs powder room had been the site of a horrible sewer explosion in the past, due to a city problem which had been subsequently fixed by the city. But. I had installed a toilet in there that I called a "superflusher" before the problem was fixed, so that I would never have to deal with an overflowing toilet in there again.
Now that the problem was fixed I no longer needed the "superflusher" in there. It was obviously needed upstairs and that was the reason I had put off fixing the toilet situation so long. I didn't want to spend an entire afternoon slogging away on the floor with wax rings and flanges and sewer smells, so I put it off. and off. and off.
My plan was to put the new toilet in the downstairs powder room and move the "superflusher" to the upstairs bathroom. The "superflusher was a one piece toilet. It had been easy to install, had been up and running in less than fifteen minutes. I didn't expect anything different from the new toilet. I mean, yeah, I would have to install the tank on top of the seat, but how hard could that be, right?  I got the "superflusher" off with no trouble. Got the old wax ring off, (ewwww) Got the base on the floor. And then the trouble started. Those silly flange screws just wouldn't stay in place. And those silly little nuts they give you don't fit the silly little flange screws very well. They keep getting stuck.
Keeping in mind that my daughter's bf is still here, I am determined to keep my temper. I bite my lip a little bit and maybe a few words might escape under my breath but I am able with a whispered prayer or two to keep it in check.
But I am sweating by this time. Down on the floor with my face next to the bowl, I can't see the screw for attaching to the tank because the bowl is only a few inches from the wall. I can feel it but I can't get it in there. Finally, finally...but the tank is too loose, and I think I might have done something wrong so I take it all off again. Taking out those nuts is a little nightmare in itself. They don't come off any easier than they went on. But with a little help from a power screwdriver with a socket on the end I finally succeed...only to realize that I had it right the first time.
So I decide to move on the the other toilet. Matt and I haul the SF up the stairs and set it aside. We get  the rock and roller off and I see that the ring is almost non existent. I get off what remains, clean up under and around where the toilet was and set the SF down on the flange screws. And it's done in less than fifteen minutes just like before, except for one heartstopping moment when I realize it's leaking, and quickly find the leak (bolts on the inside of the tank loosened during moving) and it's fixed.
And I have mostly kept my temper.
Back to the powder room.
I am determined to finish the job and have a working toilet tonight. I realize maybe I just need some seasoned nuts. I find some in my bucket o'screws, and they are just the thing. They go on easily, no trouble. I tighten the flange screws, connect the water, watch it fill up, adjust the ball valve. And relax. I'm sitting on the bowl, backwards, watching the water fill up. "All done" I say, and look up at Ashley and smile. She looks back at me and very matter of factly says "Where's the seat?"  I look down  at the bowl I am sitting on and realize there is indeed, no seat. And as my mind goes back over the last couple of hours, the unpacking, and bringing it up to the house, I realize, there IS no seat. I go out to the garage, I double check the box. Nada. Nothing. Oh well. I will be making a call to Lowes on Mon. And I will be holding my temper. That's a promise.
Now, hours later, laying in bed on Easter morning, I think about the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross for me. He thinks I was worth it. Even in the midst of a foolish wild eyed, hair raising tantrum he thinks I am worth saving. He reaches down, picks me up, dusts me off, and shows me a better way. And loves me. Thank you, Jesus for all your love.

An Apology

So....In some of my previous posts, some of the very early ones, I had a lot to say about the previous owners of my house. Since I didn't know them, and had never met any of them, other than the last couple, the ones who turned my dining room into a pool hall, it was easy to villianize them. They had no faces. All that changed this morning. I rolled out of bed with sleepy eyes, looked at the clock and realized there was somewhere I needed to be. I quickly got dressed and went to the local critter corner where for a donation to their cause they will give you a discount voucher for an animal spay/neuter. Since my dog is scheduled for surgery on Monday morning I wanted to take advantage of this program.
There was a lady at the desk in the office and she handed me a form. I filled it out and gave it back. She looked at me and then almost hesitatingly asked which house I lived in. I described the house and she smiled and said "I used to own that house." Then I knew who she was. To say I was thrilled would be putting it mildly. We talked for quite a bit. She brought up the sewer thing. We had a different city manager then, and she told me her husband had called him and told him the city needed to fix the problem. The city manager told him "Sir, if you don't like it you can move." Wow. So they did. They moved. I am so grateful for our current city manager. He went out of his way to fix things for us. I had told him I was thinking of moving, because I couldn't deal with the sewage coming up in my house any more. That I shouldn't have to deal with sewage running down my yard. He was very apologetic and it took some time but he was true to his word. He had them reroute the line from all the way down the street. He told me "No, we want you to stay, we don't want you to move."
She told me they put in the air conditioning system, for which I am grateful, and which I already knew. I was in the attic one day and found the specs for the AC system, crudely drawn out by the AC guys, a complete sketch of the layout of our entire house with the owners name across the bottom. They also built the garage. Apparently there was a really old falling down ramshackle garage and they tore it down and built a new one.

So it was nice to put a face on a previous owner and I will be nicer in my future posts, because I owe them a debt of thanks for the things they did to make this old house a better place to live.

Renewal

It's ridiculous how happy a $2.98 cent piece of plastic can make me. I was shopping at Lowes for a new light fixture for the bathroom and saw these little babies. Top of the line they definitely aren't but for a couple of bucks they give off pretty good light.
Tomorrow after church I'm going to repaint the deck. Again. Install the new deck rails I bought. Maybe weedeat with my new weedeater. And that's probably about it. But it's a start. I have been slacking off since January and it's time to get back in the game.

Graduation is coming!

I just realized the other day that there will be people, lots of people descending upon my house in June on the occasion of my daughter's graduation from high school.
Before June I need to:
repaint the deck. Again. *sigh*. for the fortieth time.
replace the missing deck rails.
do something about the yard.
do something about the carpet in the living room.
fix the gutter on my roof.
work on and hopefully finish the downstairs bathroom.
replace all the toilets in the house.
fix every stinking one of my kitchen appliances. Yes. Every one. except the fridge. and the washer and dryer.

get rich quick.

"Stinkerbell"

My fridge has never been so sparkling clean

"StinkerBell"

The weather has been crazy around here. One day it's 80 degrees (in Feb?) and two days later it's sleeting ice and rain and 14 degrees. I seem drawn to the refrigerator time and again, not because I'm hungry but because I'm bored.
One of those times I opened up the freezer door to look for something to defrost for dinner. My eyes perused the contents of the freezer which were kind of getting low. There was that ground chicken Tommy bought...(Ground chicken? Really?) Noo...wasn't really up for that tonight...wait, wait, wait a minute, something dragged my eye back to that chicken, I looked at it a little more closely. It was completely defrosted. In the freezer. I touched it and there was no doubt. I then realized there was no ice. And the skirt steak was defrosted as well. Panic. I opened the other half of the side by side and looked at the contents realizing with dismay that everything was warm. Temp settings. All good. Plugged in. Check. Breakers. All on. Should have realized it wasn't the breakers, because the internal lights were still on.
I called my best friend who has an AC business with her husband and asked if there was anything I should do. I figured if anybody would have good advice at this time of night, it would be her. She and her husband got on the phone and talked me through some more checks. Fridge back off. Check. Compressor still hot. That's good, means it's still on. Fan. Uh-oh. There it was. Must be the fan motor, they said, as they talked me out of my hysteria.The fan was way in the back where I couldn't reach it. I poked it with a long stick to see if I could get it started again. Nothing. I unplugged it with a great big wintery sigh.
So...out to the garage in the 14 degree weather to find the cooler. I debated sending my daughter out to the Qwik Check for ice....but that would be ridiculous when so much is on the ground. I grabbed my shovel and got to work filling the ice chest.
Back inside I filled it with all of the things that needed refrigerating. It was disconcerting to me that I had just spent eighty dollars at the store and it only filled up half an ice chest. The dogs were nosing around me wondering what in the world Mama was up to tonight. This week we had an extra guest and an extra puppy so our small kitchen was full of people, animals, food and activity. We really needed that fridge. I knew there was no way anybody was going to make it out in this weather to fix it. About that time one of the kids looked out the window. "It's SNOWING!" And boy was it. It didn't stop for twelve hours.
Five days later there is still ice on the ground. And the fridge is still not fixed. I called the appliance place in town and they referred me to somebody else who never answered the phone. When I finally reached them they told me there would be a sixty dollar charge just to come out, even if I declined their services and furthermore that they couldn't be out for another week. I then did what I should have done in the first place and looked in the phone book. The first name that popped up was my Sunday school teacher? Hallelujah!
In the meantime I had to take Tommy back to the airport. I left the dogs in the kitchen as I always do when I leave. They were peacefully reposing on their beds when I left. When I returned the first thing I saw was the refrigerator cord. On the floor. Not where I had left it. Chewed. All. Up. It was a bad, bad moment. I sent the dogs, Sam and bad, bad Belle out to play. How can one tiny dog cause such havoc in a household? I think I will rename her "Stinkerbell"
So it's been a rough, rough week. There have been times I have caught myself walking around in a panic telling myself "I can't DO this anymore, I canNOT do this anyMORE!" But as the words crossed my lips again tonight I heard another voice. This one said Yes, you can. You can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens you.
It stopped me in my tracks. All things. That means these things. It means He has given me the grace to deal with a broken refrigerator in a house with a plethura of stranded people (who can't get home) who need food, a husband who is stranded in Ohio, cold, icy, wet, nasty, and did I mention cold weather, mud, mud, and more mud, dishes, dishes and more dishes, and dogs, dogs everywhere. And no school for kids for a WEEK. One stir crazy mess.
But by His grace we got through it. And will continue to get through it. One day at a time.