This time of year

It kind of seems like I've been neglecting the blog lately. And the truth is that I have been. It's not that I don't want to blog. Actually it's quite the contrary. I compose meaningful and engaging posts while I'm in the shower, driving to my mom's house and wandering around the food store grabbing a bunch of random items.   Then I get home and real life starts and I forget about that awesome idea I had while I was in the car or the shower or the store. So I let a few more days pass hoping inspiration will smack me on the head. Or that my computer will open up and beckon me over. Or that a beautiful post will magically write itself.   Part of the problem (if you can even call it a problem) is everyday life. We've just been so busy over here. I feel like I'm all over the place and not doing anything well right now. My house is messy (it's clean, just not neat), the fridge is emptier than I'm comfortable with, and the laundry is piling up all over the place. I take something from the clean pile, wear it and then put it in the hamper. It never even sees the closets or drawers anymore.   

 Here's Gia, cheesing it up in my mirror. See that bag on the left? That's from vacation. Yup. Haven't unpacked it yet and we went away in February. It's pretty much April. Oh, the shame.

And, there's one other tiny little thing. It's called our money-pit, suck-the-bank-account dry, house. I have some other choice words for it, but I'll keep them to myself for now.   As you may remember we had a rough week in February when we had to replace the hot water heater and the washer. At the end of that, I was asking "what next?" Well, that seems like a breeze compared to what came next--aka what happened last week.   I went down to to basement to do laundry (see, I'm trying) and there was the infamous puddle on the floor. Turns out our old washer, which was old, was not really broken, nor was it leaking. Because, see, we replaced it and we still have a little water in the basement. So this time I knew that the water must be coming from somewhere else--I assumed it was from the snow melting outside. I threw down our old slop towels and didn't worry too much.   A few hours later I went down to check on it and found a small stream. It was threatening to reach the other side of the basement (which has carpet and is where we store our stuff). I threw down more towels and Jon walked in from work just as I was doing this. He went right down (this was around 5 pm) and found the problem. One of the huge pipes down there was actually dripping. We put a bucket under the leak and called the plumber (who happens to be an acquaintance of my husband and who came right over, thankfully.)   He diagnosed the problem right away: the sewage pipe was clogged. Yes, that's the poopy pipe--the one that carries sewage from our house to the sewer outside. No using water or flushing till we could get another guy out to unclog it. Enter 2nd plumber-type guy, who was very busy and could not come till 10 pm that night. He took one look and told us it was best to wait till morning.   We sent Gia to school a little stinky, as we weren't able to bathe her the night before--and the 2nd plumber guy came over bright and early and unclogged the pipe. In the light of day he was able to follow the pipe out of the basement and guesstimate where it was under our front lawn. Then he stepped in a soft, muddy divot on the front lawn and he knew exactly where the pipe was.   Of course there's more. There's no way that simply unclogging a pipe is the end of the road when it comes to this house.    So back to plumber guy #2 (I'm calling him plumber guy because he's not a regular plumber, but I don't know what exactly he is). The soft spot on the front lawn, combined with all his pipe experience, told him that the pipe that comes out of our house and meets with another one to take the crap out to the sewer in the street was probably not flush against the other one and was leaking sweage into our front yard. This was causing the soft spot on the front lawn. A few more months of this, combined with warm weather, would have made a huge, smelly mess of our lawn and cause several other issues for us, none of which I can remember now.
Enter the excavator and the backhoe. Plumber guy #2 sent over his buddy, a 73 year-old retired DPW guy who excavates. He agreed that we needed to dig up the pipe and replace it so it wasn't leaking. He drove his backhoe over, dug a huge ditch in our front lawn and fixed the pipe. All of this happened before dinner time. Kind of amazing how in less than 24 hours this all transpired.

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So, all of that was my very long-winded way of saying, I am so ready for spring. Spring is rebirth, new beginnings, new life...and I can't wait.  

What next?

So after a wonderful vacation, of course we couldn't have a nice, calm, normal week back to the grind. Right?

  We got home on  Tuesday evening. Wednesday was hectic because I had to work, foodshop, unpack, etc. Thursday I finally got around to doing some laundry. I went down to the basement, where our laundry room is, and found quite a large puddle on the floor. The hot water heater was leaking--from the top AND the bottom.   We've had this happen once before (in our condo), so thankfully I knew who to call without having to bother Jon at work. By Friday at 11 am we had a new hot water heater and were a bit poorer. We considered ourselves lucky though, because we fixed the problem before we had 40 gallons of water all over our basement.    Fast forward to Monday. We'd been home for nearly a week and I was still playing catch up with the cleaning and the laundry. I ran down to the basement to throw in a quick load of laundry before heading to work. And, what did I find? Another puddle on the floor in the basement. I hadn't even touched the washer yet, so where the heck was this coming from?   My mom arrived to watch Gia & I showed her the problem. She thought something was wrong with the washer--and even though I hadn't yet used it when I saw the water--that it was the culprit. Turns out she was right. So this morning we bought a new washer.   

    But wait. I'm not done.  It's not over.    Before we went on vacation we ordered custom roller shades and a coordinating cornice for the triple window in our family room. They arrived while we were gone and were supposed to be installed yesterday.     You know where I'm going with this, right?   The cornice was 2 inches too long to fit in our window frame. The "home designer," who came over to consult with us and help us pick fabric and do the measuring, messed up the measurements and it doesn't fit. They're making us a new one, but we have to wait 2 more weeks for it to get here.
Sigh.  

This is the look we're going for: custom cornice & roller shades. We chose a striped fabric and cream colored roller shades.

     None of these things is a really big deal. But, all of them together? It's just really frustrating.  Sometimes I hate being a homeowner.