Archives for October 2011

OK, this is my downer post-feel free to skip.  I’ve written it in my head several times over the past week and decided to keep waiting to get some perspective before blogging.  Not sure if I’ve been successful in gaining perspective, but maybe I’ve cut down on the invective and #$^%& words.  It all started with some kids bashing our mailbox with a baseball bat.  I found this out when the police officer came early in the morning to tell me about it.  We had replaced the box last year after it was destroyed by a pumpkin, but now the combined bashings have rendered our post untenable.  We live on a rural route so we have to have a box on the street, which means it’s open to the frequent temptation of cruising juveniles who want to destroy property.

Next we noticed that the hardwood floor in front of the refrigerator felt uneven under our stocking feet.  Upon further investigation, we found that the boards were warped, the water line between the frig and sink had a leak and we were looking at Scott’s favorite home repair: plumbing.  I’m being facetious, of course, because he’s a handy dude around the house but he really hates plumbing stuff.  Then I pulled our clothes out of the dryer to find they were still wet.  This was after 3 cycles.  Yeah, no heat in there whatsoever.  He looked at it and pronounced it DOA.  We’d had a couple days to absorb the mailbox, this other happened within a few minutes of each other.  We checked the basement office under the kitchen and no water down there.  Phew!

After several moments of despair, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.  We hung the wet clothes around the house to dry, went shopping for a mailbox, plumbing parts, and a new dryer and started fixing.  Scott got the leak under the sink fixed, we went to my in-laws to dry enough clothes to last us until the dryer could be delivered a week later, and put a continuous fan on the kitchen floor.  So far, so good.

Then a couple days ago we noticed a bad smell in the basement office and found we had wet carpet and a large wet area down the wall destroying the paint, and started fans on that.  They weren’t cutting it, so yesterday Scott rented a super blower to get it all dried.  I haven’t been down there this morning to check on the progress because it makes me want to cry every time I walk in there.  The only good thing I see is that we are both committed to tackling the long-standing problem of cleaning out the office this winter.  If only because we don’t want to move so much stuff out of there next time there’s a leak.  Oh, and the dryer was delivered late yesterday afternoon, so today I can do laundry and maybe get the clothes dry.

The icemaker is still not hooked up because Scott is nervous to upset the status quo, no decision has been made on what to do about the warped kitchen floor, I can’t even think about the mess in the office, and Blue Stakes has come to mark our parking strip so Scott plans to dig and install our new mailbox this weekend.  Just in time for Halloween pumpkin smashing.  And did I mention that we desperately need a new water heater?