Stress!

I mentioned that last week was the week from hell and I wasn't lying.  I don't think I've looked forward to a Monday morning more than I looked forward to this one.

It started last Sunday night when Scot was hit very fast and very hard with the worst migraine of his life.  He has had problems with migraines for several years now and the short explanation is that he's been to many doctors, tried many treatments (most of which are a serious problem for him), and come out the other side no better than when he started.  His headache Sunday night was a bad one and despite all medications we had to treat it at home, it was not going away.  He ended up going to the ER to have it treated.

As ER trips go, it was fairly low stress.  They gave him with the medications we know will work, broke the headache and sent him on his way.  Not such a bit deal, really.  (I'm sure you're wondering how a 'low-stress' ER visit figures into this story of ongoing stress.  Stay with me.)

Monday he worked from home because the medications he'd been given combined with the severity of the headache left him feeling pretty hung-over.  This is how it came to be that he was home in the afternoon.

Now, Scot had a procedure of a personal nature about 3 weeks ago.  It went fine.  On Monday afternoon, I was herding Liam through the process of getting ready to go to TKD when I heard a high-pitched yelp.  I actually thought it was Liam from another room but when I looked up Liam was right there.  However, Jamie had been upstairs with Scot.

Oh no.

Scot took an injury of a personal nature courtesy of Jamie's knee.  Unfortunately, I couldn't stay around to chat because I had to take Liam to TKD.  While I was at the dojang, Scot and I were exchanging text messages and then phone calls about the situation.  The upshot was that he was in enough pain that he had to be seen by a doctor, it was after hours, and the doctor that did the procedure told him to go to the ER.

The same ER he'd been at just 24 hours before.

This time I went with him.  We made emergency arrangements for childcare (Thank you, Ann!) and when I got home with Liam from TKD, I shoved down some dinner and then took Scot to the ER.  It was not as painless a visit as the night before but he did get the same attending.  Also, the nurse thought I was Scot's daughter, not his wife.  Considering this injury, this was both funny and weird.

Luckily, there didn't appear to be any damage done so he was sent home with painkillers and told to take it easy. And to stay away from the toddler's knee.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were fairly normal if hectic.  As usual, I had a crap ton to do and not enough time to do it in.  This is nothing new.

Friday night was the kicker.  That night just about did me in.

We got to the end of the day and it was time to start bath/bedtime routine.  I took the kids upstairs to and convinced them to get in the tub together to save me extra work.  Meanwhile, Scot and I kept saying "who farted?" and "what's that smell?" and "is Jamie's diaper dirty?" I got the kids in the tub and ran down to the basement to check things out.  Hit the furnace/laundry room.

GAS!

I went running for the stairs, yell at Scot to call his parents so we can get the kids out, shut off the furnace, and go running for the bathroom to bathe the kids, get them out, and get them dressed.  Scot calls his parents then calls the fire department.  Smart man, because I was all "BUG OUT!  BUG OUT!  MASH 4077, BUG OUT!"

So, he goes to wait outside for the nice burly firemen to show up while I run around like a crazy person getting Jamie dressed (Liam can dress himself), gathering toiletries, clothes, pillows, blankies, and stuffed animals and throwing it all together in an overnight bag.  All the while I'm wondering "What the hell are we going to do with the dog?!"

By this time the firemen have arrived (who, by the way showed up with the lights and trucks and whatnot - Jamie was FASCINATED as, I'm sure, were the neighbors) so I can't get out of my driveway.  I went down to check on things and find out if I needed to whisk the kids away.  Guess what?  IT'S POO GAS.  Yep, a back burp of sewer gas from the main house drain.

Yes, go ahead.  I'm laughing at myself, too.  

But, you know, just to be safe, the burly firemen are running around with their little gas reading equipment.  There were no leaks on the furnace - good, it's practically brand new - but he stuck the meter in the dryer, turned the dryer on and that meter lit up like a damn Christmas tree.  Gas leak in or around the dryer.

They shut off the gas supply to the dryer and I had to call a repairman today (they are coming out tomorrow).  Meanwhile, the 6 year old was freaking out that it's not safe in the house and the 2 yr old was shrieking about all the "SHRUCKS!" in front of the house.

It was A Night and almost immediately upon getting the kids calmed down and in bed the phone rang.  It was the neighbors wanting to know what the hell was going on.  Oh joy.

The weekend was crisis-free but not aggravation free.  Everyone was on everyone else's nerves and we were all cranky.  Not even a couple of family outings seemed to soothe our savageness.

So here it is, the start of a brand-new week, and I am praying that it will be calmer and that I will be able to get all of my domestic chores done without a bunch of crazy crises throwing monkey wrenches into things.  Considering I've got two TKD classes, a class field trip I'm chaperoning, a plumber coming in to repair the dryer, taking the car for inspection, Liam's Lego class, and speech therapy all on the docket this week I need things to run smoothly.

My thoughts exactly, Jamie.

Again? Really?

Last night at around 8:00, Scot looked out the back door and said "What the hell is THAT?!"

People, another tree came down.  ANOTHER ONE.  I know that much of the Pittsburgh region got slammed with storms last night but we were in the zone of no storms.  Storms to the north.  Storms to the south.  No storms here.  There wasn't a single drop of rain, rumble of thunder, flash of lightning, or gust of wind.

Despite that, we have this "little" problem facing us:

We've known for a few weeks that we have a very large, very dead tree on our back hill, situated directly in front of our treehouse.  The removal of this problem is going to require a tree service which we hadn't gotten around to yet because of the $500 we spent on a new water heater 2 weeks ago.  There's only so much room in the budget, people.

Anyway, a fairly large limb of the dead tree came down and in the process managed to take out some other baby trees.  Here's where the limb came from (look at the tree directly to the right of the tree house and go up - there's broken tree there).

A close up:

So, whether we were ready for it financially, we've got to get the tree service in here to do some damn clean up work.  So much for getting new garage doors this fall.  By the time all is said and done we will have managed to blow about 2/3 of the money required for that on unexpected home repairs.  I'd really rather go to Hawaii.

Well.

Not Hawaii.  I'd have to wear a bathing suit.  But vacation?  YES, PLEASE.

The Aliens Stole The Real Me

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a terrible housekeeper.  If you walk into my house unannounced on a random Tuesday you're likely to find the remnants of a toy tornado scattered around, dishes rotting in the sink, enough dog hair on the carpets to knit a second beagle, and laundry (both clean and dirty) piling up.  That's just inside the house.  The yard is even worse.  I never seem to be able to manage to climb up on top of the mountain and stay there.

A week and a half ago, on a Monday morning, I got up and had my usual morning with the kids.  But, something seemed to have infected me with the need to clean.  (And before you jump to conclusions, I am NOT pregnant, nor will I ever be again.)  I sat down and made a list of all the things I wanted to do that day.  I didn't overwhelm myself with everything I needed to accomplish, just the things that I could reasonably tackle that day.  Then I got to work and started crossing items off my list.

Would you believe that I finished the to-do list for that day?

It's true.  I did.  Even more shocking was the fact that I finished my to-do lists for the next four days running.  I kept wondering who replaced the real me with one who cleans.  Not only that, I did all this while taking care of the kids.  What, what, what?!

I really admire Moms out there that can get it all done - work, take care of the kids, make it to activities, clean the house, cook dinner, etc, etc, etc.  I have never been able to strike that balance in the long term and I don't even work outside the home.  Who wants to rake leaves when you could be inside watching a movie with the kids?  NOT. ME.  But the truth of the matter is that I can't do it that way anymore.  I have to get our lives, our house, and our yard organized or I'm going to drown as the kids get older and they have more activities to attend.

What's amazing to me is that a single 5 day period of concentrated work each day has led to me to a point where I can now start tackling all the little jobs that have accumulated around the house.  Those pesky little tasks that needed to be done but weren't imperative so I always said "Oh, I'll get to that later."

Well, Later has finally arrived.  I never thought I'd get here.

These days if you stop by the house unannounced on a random Tuesday you'll probably find clean dishes in the dishwasher and clean pots in the drainboard, clean laundry IN THE DRAWERS, the carpets vacuumed, and the toys in some semblance of order instead of strewn all over the house.  I hope I can keep the momentum going.  It was awfully nice to wake up to a clean house and the coffee already in the pot this morning.

Walls Were Just The Beginning

You know that old adage about how bad things come in threes?  Well, it's holding far more true than I would like when it comes to home repairs.

Our house is 35 years old.  It is a veritable baby in comparison to our previous home that was 80 years old when we moved out.  I assumed that having a younger house meant less silly "oh that's really old and now you're screwed" type of repairs.  Here is where I reference the adage about what assuming does.

Anyway, the point is that in the middle of dealing with the beginning, middle, and completion of wall construction, a number of OTHER things went wrong with the house.  Money is flowing in a mighty torrent from my bank account to the repairmen of Pittsburgh.  (Repairmen of Pittsburgh -- decent band name.)

First, our garbage disposal went haywire.  It got stuck in the "on" position.  We have one of those nifty professional models that turns on by twisting the drain plug in the sink.  No switch on the wall by the sink.  Just reach down, twist, and churn away.  I'd never seen one before we moved here.  Now I know why.  That sucker got effed up somehow (I don't know how!) and it got stuck in the on position.  I'll let you go ahead and imagine the frantic attempts to shut it off to no avail until I finally cut the power at the breaker box.  As luck would have it, the thing is on its own circuit so I didn't lose power to anything else in the process.

I haven't had anyone in to fix it yet but it will probably be around a $250 job to replace the batch feed switch on the silly thing.

Then there was my garage door.  I was standing in the library one Saturday afternoon (yes, we have a library - we have too many books and the formal living room became a library) and I heard a huge crashing noise.  I ran around for 10 minutes trying to locate the issue until I decided that maybe it had happened outside and I hit the garage door button to check.

The door went up about a foot and a half.

The door opener tried to lift it further, got nowhere with that effort, and sent the door back down again.

Lather, rinse, repeat about 4 times until I satisfied myself it was not a fluke.

So, I went over and while the opener was running, I lifted that damn door all the way up so that I could get my car out.  And then I noticed that certain pulleys and wires were hanging willy nilly off the tracks of the door.  Ah.  Yes, THAT would be the problem.

I called in a repair guy who said I had bad springs.  He replaced them both for me for the low, low price of $70 (yahoo!) and also left me with a rather nice little quote for new garage doors.  If we can scrape the money together, that's a project for the fall.

So, the door was working well for a few days.

And then it crapped out again.  This time, it would start lowering, go about a foot and a half, get caught up somehow and go back up again.  Joy.  This occurred on the first day of wall construction.

I called the repairman back and he came back out and gave that opener a piece of his mind.   Really, he just adjusted the thing to accommodate for new springs and it's working fine now.  Even better, he didn't charge me.

Two days later I decided that I had better do some laundry before we went out of town last weekend.  (That's another blog post.)  I got an error on the first load.  We have a front loading high efficiency washer so those codes mean diddly-bo-jack-wop-shit to me.  I cleared it out and sent it through another rinse and spin cycle.

That crapped out, too.

Bonus.  Now I had a washing machine problem that I needed fixed immediately in order to have clean clothes to pack.  I called a local repairman and when I told him what kind of washer I had he ran away.  And told me that every other local dude would run, too.  Sigh.  So I called the next option - a large appliance repair company.  They said they'd be able to send a dude out that same day.  Hurrah!

I went to the laundry room to remove the wet clothes from the washer.  Now, this is the first time I've ever had the washer repaired - we only bought it 3 years ago.  So, I didn't really think about the consequences before I opened the door of the FRONT LOADER WASHER THAT WASN'T PROPERLY DRAINING.

Water.  Everywhere. 

I got it cleaned up the best way I could without, you know, having a working washing machine and waited for the repairman to show up.  He showed up, took the thing apart and removed a single bobby pin and some lint.  Let me repeat that.  A single bobby pin and some lint.  Then he put everything back together and charged me $134.  For a single bobby pin and some lint.

But, wouldn't you know, that washer works again and I had clean clothes for the trip.

Dear Household Fairy - UNCLE.