Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Shooting Star
Another busy day put to bed. I had dinner with a good friend tonight, catching up on the last few weeks of life and unwinding with a glass of wine. A few minutes into my drive home after dinner, I saw one of the most brilliant shooting stars I've ever seen. I think you are supposed make a wish on shooting stars. For the first time in a long time, I couldn't come up with a single thing to wish for.
Bug Zappers and Jerry Jeff
Late night drives + caffeine to stay awake = staying up long after I get to where I need to be. Tomorrow (errr, today) is going to be fun.
On the drive tonight, I was happily listening to some new music (Mumford and Sons and Avett Brothers) until my Ipod decided it was unhappy with its work hours and went on strike. I switched over to XM once I realized the Ipod had given up the ghost for the night. While channel surfing XM, I stumbled across a few Jerry Jeff Walker songs.
If you are from Texas, particularly the Austin area, you are probably somewhat familiar with Jerry Jeff's music. Similarly, if you've listened much to Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, you've probably heard Jerry Jeff. His main claim to fame is probably "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother," although "Mr. Bojangles" is another good one. The last song I came across tonight was "Gettin' By." The only way I can really describe what his music means to me is to call it "comfort music" - sort of akin to comfort food.
My family has a cabin up in southern Missouri; it has been in the family for several generations. It is in a very rural part of Missouri, out in the middle of nowhere, down three miles of dirt and gravel roads and across two creeks that often flood. When I was growing up, we would make the four hour trip up to that cabin several times a year to visit my aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandmother. I can remember a time when the cabin itself did not have an indoor bathroom - you had to trek about 30 feet across the yard to a bathhouse when you needed a shower or when nature called. It was fine during the day, but not much fun when nature called in the middle of the night and it was pitch black outside.
I used to love making those trips, even if it meant several long hours in the car. The adults would relax, catch up with each other, and blow off steam, so we kiddos were left with little supervision and acres of woods as our playground. The days consisted of swimming and fishing in the river, running wild in the woods, making up all sorts of games, having bottle rocket wars (the grown ups either didn't know or didn't want to know about those little games), and feeling total freedom. During the evenings, my dad and uncle would barbecue while my mom and aunt would take care of the rest of dinner. After dinner, the adults would sit outside for hours talking and drinking, usually with Jerry Jeff, Willie, or Waylon as background music. The conversations and night noises were punctuated with the periodic ZZZZAAAP from the fluorescent purple bug zapper.
Those weekends are some of my favorite childhood memories. The songs from that time frame, particularly Jerry Jeff's, have a way of reminding me of those simple, free days, and the warm, comforting nights when the grown ups laughed at everything, bedtimes didn't matter, and my shoulders had yet to feel the weight of life's responsibility. It's always nice to take a trip back there, even if the trip only lasts the length of a song.
On the drive tonight, I was happily listening to some new music (Mumford and Sons and Avett Brothers) until my Ipod decided it was unhappy with its work hours and went on strike. I switched over to XM once I realized the Ipod had given up the ghost for the night. While channel surfing XM, I stumbled across a few Jerry Jeff Walker songs.
If you are from Texas, particularly the Austin area, you are probably somewhat familiar with Jerry Jeff's music. Similarly, if you've listened much to Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, you've probably heard Jerry Jeff. His main claim to fame is probably "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother," although "Mr. Bojangles" is another good one. The last song I came across tonight was "Gettin' By." The only way I can really describe what his music means to me is to call it "comfort music" - sort of akin to comfort food.
My family has a cabin up in southern Missouri; it has been in the family for several generations. It is in a very rural part of Missouri, out in the middle of nowhere, down three miles of dirt and gravel roads and across two creeks that often flood. When I was growing up, we would make the four hour trip up to that cabin several times a year to visit my aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandmother. I can remember a time when the cabin itself did not have an indoor bathroom - you had to trek about 30 feet across the yard to a bathhouse when you needed a shower or when nature called. It was fine during the day, but not much fun when nature called in the middle of the night and it was pitch black outside.
I used to love making those trips, even if it meant several long hours in the car. The adults would relax, catch up with each other, and blow off steam, so we kiddos were left with little supervision and acres of woods as our playground. The days consisted of swimming and fishing in the river, running wild in the woods, making up all sorts of games, having bottle rocket wars (the grown ups either didn't know or didn't want to know about those little games), and feeling total freedom. During the evenings, my dad and uncle would barbecue while my mom and aunt would take care of the rest of dinner. After dinner, the adults would sit outside for hours talking and drinking, usually with Jerry Jeff, Willie, or Waylon as background music. The conversations and night noises were punctuated with the periodic ZZZZAAAP from the fluorescent purple bug zapper.
Those weekends are some of my favorite childhood memories. The songs from that time frame, particularly Jerry Jeff's, have a way of reminding me of those simple, free days, and the warm, comforting nights when the grown ups laughed at everything, bedtimes didn't matter, and my shoulders had yet to feel the weight of life's responsibility. It's always nice to take a trip back there, even if the trip only lasts the length of a song.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Monday Again
Another Monday morning, another busy week. A trip to Houston planned for later today, and in the meantime, I need to knock out a bunch of stuff on my to-do list. I have a few ideas for posts rattling around in my head, but I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have to actually get to them. Oh well. Can't do anything about that.
The weekend included IHOP for breakfast Saturday morning with the kiddos, followed by a shopping trip to take care of the myriad little things that crop up over time (new pajamas for the kiddos, caulk to fix a shower leak, etc.). I also needed to pick up something to wear for a fundraiser that J and I attended on Saturday night. It's been a long time since we've gone to anything quite like that, so I figured I needed something that was not a business suit and looked a little nicer than a two year old Old Navy sweater... After the shopping trip, I did a little organization around the house, then headed out to the fundraising shindig (kiddos stayed with my parents). J joined me there after his flight landed in LR, and we spent a rather surreal night seeing faces we haven't seen in 15 to 20 years. Very odd.
Yesterday we enjoyed the time change and slept in - woo hoo! Got up, picked up the kiddos, and worked on getting the house ready for the upcoming week. I'm not sure we really succeeded with that one, but I did make some declutter / organization progress. I made the mistake of letting my boy watch Twister with me as I went through one of those massive piles of paper that tends to accumulate in our house. That came back to bite me in the ass when he informed me, well past his bedtime, that he couldn't get the movie out of his head. Dumbass parenting mistake #42.
And here we are at Monday morning, once again. Time to take a deep breath and dive on in.
The weekend included IHOP for breakfast Saturday morning with the kiddos, followed by a shopping trip to take care of the myriad little things that crop up over time (new pajamas for the kiddos, caulk to fix a shower leak, etc.). I also needed to pick up something to wear for a fundraiser that J and I attended on Saturday night. It's been a long time since we've gone to anything quite like that, so I figured I needed something that was not a business suit and looked a little nicer than a two year old Old Navy sweater... After the shopping trip, I did a little organization around the house, then headed out to the fundraising shindig (kiddos stayed with my parents). J joined me there after his flight landed in LR, and we spent a rather surreal night seeing faces we haven't seen in 15 to 20 years. Very odd.
Yesterday we enjoyed the time change and slept in - woo hoo! Got up, picked up the kiddos, and worked on getting the house ready for the upcoming week. I'm not sure we really succeeded with that one, but I did make some declutter / organization progress. I made the mistake of letting my boy watch Twister with me as I went through one of those massive piles of paper that tends to accumulate in our house. That came back to bite me in the ass when he informed me, well past his bedtime, that he couldn't get the movie out of his head. Dumbass parenting mistake #42.
And here we are at Monday morning, once again. Time to take a deep breath and dive on in.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Asking the Question
About two months ago, I bought a new journal. This isn't unusual for me - I've kept a diary / journal for almost as long as I can remember. There have been times in my life where I've felt that whatever journal I'm writing in at the time has been the only thing tethering me to sanity. There have been years where I've written only two or three times during that year, and years where I've probably written nothing. But there have been years when I've filled hundreds of pages with whatever is going on in my life.
The journals I wrote in high school are almost unintelligible - I wrote in pencil and many of the pages have smudged and smeared nearly beyond recognition. Those years are written on notebook paper, clipped into three ring binders, and filled with the trials and tribulations that come with being a teenager. But that was the first time that I wrote nearly every day - often at 1am, after the homework and nightly phone marathons were completed - and I began to realize how putting thoughts on the page helped me think through my problems and confusion. I actually remember keeping two different journals in that time frame, one focused on the daily stuff that I was dealing with, and one focused on religion. There are at least five or six journals from that time, and I'm pretty sure I still have them all.
I did not write anywhere nearly as much in college, although I did occasionally fill a page or two of a journal I kept during that time. I clearly remember the night that I changed my course from being dead set on going to medical school to thinking I would do "something else." I was writing in my journal at that time, and I guess I was finally able to determine that the medical school direction was not where I really wanted to go. Writing it down that night gave me the strength to change my course; I'm not sure I would have otherwise done that. I think I was in my third year of college at the time, had already taken the MCAT, and was beginning to contemplate medical school applications. That night, everything changed course.
After J and I got married, I didn't write for a long time. I'm sure I have a page or two from various early years of marriage, but it almost felt like I had no use for writing in journals at that point. I was too busy trying to figure out how to live life as a married adult, not to mention answering the whole "what do I do with my life" question, since I'd thrown medical school out the window. I'm sure I have whatever journal I might have written in at that time, but I have no clear memory of writing in the first year of marriage.
The writing hiatus extended to law school. For obvious reasons, during law school I quit nearly every extraneous activity except for eating, a bit of sleep, and a bit of tennis (hitting the hell out of a tennis ball should be considered therapy as far as I'm concerned). For my law school graduation, an aunt gave me a gift certificate to Levenger, a web site dedicated to lovers of all things paper, pens, and books. As I debated what to order, I kept coming back to a set of journals on their web site.
This was the beginning of the crazy time in my life, which meant my brain was starting to look for a way to sort things out. I remembered the way writing had helped me organize my thoughts and think through my problems in the past, and that was probably what steered me to the journals. I bought two of them with the gift certificate, both over a hundred pages in length. I zoomed through the first one, filling page after page with frustration, thoughts, anxieties, and whatever was on my mind. Life got harder, things got stranger, and this was the time in my life where I felt that writing was one of the few things that kept me tethered to sanity.
Somewhere in the midst of all the chaos and The Crazy, I went on a trip with some friends to a water park (it was high summer in Texas). I wasn't really in the mood to go, but the trip had been planned for a while and I felt bad backing out. I spent the morning with my group of friends, but volunteered to stay at our picnic table and watch all of our stuff for the afternoon. I spent the next three hours or so sitting at that picnic bench, writing and thinking. Heh, now that seems like an amazing luxury - I'm not sure I ever see that much free time at once any more! Anyway, that afternoon as I was writing, I came to an understanding - perhaps even an epiphany if you want to get dramatic (which I usually don't). I'm not sure I can accurately describe it, but I was in the middle of a sentence and it was like a floodlight came on. If I ever had to choose a turning point in my life, that afternoon, that one sentence I was writing might very well be the one I would choose. It was the start of some clarity in my life.
I'm sure I would have figured it out eventually; I'm sure I would have worked through things just the same had I not been writing. But I'm not sure everything would have crystallized in quite the same way, nor am I sure I would have recognized the importance when everything came together. For whatever reason, still having that journal, still having the words I was thinking at that exact point in time seems inordinately valuable now.
When I bought the new journal a few months ago, I still had another unused journal in my drawer, just like the ones I bought with my aunt's gift certificate. I bought it several years ago, and it just felt too heavy for the writing I want to do now, almost like it required a life crisis to justify writing in it. Fortunately, I don't have one of those going on right now. So instead, I bought a new journal that I hoped would inspire me to write more. I wrote in that one for two or three nights, and then haven't written in it again until tonight. Which is great, because in those two or three nights that I did write in it, I wrote down some goals for myself. One of those goals was to write more, perhaps by starting a blog to help me stay on track. Mission accomplished so far.
The journals I wrote in high school are almost unintelligible - I wrote in pencil and many of the pages have smudged and smeared nearly beyond recognition. Those years are written on notebook paper, clipped into three ring binders, and filled with the trials and tribulations that come with being a teenager. But that was the first time that I wrote nearly every day - often at 1am, after the homework and nightly phone marathons were completed - and I began to realize how putting thoughts on the page helped me think through my problems and confusion. I actually remember keeping two different journals in that time frame, one focused on the daily stuff that I was dealing with, and one focused on religion. There are at least five or six journals from that time, and I'm pretty sure I still have them all.
I did not write anywhere nearly as much in college, although I did occasionally fill a page or two of a journal I kept during that time. I clearly remember the night that I changed my course from being dead set on going to medical school to thinking I would do "something else." I was writing in my journal at that time, and I guess I was finally able to determine that the medical school direction was not where I really wanted to go. Writing it down that night gave me the strength to change my course; I'm not sure I would have otherwise done that. I think I was in my third year of college at the time, had already taken the MCAT, and was beginning to contemplate medical school applications. That night, everything changed course.
After J and I got married, I didn't write for a long time. I'm sure I have a page or two from various early years of marriage, but it almost felt like I had no use for writing in journals at that point. I was too busy trying to figure out how to live life as a married adult, not to mention answering the whole "what do I do with my life" question, since I'd thrown medical school out the window. I'm sure I have whatever journal I might have written in at that time, but I have no clear memory of writing in the first year of marriage.
The writing hiatus extended to law school. For obvious reasons, during law school I quit nearly every extraneous activity except for eating, a bit of sleep, and a bit of tennis (hitting the hell out of a tennis ball should be considered therapy as far as I'm concerned). For my law school graduation, an aunt gave me a gift certificate to Levenger, a web site dedicated to lovers of all things paper, pens, and books. As I debated what to order, I kept coming back to a set of journals on their web site.
This was the beginning of the crazy time in my life, which meant my brain was starting to look for a way to sort things out. I remembered the way writing had helped me organize my thoughts and think through my problems in the past, and that was probably what steered me to the journals. I bought two of them with the gift certificate, both over a hundred pages in length. I zoomed through the first one, filling page after page with frustration, thoughts, anxieties, and whatever was on my mind. Life got harder, things got stranger, and this was the time in my life where I felt that writing was one of the few things that kept me tethered to sanity.
Somewhere in the midst of all the chaos and The Crazy, I went on a trip with some friends to a water park (it was high summer in Texas). I wasn't really in the mood to go, but the trip had been planned for a while and I felt bad backing out. I spent the morning with my group of friends, but volunteered to stay at our picnic table and watch all of our stuff for the afternoon. I spent the next three hours or so sitting at that picnic bench, writing and thinking. Heh, now that seems like an amazing luxury - I'm not sure I ever see that much free time at once any more! Anyway, that afternoon as I was writing, I came to an understanding - perhaps even an epiphany if you want to get dramatic (which I usually don't). I'm not sure I can accurately describe it, but I was in the middle of a sentence and it was like a floodlight came on. If I ever had to choose a turning point in my life, that afternoon, that one sentence I was writing might very well be the one I would choose. It was the start of some clarity in my life.
I'm sure I would have figured it out eventually; I'm sure I would have worked through things just the same had I not been writing. But I'm not sure everything would have crystallized in quite the same way, nor am I sure I would have recognized the importance when everything came together. For whatever reason, still having that journal, still having the words I was thinking at that exact point in time seems inordinately valuable now.
When I bought the new journal a few months ago, I still had another unused journal in my drawer, just like the ones I bought with my aunt's gift certificate. I bought it several years ago, and it just felt too heavy for the writing I want to do now, almost like it required a life crisis to justify writing in it. Fortunately, I don't have one of those going on right now. So instead, I bought a new journal that I hoped would inspire me to write more. I wrote in that one for two or three nights, and then haven't written in it again until tonight. Which is great, because in those two or three nights that I did write in it, I wrote down some goals for myself. One of those goals was to write more, perhaps by starting a blog to help me stay on track. Mission accomplished so far.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Friday Bullets
So let's see, it's Friday. In bullets,
- The plumbing issues from Wednesday have been either fixed or at least identified for future DIY fixing - this is a good thing. How we ended up with two different water leaks from two different sources is beyond me, but at least we can fix it now. Now to the hardware store get some caulk...
- I ran yesterday for the first time since Sunday, just a quick 3 miler while the girl was at gymnastics. J is talking about a half marathon in December. I'm sort of tempted to ramp it up and try to run it with him, but that might be begging for an injury. Sigh.
- The only thing on the agenda tomorrow is a fundraising event in the evening. I can't remember the last time I had a Saturday completely open - I'm not sure I know what to do!
- I'm probably looking at a trip to Houston next week, so I'm sure part of the weekend will be spent getting ready for the trip.
- J gets back tomorrow from his week long trip - yay! His route back from LA includes a stopover in Las Vegas tonight. Totally unplanned, of course. His last trip's winnings from Vegas put him in the black, so I fully expect this one to involve major collateral damage, even though he'll be there less than 24 hours. Yay.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Drip Drip Drip D'oh!
You know how sometimes you just get that funny feeling that someone - or something - is sneaking up on you and just about to get you? Like, say, your house? Yeah, me too.
When we moved back to AR, both J and I were adamant that we did not want a new construction house. We'd had that for the last several years, and from what we'd seen, new construction meant a complete clear cut of any trees that were in the neighborhood. So instead of looking at new construction, we intentionally looked at older houses. I'm not talking 100 years old or anything; just a well established neighborhood that had large trees and no cookie cutter houses. We found a house that worked with a nice large yard and moved in.
Over the last two years, we have come to expect the fairly minor maintenance issues that come with having a not-so-new house. That's just part of the deal. The plumbing, however, has been an issue nearly since we moved in; it resulted in my encountering what I have to call one of my top 3 most disgusting situations/jobs ever. Actually, that situation and rotovirus diapers are probably tied for #1 - but I digress. Let's just say that the plumbing / sewer lines in this house have me perpetually nervous, and leave it at that for right now.
For the last few days, things have felt a little "off" in the house. Last night, they went completely haywire. Sometime yesterday afternoon, I noticed that one of the toilets had very little water in the bowl - usually a sure sign that a kiddo was a little too liberal with the TP. But when I flushed it? It flushed just fine. So no, no blockage, just a strange occurrence (Mistake #1).
For some reason yesterday evening before dinner, both kiddos wanted baths. So they both took long, full baths. While running the girl's bathwater upstairs, the girl and I both noticed an "odor" in the bathroom. I blamed it on her, she blamed it on me, and we went on our merry way (Mistake #2). I ran the dishwasher and cooked dinner. Teeth were brushed, toilets were flushed. A lot of water that flowed through this house yesterday evening.
In the quiet that descended after the kiddos went to bed, I noticed a funny sound in my bathroom. It very faintly sounded almost like ... dripping water. But I couldn't see anything obviously wrong, and figured maybe there was a bathtub still draining from Tubfest 2010 (Mistake #3).
As I went to turn on my shower, I looked down and the drain looked funny. Almost like there was a little bit of food that had come out of it at one point (no other description really works there) - peas crossed my mind. WTH??? Then I realized there were a bunch of kid toys in there, crayons of various colors, and a kiddo had been the last one to shower in there, so god only knows what they had been doing in there (Mistake #4).
I went about my merry way, first cleaning the shower because it needed it, then getting myself cleaned up (and noticing that the water seemed to be draining slowly for some reason). After I got out, I realized I could still hear the faint dripping noise, and decided I probably needed to figure it out (this would be the first intelligent decision I made).
I checked around the bathtub - nope. I checked under the sinks - nope. I checked the faucets - nope. While I was troubleshooting, one of the kiddos flushed a toilet upstairs, and the toilet in our bathroom made an ominous bubbling/gurgling sound. Not a good sign at all. After spending several minutes trying to locate the source of the noise, including crawling around on the floor because I could hear the noise better that way, it occurs to me that it sounds like water dripping on plastic. Such as the plastic that is on the floor of the crawlspace immediately under our bathroom. Oh shit.
I hauled my ass down to the crawlspace (which is actually very large in most places, so the word crawlspace is kind of misleading), and as soon as I got down there, I could hear the water hitting the plastic. Bingo. I shined my flashlight around and immediately found the source of the dripping noise. Except...there wasn't just one spot that was leaking. No, there were at least two, and possibly three spots where water was leaking from the subfloor into the crawlspace. This was very not good. Obviously, a water pipe had burst and I needed to shut off the water to the house. Crap, that meant no water for the next morning, but I figured we could survive that. It was better than a flooded crawlspace and enormous water bill.
So I got my wrench and flashlight and went out to the front yard to shut off the water to the house at the meter. Except that while doing so, I notice the meter wasn't turning to show that water was being used. If there was a water leak from incoming water, the meter should be running. It wasn't. Which left me with really only one - very bad - conclusion. Whatever burst pipe that was now leaking into the subflooring and crawlspace (and, as I was to discover later, into the half bath) wasn't an incoming, clean water pipe. It was an outgoing sewage pipe. Shit.
***Update - apparently there was another option. Two water leaks going on at the same time (one from the shower, one from a toilet), combined with a slow moving blockage in the pipes that has apparently cleared. Go figure - I'll take 10 water leaks over a sewage issue any day.***
When we moved back to AR, both J and I were adamant that we did not want a new construction house. We'd had that for the last several years, and from what we'd seen, new construction meant a complete clear cut of any trees that were in the neighborhood. So instead of looking at new construction, we intentionally looked at older houses. I'm not talking 100 years old or anything; just a well established neighborhood that had large trees and no cookie cutter houses. We found a house that worked with a nice large yard and moved in.
Over the last two years, we have come to expect the fairly minor maintenance issues that come with having a not-so-new house. That's just part of the deal. The plumbing, however, has been an issue nearly since we moved in; it resulted in my encountering what I have to call one of my top 3 most disgusting situations/jobs ever. Actually, that situation and rotovirus diapers are probably tied for #1 - but I digress. Let's just say that the plumbing / sewer lines in this house have me perpetually nervous, and leave it at that for right now.
For the last few days, things have felt a little "off" in the house. Last night, they went completely haywire. Sometime yesterday afternoon, I noticed that one of the toilets had very little water in the bowl - usually a sure sign that a kiddo was a little too liberal with the TP. But when I flushed it? It flushed just fine. So no, no blockage, just a strange occurrence (Mistake #1).
For some reason yesterday evening before dinner, both kiddos wanted baths. So they both took long, full baths. While running the girl's bathwater upstairs, the girl and I both noticed an "odor" in the bathroom. I blamed it on her, she blamed it on me, and we went on our merry way (Mistake #2). I ran the dishwasher and cooked dinner. Teeth were brushed, toilets were flushed. A lot of water that flowed through this house yesterday evening.
In the quiet that descended after the kiddos went to bed, I noticed a funny sound in my bathroom. It very faintly sounded almost like ... dripping water. But I couldn't see anything obviously wrong, and figured maybe there was a bathtub still draining from Tubfest 2010 (Mistake #3).
As I went to turn on my shower, I looked down and the drain looked funny. Almost like there was a little bit of food that had come out of it at one point (no other description really works there) - peas crossed my mind. WTH??? Then I realized there were a bunch of kid toys in there, crayons of various colors, and a kiddo had been the last one to shower in there, so god only knows what they had been doing in there (Mistake #4).
I went about my merry way, first cleaning the shower because it needed it, then getting myself cleaned up (and noticing that the water seemed to be draining slowly for some reason). After I got out, I realized I could still hear the faint dripping noise, and decided I probably needed to figure it out (this would be the first intelligent decision I made).
I checked around the bathtub - nope. I checked under the sinks - nope. I checked the faucets - nope. While I was troubleshooting, one of the kiddos flushed a toilet upstairs, and the toilet in our bathroom made an ominous bubbling/gurgling sound. Not a good sign at all. After spending several minutes trying to locate the source of the noise, including crawling around on the floor because I could hear the noise better that way, it occurs to me that it sounds like water dripping on plastic. Such as the plastic that is on the floor of the crawlspace immediately under our bathroom. Oh shit.
I hauled my ass down to the crawlspace (which is actually very large in most places, so the word crawlspace is kind of misleading), and as soon as I got down there, I could hear the water hitting the plastic. Bingo. I shined my flashlight around and immediately found the source of the dripping noise. Except...there wasn't just one spot that was leaking. No, there were at least two, and possibly three spots where water was leaking from the subfloor into the crawlspace. This was very not good. Obviously, a water pipe had burst and I needed to shut off the water to the house. Crap, that meant no water for the next morning, but I figured we could survive that. It was better than a flooded crawlspace and enormous water bill.
So I got my wrench and flashlight and went out to the front yard to shut off the water to the house at the meter. Except that while doing so, I notice the meter wasn't turning to show that water was being used. If there was a water leak from incoming water, the meter should be running. It wasn't. Which left me with really only one - very bad - conclusion. Whatever burst pipe that was now leaking into the subflooring and crawlspace (and, as I was to discover later, into the half bath) wasn't an incoming, clean water pipe. It was an outgoing sewage pipe. Shit.
***Update - apparently there was another option. Two water leaks going on at the same time (one from the shower, one from a toilet), combined with a slow moving blockage in the pipes that has apparently cleared. Go figure - I'll take 10 water leaks over a sewage issue any day.***
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Routines, Rituals and Lightening
J is out of town at a conference of some variety this week, so I've got the kids mostly to myself (with a little help from my mom, thanks goodness!). I find it amusing how much my normal rituals change when I'm home by myself. On a normal night, I'm often in bed by 10, and usually asleep by around 11; however, when J is gone, I tend to stay up a lot later, and I'm not sure why. Sometimes I wonder if it is just the lack of normal clues that tell me it's time to go to bed. It also feels easier to get stuff done, and again, I'm not really sure why that is. It's not like one more person makes a ton of extra work, unless that person is a newborn - then all bets are off.
But for example, it feels easier to get the dinner mess cleaned up when I am on my own. I'm much more likely to stay up goofing around on the internet or watching tv or reading or whatever. In fact, some nights I can't fall asleep, even though I'm up waayy too late. It also feels a little easier to get the kiddos to do what I need them to do. After the fiasco that was Monday night, when both kids and the cat ended up in bed with me, covers over heads to block out the thunder and lightning, I knew they needed a little extra sleep. So last night, the kiddos were upstairs and in bed nearly an hour early, lights out, with no yelling, fighting or screaming (not necessarily true for the cat). I'm sure it won't seem as easy once they are able to tell time, but I'm taking advantage of that ignorance as long as possible! But it just seems easier sometimes, and I'm not really sure why.
I wonder if it has something to do with only having to take your own schedule and priorities into consideration. If you are the only one around, you get to dictate the schedule, what happens next, what is important, and what you can let slide. If someone else is around, you also have to work around their to-do list and priorities, whatever those may be. Throw in different parenting styles and the logistics / coordination that are required from two working parents with school kids, and everything feels more complex. Plus, if I'm the only one around, I can't get irritable if my task list isn't being carried out; the only one I can blame for the stuff that doesn't get done is myself! If there are two of us around, and I'm the only one working on whatever needs to get done at any given time, I tend to get a little out of sorts (read: pissed off). Sometimes it's justified, but often, I'm just trying to be a little too much of a control freak. So instead of doing what needs to get done, I lose the motivation and go to bed. I think I was an ostrich in a former life.
One other interesting aspect I've noticed - when J is out of town or working on the weekend or whatever, I don't feel quite as compelled to get everything on my list done as fast as possible. It's almost like I take the pressure off myself, which is crazy because the only one putting pressure on me is myself (well, deadlines are also a factor I guess). But for whatever reason, it is just easier for me to sit down and watch television with the kiddos or read a book or just play with them when I'm the only one around. It's as though I know that I'll still have energy after they are in bed, and I can probably take care of the most vital things on my list later.
Who knows. There probably is no answer.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Parenting Fail
J is out of town this week at a conference, so I'm flying solo with the kids. That's not exactly true, though; my parents live nearby and they help out a tremendous amount with the kiddos. In fact, my mom made dinner last night and the kiddos and I went over there to eat. After dinner, the boy stayed with my mom to do his homework reading for the night, and the girl and I made a trip to the grocery store. The weekend was so busy that I never had a chance to go, and we definitely needed some food in the house! We did the shopping thing, checked out, and I loaded the groceries into the car. My girl was in a great mood, playing around the cart, chattering, singing, when all of a sudden I hear this huge CRASH. I look down, and she's managed to pull the entire grocery cart over. On top of her. I think she was hanging on to the side of the cart that had the 12 pack of diet coke, and it made enough of an imbalance that over it went.
Of course there was the long drawn out moment of silence that happens just before the screaming. It was not a pretty sight, and I was honestly petrified at thinking how bad the damage could be. There were grocery bags and food everywhere, a screaming little girl, and an upended shopping cart. It was just not a good scene. I picked the cart up off of her, threw everything into the car (including her) and headed for my parents house where I could get her in some light, hoping she would calm down enough by then to let me figure out what hurt. She screamed the whole way there.
Once there, I was able to get her to calm down long enough to determine that the only thing in pain seemed to be her hand. More specifically, her right fingers. There was a small nick on her shin, but she didn't bump her head or hurt anything else - just her fingers. By the time I was able to look at them, one of the nails was already turning purple, but none of them appeared to be broken. WHEW. I sort of feel like I dodged a huge bullet on that one. I was most afraid that she'd knocked her head on the concrete, but that didn't happen. I guess if there was a good way to pull a shopping cart over on herself, she figured out what that was.
I'm not sure what I could have done differently. I can't watch my kiddos every single second of the day, nor would I want to. I refuse to be a helicopter (or hover) parent, but you just hate it when your kid gets hurt. We've been really lucky in that respect so far with both kiddos, and instinctively I know they are going to get hurt as they get older, probably more seriously than they have so far. It still sucks to know that and accept that it is just going to happen. This morning when she got up, one entire fingertip was purple, and I'm debating whether to take her in for an X-ray. I'm not sure what they can do if you fracture a finger tip, maybe just pain management, but that would be enough. I guess we'll play it by ear and see how it is a little later in the day. Here's to hoping the rest of my solo week goes better than last night...
Monday, November 1, 2010
Rookie Mistakes
Rookie mistakes from Halloween:
- Buying candy before the day of Halloween;
- Opening early-bought candy before the day of Halloween;
- Buying candy that you like;
- Forgetting when buying said candy that you will not actually be home to give out said candy;
- Working from home all week the week following Halloween.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
The Weekend Flow
This weekend went by amazingly fast. Time always moves fast on the weekends, but for some reason it seemed to go double speed this weekend. When the kiddos were younger, it felt like no big feat to get out the door by 9am if we needed to; maybe it was because they really had no say in what went on and couldn't voice their disapproval or drag their feet. Or it could have been because we'd all been up since 6am and were just ready to get the hell out of the house. Whatever the reason, my big plans to get out the door and running errands by 9am THIS Saturday did not happen. It was 10:30 before I was on my way, and I seemed to hit every red light and make every single wrong turn it was possible to make. I had a list of about four things I wanted to accomplish in the 2.5 hours I had available. After trips to six different stores (and probably twice as many wrong turns), I think I marked off two of the four things, and I was running late. It was frustrating. The rest of the day actually went pretty well, though - we baked Halloween cookies with some friends, went out to dinner, and generally had a lot of fun (well, the kids and I did; J had to work until dinner on Saturday).
Today, although not as frustrating, went just as fast. Pancakes and eggs in the morning, followed by household crap that needed to get done. I actually managed to get in a half hour nap at some point, which was definitely needed. I also was able to squeeze in a 3 mile run this afternoon, which started out really difficult but ended up feeling good. Then we did dinner, the trick or treating thing with the kiddos, and now the weekend is over. There are plenty of things I didn't get done this weekend, but I turn into a pumpkin after about 9pm most nights, regardless of whether it is Halloween, so my weekend is essentially over.
One other thing that happened this weekend - on Saturday morning, I spent about 45 minutes in the glider with my girl as she woke up for the day. She brought in a blanket and her animals (she has a complete menagerie) and cuddled up, which is a little out of character for her. At 4.5 years old, she tends to be not especially given to lots of hugging or cuddling - most of the time she'd rather be playing with her brother or doing something active. But Saturday morning, she snuggled in and we rocked and talked while my boy played with his Legos around us. It was a very pleasant and peaceful way to start the day. I guess maybe that's part of the reason I didn't get out of the house until 10:30 that morning, so I guess in retrospect, I'll take the late start in exchange for the good memory.
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