Ding dong; Avon calling

I do believe Cas is actually excited about the prospect of kids in costumes ringing our doorbell and awaiting candy distribution. I guess that's the result of having lived in apartments for so long.

We went to Costco on Thursday night to buy a lot of candy. 

I actively hid from trick-or-treaters for the past five years, so this should be a reversal for me, too. I bought the house on Modella when I worked at TJ. When I started working at White, I was suddenly living in the attendance area of my school. Nothing made me want to shut off all the lights and hide in the back bedroom like the prospect of some kid from my class standing on my doorstep. My last five years on Modella were marked by halloweens where I hid from children. 

We shall see in just a short while if our street will be heavily or lightly travelled by costumed children. Either way, we're prepared. We're either handing it all out or eating a big bag of candy. 

Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays

I wish I could say this is the first time I have done this, but today, I put on the left shoe from one pair of shoes and the right shoe from another pair of shoes.  One has a rounded toe and a bow on it.  The other has a pointier toe and no embellishment.  Here- just look:

I've done it before, and I am sure I will do it again.

This weekend was a good one.  I went over to Mom and Dad's house on Saturday, but Mom was the only one there.  Dad was off at a motorcycle thing and Danny was in Arkansas with Laurie.  In the meantime, over at Holly's house, Brad and Sue were in town.  I went to get Mom and take her to Holly's house so she could see the triplets and visit with her brother.  While we were there, Holly had to get a photo of all three babies lying on a fuzzy blanket, wearing the cute Halloween outfits Sue bought.  This is how it looks when the photo session is happening:

It cracks me up.  Holly is standing on a chair; Brad and Sue are trying to get the babies to smile and look a certain direction.  The shot turned out cute, but getting there was kind of entertaining.  

I am at school now, but I have to head home as soon as I physically can today,  Allegedly the water damage people are finishing the work on my house today, but I will believe it when I see it.  Mom is heading to my house for the 2:00 appointment time.  I left a check for my mom to fill out as well as the paint colors for the places that may need paint.  I want the work done today.  My dining room has not had all of its baseboards since October 2nd, and the man who came to "fix" everything was in and out of my house ten days ago, and all he did was take measurements and another chunk of the baseboard for reference.  Needless to say, I am getting pretty sick of this process.  It's probably a case of the Mondays.  Or maybe it could be that my house has been slightly broken for 24 days.  Hard to say which... 

Thunderstruck

When the thunder started up in earnest today, I started thinking of the song Thunderstruck by AC/DC.  Then, it occurred to me that you don't get struck by thunder; you get struck by lightning.  Stupid song.

Here's what the radar looks like right now:

Anyhow, last night, I pulled a big box off the front porch and assembled the cabinet that I want us to put grandma's china in.  I opened the box and put the thing together.  It took time, but it looks pretty good.

When I got home from work tonight, I gathered up the Styrofoam and cardboard that it came in and got it all contained so I can put it in the recycle bin.  It's all ready to go, but it's raining too hard to drag it all out there now.  

Just before the rain started up, I was driving home.  The warning light for the gas tank came on, and I decided that it was probably my turn to use the Tom Thumb rewards points.  I got gas for 81.9 cents a gallon.  We had ten points, and each point is worth ten cents a gallon.  I got a tank of gas for under ten dollars.  It's been a really long time since the gallon number was higher than the dollar number on the pump.  

Good times.  We're coming up om the weekend, and I am headed over to Holly's house with mom on Saturday.  Should be a good time.  

Playing hooky

Well, not exactly hooky.  Use of the word hooky would imply that I gave no notice or explanation for my absence.  I gave notice and explanation, but nevertheless, here I am, missing work today.  It's serendipitous, actually.  I had a staff development day today, and the plumber needed one more day to finish work.  I decided to stay home today so I could be in the house for the occasion.  The same guy is out there today, filling in the giant gash in the front yard.  I also had the opportunity to meet Coco, the woman who Cas has had cleaning up after him for years.  When we moved in together, we apparently both needed Coco.  This woman has been washing my bed sheets and vacuuming my carpets for a few months, now, and I guess it's about time I met her.  She seems nice and she appears to work hard.

It was getting kind of late in the morning, and I hadn't heard from anyone at the plumbing company or the water damage company.  I called them both.  The plumbers said they were responding to an emergency, and there seemed to be some question about their ability to come today.  I was as polite as I could be while still saying that I had taken a day off of work, and I would be unable to do so again tomorrow.  I was clear that I was not angry or even mildly upset, but I did need to be able to plan my week, so some more information would certainly be necessary.  They sent the same guy out within the hour.  I imagine he will complete the work today- he is out there shoveling dirt into the lawn-hole now.

He said they pulled him from the emergency.  I felt bad.  Then he told me they were digging under a house and it was pretty disgusting- to the point where they all needed protective attire, and he was more than happy to go do a much cleaner job in the shaded grass out in my front yard.  Shoot... Glad I could help.

This is what the front yard looked like this morning:

It looks a bit different, now.

I also called the water damage people.  I keep assuming they will do some actual work when they come out.  They came on Friday, and the guy measured things before leaving.  I want the person with the baseboards and the carpet cleaning equipment to come out.  That's the thing we need.  The baseboards came off on October 2nd.  The house was officially dry on the 5th.  The 5th was exactly two weeks ago, so now, I am wondering if we will have our dining room reassembled in any kind of pre-holiday time frame.  At some point, I genuinely want to have Jeanne and Dave over for dinner.  I think that would be a very nice thing for Cas to do.  I just want the table to be in a room that has baseboards at the bottom of the walls, but it looks like I won't be able to resolve that during my skip day.  At least the hole in the grass (a grass-hole?) is vanishing.

99 luftballoons

Two really great things happened yesterday.  The drainage pipe out to the city sewer line was replaced and Cas and I went out to the Celina Balloon Festival.  

First things first, the plumbers came pretty early in the morning, and I took the first shift.  Cas and I were both home in the morning, but he went to the gym for a lunchtime class, so I stuck around the house.  When he came back, I headed to my parents' house.  The plan was to spend Saturday doing our typical Sunday stuff so we could spend Sunday at the balloon festival.  It is a two day event, and we had already paid for our Groupon, so we were definitely going.  

Cas called me before four and let me know that the major part of the job was done, we could flush our toilets with reckless abandon, and we may want to head to the balloon festival in the evening.  They had some really cool stuff planned for that night, and since we had the time, we decided to go.  

Good call, Cas. 

That was my first time seeing a "balloon glow" occur.  It was pretty cool.  The evening was too windy to send a bunch of hot air balloons up into the air, but one of them did launch, if only briefly.

It came down in pretty short order, but at least one of them took to the skies.  

Later in the evening, there was a fireworks show.  Cas had begun sneezing so hard by then that I am surprised he didn't break a rib.  Between that and my incredibly dry eyes, we decided to walk out to the car and have a seat in the relatively still air of the inside of a vehicle until it was time to watch the fireworks.  

That's exactly what we did,  And as a bonus, we were in the car when it was time to leave.  We beat the majority of the crowd out of the parking lot.   

It was a pretty triumphant day.  We have proper drainage from our house (it's funny what you take for granted right up until it stops working) and we saw pretty stuff in the sky.  Now, my Sunday is free, so I think I will head to mom and dad's house by way of the Home Depot.  I have to pick up some rather specific light bulbs for our front porch.  So many of the bulbs are dead that it's embarrassing to turn the lights on, and Halloween is coming right up.  Probably best to replace them now.  

My house has no dong

This morning just after nine, the first of today's home repair personnel arrived.  He is out in the front yard digging a trench from the city's sewer line to my house.  He's being very careful, and I appreciate it.

He got a few feet of trench dug up, and that's when the water damage guy arrived.  He left, but came back and rang the bell again.  The total number of times my doorbell rang today so far has been three, and every time, it reminds me that my doorbell dings, but doesn't dong.  It goes ding-click.  

My house has no dong.  Tee-hee.

Taking it in stride

What a week.  My theory stands about how the universe tries to extract the missed work hours from me when I get a day off.  I get one tomorrow for the state fair, though I am not going.  There's a small piece of work-ish stuff I'm missing out on, there, but I will not travel to Fair Park tomorrow, and that's probably for the best.

On Sunday, I went over to Mom and Dad's house, as is my ritual.  Danny had been called in to work, so Dad and I went out for beers.  Cas came out to join us, and we saw this rather fascinating scene unfold:

I have seen people use a selfie stick in public before, but it still entertains me.  Mostly, I love the older gentleman.  He is clearly over it.  And so goes a Sunday out for beers with Dad and my sweetie. 

Monday was parent teacher night, and I was in my classroom for over 12 hours.  I left to go to the bathroom a few times, and I did make it all the way down the stairs to the first floor to manage a few things in the front office for about five minutes, but other than that, I took up residence in room 329.

To top that off, the PTA forgot about me.  They promised to bring food to everyone who signed up.  I signed up.  No food.  I was still waiting for my dinner at 8.  No such luck.  I left at 8:15 and hit up a Taco Bell on the way home.  Meh.  Win some, lose some.  

Tuesday, the photography club met.  They also took a vote to meet every week instead of every other week.  The kids agreed and Larry said yes.  It was only then that they asked me if I was cool with the idea.  I guess.  I would have been a lot quicker to agree if I hadn't just had the longest Monday of the year.  Larry also wants to meet up with kids at the State Fair to do a photo walk on Fair Day.  I went with him last year, but I had to bow out this time around.  I already knew about the scheduled time for the water damage guys to come and finish the work in our house on Friday, and I had a sneaking suspicion that we would be seeing more plumbers that day.  Turns out I was right.  I handed Larry my fair ticket- seemed the only reasonable thing to do.  

On Wednesday, about half of my kids were out of the classroom taking the PSAT test.  That makes for a pretty dull day, because you can't really teach a full lesson to half of your class.  You would just have to re-teach it the following day to all of the kids who were missing, thereby boring the kids who heard you the first time.  I got out of the building, headed to the Home Depot, paid for the windows we're having installed on the front of our house and made it back home.  I had to pick up a few things and head to my bank before 6.  I think there was something else I managed to accomplish that afternoon, but it all went by so fast that I can't remember what the hell it was.  That's how you know you've been busy- you can't even remember what you did yesterday.  My theory about the universe extracting missed hours of work or work-like activities when you get a day off is looking pretty solid right now, isn't it?  

Today, I had it all figured out.  The plumber was coming to run a camera down the pipe to the city sewer line.  He was supposed to arrive between 3 and 4.  I had Mom all slated to come at around 2:30.  She was ready to go, too.  Her car wouldn't start, though.  The battery was dead, and nobody was around with jumper cables, so I had nobody at the house.  

I got a call at 3:22 saying that the company had tried to call me 30 minutes before (they hadn't), and the plumber was at my house.  I was at my desk at school.  We worked it out- the guys started the work, since it was something they could accomplish outdoors.  I raced home during seventh period, which I was suddenly very happy to have as my conference time.  I met them there about 10-15 minutes after they discovered the problem.  We talked about it.  I wrote them a check.  They're coming back in the morning to dig a hole in the yard.  Riveting stuff.

In addition to that, the water damage guys are coming to clean the dining room carpets and replace the baseboards.  So very soon, I should have plumbing that runs flawlessly, a beautiful dining room and a rather large-sized gash running through my front yard.  

I'm sure glad Cas and I are managing to take everything in stride.  I could see things like this really putting stress on a relationship, but somehow, we've managed to avoid that kind of frustration so far.  We're fixing stuff we didn't want to have to fix, but at the end of the day, it's not the worst thing, and we are both pretty happy with the living arrangements.  We'll fix the pipes and deal with the fallout, but I get to have this really nice guy in this really nice house with me.  It's best to keep that kind of perspective.  

Come sail away

Cas and I went out to Lake Grapevine on Saturday.  It was my birthday present that we decided to redeem about a month and a half later- we had a sailing trip.  In order to do it correctly, we had two chilled bottles of prosecco out on the water with us. It was a really fantastic evening. Behold, the selfie when we are about to float away:

I took some other photos, but the point of the evening was to go out for sunset, so a lot of the faces are hard to see.  I did take a really great silhouette of another couple on the boat with us, though:

It was a great night.  Today, I am back at work.  Cas has his fair day, and for extra fun, this morning, our plumbing problem returned.  So, today, Cas hosted a plumber at the house, as well as a handyman who will be replacing the windows on the front of our house.  He even took a trip to the Home Depot to pay for ten very nice windows.  

In the meantime, I have parent/teacher night.  So far, it is just as lightly attended as I expected.  For extra fun this year, the PTA (they are very kind to feed us) decided to deliver food to our classrooms.  I suppose they had too many people take leisurely dinners while parents waited at the classroom doors in past years, so the delivery idea was born.  They forgot me, though.  We were supposed to get dinner at 4:30 or something, but it's almost 6pm and here I am with no food.  It's not that big of a deal- I had plenty for lunch and I have backup food in my fridge, but I kind of want the thing I was promised.  I am told the delivery crew is forthcoming.  

Whatever.

The rest of the week should be a snap compared to today.  We had our plumbing problem recur this morning and I have a 12+ hour day at work.  

Tomorrow should be a snap.  I have photography club tomorrow, a film thing to work on Wednesday, my flu shot and a zillion boosters on Thursday, and fair day on Friday.  I think I am supposed to do a State Fair photo walk with Larry and the kids, but I may need to bow out.  I have Cas' homecoming that evening, and there is a pretty good chance that I will have to play host to some repair or service people at the house in the daytime.  We shall see, I suppose.  

Water, water everywhere

The water damage guys took all of their stuff out of our house on Monday. This was what the nice man hauled away:

When Cas made it back to the house, we both stood in the kitchen and enjoyed the peace and quiet. Four high-powered fans and an industrial strength dehumidifier kick out some decibels. 

I talked to Jeff a few times this week, as well. He lives in South Carolina, now, and his whole city is dealing with the aftermath of hurricane Joaquin. His house is on a bit of a hill, so he stayed dry. Irony, right? We haven't had any substantial rainfall in Dallas for a few months. Jeff is living in a disaster area dripping with flood water. So why am I the one with the water damage guys coming to my house? 

Alas, the walls are dry and we just need to have the fellas come out to put baseboards back on the dining room and clean the carpet. 

We should have it all wrapped up soon. 

In the meantime, I'm gearing up to enjoy my birthday present. Cas scheduled our sailing excursion for Saturday. Now, we just have to work a few more days until it's time to sail away. 

Dream sequence

I've had an utterly strange week, which, last night, I managed to punctuate with an utterly strange dream. I dreamt that Cas and I had a housewarming party, and we had a very nice group of people come and visit. There was a decent sized crowd and everyone was having a good time.

As the party was wrapping up, I answered the doorbell. It was Harry, my boyfriend from five years ago. He showed up when nearly everyone was gone, and I thought it was very awkward. After a brief conversation, I introduced Harry to Cas. The two of them were immediately best friends. They started talking about sci-fi things, computer things, role playing game things- you know- nerd stuff. 

I guess the dream was a manifestation of my general discomfort about the house right now. It's still a beautiful house. I love it, and we have no buyer's remorse, but we had a plumbing problem yesterday. 

The drain out to the city sewer line was blocked, so when Cas took his shower, all of the warm, soapy water came back up out of our downstairs toilet. 

Good times. I was on towel detail after that. I mopped up the floor as well as I could. When I finished that, I tried to make a little breakfast. I was so turned around that I cracked an egg into the blender where I was making a pair of smoothies. One less egg to scramble, I guess. 

I insisted that Cas go and continue to get ready for his day. It was a full day of parent conferences at his school, which meant he had to be on time and dressed in a suit. I had six weeks tests and newspaper distribution. I was already in jeans. 

I hung all of our towels off of lawn furniture in the back yard and left 20 minutes later than usual. 

I called the home warranty people on the way, and they put in an emergency call to a plumber. The plumber called in the morning to set up a time between noon and five. I called Mom and asked her to come at noon. Cas was slated to finish up parent conferences and be home by three. Everything was under control. 

I went ahead with my day. 

Man, I love Hoofbeat day. And for extra fun, we all have matching shirts this year. It kicked ass. 

I skipped the pep rally and happy hour to head straight home. The plumber was on the way out the door, and our problem was solved. 

Apparently, though, the plumbing problem gave way to an additional problem. We had water damage in the walls. Not much, but enough to cause concern. Cas has allergies, and the prospect of mold in our beautiful home was not a happy one for him. The water damage people came next, but in the interim (and since we missed out on happy hour), we had our own happy hour at the bar in our kitchen. We had some Angry Orchard cider, some chips and salsa, and a close approximation of a meat and cheese plate. 

That's when the water damage guys showed up. We are now minus a few baseboards and plus a few industrial-strength fans: 

It should all be solved soon, and our house should be dry and mold-free with clean carpets and new baseboards very soon. 

Other than that, it was a pretty mellow couple of days... Kind of.