Wednesday, December 09, 2009

What Else?

O.K. lets see where it all started. I love our home. The good Lord has been very good to Adam and I. I am very grateful! I especially love our floorplan! D.R. Horton our builder does a great job with floor plans! That said, we've had a few problems as of late and well...here goes!
The other day was a normal everyday kind of day, until I heard a loud crash. Running out of our room, from behind a closed door I came wondering what was going on. Well, it wasn't the house it was the dog. She, Ginger had knocked over a plant stand that had a gallon plant on it, so there was soil and plant all over the floor. Along with a shattered 10" glass plate that sat below the plant before it was thrown from it's place.
Shortly thereafter I had my turn. Before noon, I had broken a small glass and a coffee mug from my brand new dinnerware set for Christmas that I opened early so I'd have them for a Recipe Exchange party with the girls. (I didn't want to use paper since there weren't going to even be any kids :) The glass was no big deal, and it wasn't very big though it made quite a mess and actually made it back up on the counter, or at least shards of the glass that made it that far after the glass made impact with our hard, tile floor.
Did I mention that our hot water heater is already not running. Our house is only 3 years old and our hot water heater is already broken. My husband keeps fixing it, but then it brakes again. I have already made up my mind that I am going to get it replaced tomorrow!
So, school was O.K. today, and other than a few broken dishes, no big whoop, right? Right. I am going to get dinner going. So, Adam is wrapping outdoor electric because there must be stuff out there that isn't suppose to get wet??? He went down the road to help a neighbor and in my bustle dinner got delayed. However, I did finally get the water boiling, and the beef cooking. I was making spicy beef dish, and cracked open the box of Penne with Omega 3s. Yum! I put the pasta in the boiling water, set the timer for 8 min. and away. Well, I just so happened to walk past the pot and noticed mealy worms floating on the surface of my pasta water. Ugh!!! So much for pasta in a more earth friendly box instead of the sealed bags :( So, I dumped the pasta down the disposal with the hot water and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but cloudy water and no draining of the pasta, oh my dear!!! So, I grabbed another pot, boiled more water and grabbed another box of pasta with Omega 3s. I tried checking the box and didn't notice any creepy crawlies, but after putting the box in the boiling water, again I had floaters! I learned my lesson the first time, and I drained this pot, and dumped the pasta in garbage can. No more pasta in the box for me! Now I am on my third pot of boiling water and a BAG of pasta, no more penne which works best with this recipe, but whole wheat spaghetti noodles will have to do.
Adam is at this point in the bedroom trying to book Polar Express tickets with afore mentioned neighbors, which we didn't get because though we almost booked several times, we delayed and now they are sold out for the 8 people we were trying to book tickets for. This itself again would be no big deal, but...
So, I tell Adam that I have clogged the disposal with pasta, but we decide to eat before we deal with it, maybe the pasta will get even more mushy and decide to go down. So, we eat, I boil water for doing the dishes and Adam gets to work on the disposal. Now in our 11 years of marriage, I have learned not to put carrots or potato peelings down the disposal because they don't go down either, but cooked pasta, who'd a thunk?
Now, I am behind Adam ready with pots that I know I am going to have to hand wash with my boiled water, not because I used them to cook, but because I clogged the disposal. I had to go use the restroom real quick so I told Adam and ran to the bathroom. While I was washing my hands I hear the man in the other room begin to blow his top. I know nothing about plumbing, but something that was suppose to twist pulled and it pulled right off, and our kitchen and under the sink was flooded with water, so am grabbing towels from all over the house, and bath mats anything that would absorb water, yucky pipe water laden with bits of pasta, and remember I don't have hot water to wash them with. So, anyways we finally get all the water up after emptying all three cabinets, and tossing out stuff that was ruined by the water. Adam rigged the pipes back to the way they were installed. I went to wash my hands in the front bathroom and remembered that we have crummy faucet in there. We had to shut the cold water off in that bathroom, because otherwise the faucet leaked. So now because Adam shut the hot water off so it doesn't continue to leak out of the hot water heater there isn't any water coming out of the front bathroom faucet. Thank goodness for having more than one bathroom!
So, now I am trying to wash the yucky towels and bath mats and forgot about the water situation, and our washing machine starts making a noise I have never heard before and is flashing some kind of code or something on it's little digital screen. So, I try to pause it, and then stop the load from running and I can't get it to quit! Great and I think our 3 year warranty just ran out last month. Adam was about to unplug it when I finally got it to quit. I realized I had put the machine on Sanitize out of habit for anything yucky. Unfortunately the no hot water thing wasn't helping because we had the hot off. So I reset the machine and figured I'll just run it through a couple of times. Praise God the washing machine didn't break too, just some minor set backs. I went in the bathroom and leaned my head against the mirror and realized that it had a lot of give. Uh oh! I remembered at that moment that Adam sold our model to a client whose master bath mirror came crashing down. I think after I call Mark our general contractor/handyman. I will make a trip to the Home Depot for some adhesive or those little screw in mirror holders that you would think would just be a requirement as a fail safe for if/when the mirror adhesive ever let's loose. If I was the builder I would put those kind of things in and I would put that water drip pan under water heaters too! So you save a few dollars per house, but come on!
All this to say that I do love my house, and I love my neighborhood! Our lot is good other than the poor drainage the builder again and the giant gap under my fence that they started me off with and then wanted to fine me for when I tried keeping wild animals out of my yard and my dog in. The builder did come and fix the small area in front of my back yard fence, so it doesn't look bad in the front yard at least. I also noticed that there seems to be less pokey cactus our community park, for which I am grateful! I am trying to focus on the good stuff, but I had to journal about that crazy day!

Santa Magnet

So, I've had a Mr. and Mrs. Claus refrigerator magnet in with the Christmas decorations for a few years at least, and it was still in it's original packaging. This year after putting up the tree and placing the decorations around the house, I noticed that Mr. and Mrs. Claus were hanging on the frig. I knew I didn't put them there, so I asked the kids who hung them. Sebastian said he did, the magnet is kind of sweet, Mrs. Claus holding Mr. When I asked him why he decided to hang it he said, "I thought it was funny. It looks like Santa is trying to get in the frig and Mrs. Claus is holding him back." His friend Loredana was at the house and listening to the conversation, and said, "If Santa was my husband, he'd be Workin' Out!" I had a good holly, jolly laugh! Thanks Sebastian and Loredana!