Oh hi! I am once again waiting for the HVAC professionals to arrive at my home! My furnace worked for two days. Then we had a day of beautiful sunshiney 79-degree weather and the interior of my house transformed into a sauna, so I turned on the air conditioning. Which didn’t work. This morning, my husband thought to check whether the furnace would work… and it did not work either. We have neither heat nor air conditioning. I am very glad today’s forecast is for mild temps, but… What is happening?????
Sidebar, since I was already moaning to you last week about pest woes: We opened the windows to help cool the house last night, and when I got into bed I noticed that approximately ten zillion miniature flying critters had taken up residence inside my lampshade, on the wall around my lamp, and on the ceiling directly above my lamp. I suspect they were tiny moths or other light-loving insects. I examined the screen nearest my bed and discovered that there is a large rip in it. It was past one (I fell asleep at my desk while working), so I did not have any energy to do a single thing about the moths. I turned off my lamp and went to bed, hoping they wouldn’t swarm me while I slept. This morning, they were gone. Where… did they go? I closed the window with the broken screen, so they didn’t exit that way. They don’t seem to have congregated around any of the nightlights. But… where are they? On the scale of pest awfulness, a million tiny moths doesn’t really register… but I am still very concerned. Am I going to open a seldom-used closet one of these days and find a full-fledged moth hive, pulsing with winged bugs?
MOVING RAPIDLY AWAY FROM THAT HORRIFYING IMAGE. I am in desperate need of groceries, but I’m afraid to leave the house lest the HVAC person choose that moment to show up. (They are supposed to give me a 30-minute window, but, in my experience, it is more like, “Oh, hey, I’m five minutes away!”)
Let’s turn our thoughts away from the specter of replacing BOTH air conditioner and furnace and to the much more comforting prospect of food!
Dinners for the Week of April 15-April 21
Taquito Enchiladas: I am pretty sure Sarah inspired this one, as I never in a million years would have thought to do this myself. But I am newly in possession of a bag of chicken taquitos from Costco and I really, really want to see if this easy delicious-sounding meal is as easy and delicious as I hope it will be.
Pasta Primavera: It’s that time of year again when I want ALL THE VEGGIES. I will sauté whatever I can find – asparagus! zucchini! broccoli! peas! – and add it to some protein pasta with a ton of lemon juice and parmesan. YUM.
Sheet Pan Red Curry Chicken and Veggies: This recipe calls for butternut squash, which I will probably sub out for… something else. Broccoli and cauliflower? Green beans?
Carla is back in the throes of Multiple Extracurriculars, now that spring sports have begun, so we will also be eating some junk food this week – some sort of fast-food chicken or burger, we’ll see. I am not a big fan of eating fast food on the regular, but sometimes it is the best and easiest option. This season of eating fast food multiple times per week won’t last forever, so I will try to lean into it as best I can.
And just like that, it’s mid-April! Many apologies for being MIA lately, internet! I miss you! (And I fully intend to catch up on what you’re up to.) This is one of those pell-mell times of the year, where I feel like I’m being propelled down a steep hill and can barely get my feet under me. All (mostly?) good things, but this is the first Fun Writing I’ve done in… three weeks maybe? When I go to open a document in Word, NONE of my recent files are my blog document, is what that means. (Yes, I type all my posts in Word and then transfer [some of] them to WordPress.)
Seems like a good day for a quick catch-up. And then I need to find a solid week or so to go back and read ALL OF YOUR POSTS, omg, I feel so out of the loop.
1. I am spending today as we all hope our Fridays go: waiting for the HVAC service technician to show up. Why, yes, that was sarcasm, and yes, our furnace IS dead. I’m glad it’s not, like, January, but it is currently 45 degrees F outside and the internal temperature of my house has dropped to 65. Perfect weather for walking on the treadmill while I cross two items on my to-do list off simultaneously!
Our furnace is 23 years old, if it is a day, so it’s no spring chicken. But we did just have the HVAC people in here this February to give it a checkup, so I’m feeling a little grumpy that it’s acting up now. Back in February, I asked the HVAC guy to give me a prognosis on the lifespan on my furnace, and he said, “Well, I can’t guarantee anything – it could stop working tomorrow! But it seems like it’s in good shape and you could get another ten years out of it.” Not sure why I didn’t hear the foreboding music swell in the background of this little pronouncement.
2. While I drank my breakfast (which was a smoothie and a mug of green tea, not, like, whiskey), I whacked away at my to-do list a bit more. It’s at that out-of-control point again, where things keep piling up until I am buried under their weight. The section I tackled today was Making Routine Doctors’ Appointments. Well, some of them were routine. Like I got Carla scheduled for her annual well visit and her annual eye exam (which we somehow skipped last year????). I also left a message on my doctor’s prescription line to follow up on a refill that I requested earlier this week. That last one took two calls because I got through three menu trees and clicked on “leave a message for Dr. X” and then had to listen to a recording that said this was the place to leave questions for the nurse, NOT the place to leave refill requests, so I had to go through all the phone menus again. And! Most exciting of all: I scheduled an ear piercing appointment for Carla! This will be her Big Birthday Present this year. She has been ramping up the requests to have her ears pierced over the past six to twelve months, and she has really made strides in Being Responsible (she has a necklace she wears daily that has so far always come home with her; she has a dental appliance she has to care for). Plus, she got a pair of nice-quality clip on earrings from her grandmother last fall, and she wears them regulary. So I think she is ready for pierced ears. I, however, am NOT ready for pierced ears. I have never had pierced ears, or any sort of piercing, and the whole thing a) squicks me out and b) makes me extremely nervous. I am squeamish and blood/body stuff makes me woozy. I am comforted by Carla’s swift and independent handling of her dental appliance; I have never had to touch it or adjust a single rubber band, and her orthodontist says she is doing great, so I am going to trust that between her and my husband, she’ll figure out how to care for HOLES in her BODY.
Still on the list are many additional phone calls, which I will probably avoid some more. I need to call the landscaper, make an appointment to get my car serviced, call someone to come look at our oven, call the trash collection service about whether they will collect some unusual items (paint cans and gutter guards), hire a lifeguard for Carla’s birthday party, and get some estimates to get the exterior of our house painted. Also on my list: a work project, two rather major projects for my volunteering role, a message for a family member’s Big Birthday Memory Book, finding photos of Carla for a school project, making decisions about and then scheduling a couple of other healthcare-type things, and, most daunting of all: figuring out how to order breakfast for an out-of-town group event at which I will not be present, in a town I have never visited and know nothing about.
3. A phone call I already made this week? Scheduling an appointment with our new pest control service. Even though we live, like, twenty miles away from our old neighborhood, the locations are different enough that they seem to have totally different pest problems. At our old house, we had silverfish; at this house, we have ants, stinkbugs, mice, and bats. “Probably you had rats, too,” the pest control guy said helpfully. But since in twelve years I never once saw a rat, or any sign of such, I refuse to acknowledge this as a possibility.
While he is from the same pest control company that handled our mouse problem when we first moved into this house, he is not the same person. He tells me he was injured last fall and on leave. But he used to do pest control for the previous owners, which was useful because he knew exactly where to go and what the problem areas were. He also kind of implied that the previous owners canceled a ton of their appointments, so he wasn’t surprised we had such a huge mouse infestation when we moved in. While I feel deeply uncomfortable with service people sharing qualms about their other customers, I do feel a little bit justified in my growing belief that the previous owners did not really take care of this place. Lots and lots of things have looked lovely on the surface and then turn out to be falling apart behind the scenes, and the repeated cancellation of regular home maintenance stuff helps explain that. Don’t get me wrong – they seem like lovely people, and I get the impression they are just very busy and travel a lot. And who knows! Maybe they had other stuff they were dealing with, and/or once they decided to move, they simply stopped keeping things up. I will tell you, while I am NOT EXCITED about bats or mice, I do prefer the tiny little ants and the occasional stinkbug to silverfish.
4. Did you know you can make queso dip out of cottage cheese? Possibly you already knew this, but I only just tried it. It was marvelous. I don’t know how “healthy” it was, especially because I ate it with tortilla chips. But it was easy and much higher in protein than covering my chips in shredded cheese while being just as delicious.
5. Speaking of things I have recently tried and loved, I have FINALLY found a travel pillow that allows me to sleep on the airplane! Sleeping is really the only way I can fly, because I find the entire experience so anxiety-producing. But I am not a person who can lean back against the questionably clean headrest or use a travel pillow. My head insists on flopping forward, no matter what, and each time it falls, I snap awake. It is neither comfortable nor restful and it’s kind of embarrassing, to be honest. I have tried so many travel pillows. So many. None of them work. But then! My husband ordered a TRTL travel pillow to use on our flights to and from spring break (four-ish hours each way) and on our first flight, he let me use it… and it WORKS. My head can rest gently in a forward position but there is enough support to prevent flopping AND it doesn’t make my neck ache! I did feel like a moron, winding it around my neck like I was bracing for arctic winds, but it was well worth it! I used it on the flight home, too, and it is now mine, all mine.
Okay, in the time since I drafted this post, I got a phone call (friend with whom I exchanged phone numbers for my phenomenal roof/siding person; being an adult is weird), made a phone call (oven repair person is scheduled!), wrapped two birthday presents, unloaded the dishwasher, tidied the kitchen, welcomed the furnace repair person into my home, threw some ice cubes into the dryer to refresh the clothes I dried last night and forgot about, discovered that my front door will BLOW OPEN unless it is locked, tossed a load of laundry in the washing machine, and agreed to pay to have a new transformer installed in my furnace. I think I hear the heater doing its thing!
Happy Leap Day, Internet! I am spending this extra day trying to decide whether the benefits of cold medicine (reduced headache, mild cough suppression, drying of the sinuses) outweigh the ill effects (drowsiness, zombie brain).
We had a good run of it, Internet. And by “it” I mean good health. Carla’s class has apparently been stricken by a boatload of illnesses and, after volunteering at a school event last week, I have brought one home.
It started Sunday with a sore throat, then moved along through the normal URI progression, so I thought I was getting better. But today I woke up with no voice and a fever of 101.5. I feel like someone is trying to escape the inside of my skull by hacking at it with a pickaxe and he’s standing right on my lungs while he hammers away.
Carla was fine at first, but woke up with a fever yesterday, so she is home with me for the second day. So far it doesn’t seem to have hit her quite as hard. She’s feverish but cheerful. And sniffly. I hope her illness goes in the proper direction, though.
I am bummed because I had weekend plans, but even if I do feel better by then, I am sure to be hacking up a lung which doesn’t sound pleasant for me or those around me.
This post is not about me whining about being sick though. It is a celebration of productivity!
I know you are dying to know whether the internet magic of mentioning something on my blog made it happen, and it did! Via the power of public humiliation (although you made me feel understood rather than humiliated), I have made some progress on my to-do list.
While my preference would have been for Suz to come over and tackle my to-do list for me (you DID offer, Suz), I decided to take Jenny’s advice and do a Power Hour.
In my house, a Power Hour is a way to gamify a to-do list. I have heretofore only used it on my daughter, and pretty much only as a cleaning challenge. Although, to be fair, she will not do a Power Hour unless I am also doing a Power Hour – she is a competitive being – so I end up doing one alongside her. We haven’t done one in a while. But I have never really made myself do a Power Hour.
Monday, I came home from school drop-off and took a nap until 11:00, then allowed my guilt for napping to propel me into a Power Hour. I will tell you, first, that the Power Hour is a misnomer because it took THREE HOURS.
1. First, I made a list on my new custom notepads that my husband and daughter got me for my birthday.
2. Instead of calling the landscaper, I instead looked up an email she’d sent me in August with a recommendation for a tree trimming/removal company. I had called them, around that time; there’d been a storm that wreaked havoc on a lot of local trees, so the tree service said they would call me back and then never did.
I called the tree company and someone is coming out to look at the tree in question and offer an estimate. Should I call someone else to come give a second estimate? Probably.
3. Gigi said I needed to handle the rot in my siding sooner rather than later, so that was next on my list. She’d suggested calling a general contractor, so I spent some time looking at previous texts with friends whom I’d asked for contractor suggestions. None of them seemed right, and one of them mysteriously has NO Internet presence at all. Like… his name doesn’t exist on the internet. And it’s an odd name with an unusual spelling – something like Grygg – and I know the spelling I used was accurate because the friend who’d recommended him said, “Oh, I spelled his name wrong in the contact I shared; it’s Grygg instead of Gryyg.” Nonetheless, neither spelling came up with ANY hits online.
So I turned instead to people who deal with gutters. This is what Marg had to do, at an approximate cost of $1500 for a similar issue. (THANK YOU, Marg, for the benchmark pricing!) We had our gutters cleaned regularly at our old house, and it was fairly reasonable price-wise, but the REAL price was in future phone and text spam from the company. So I didn’t want to call them. Moving has been a nice excuse to part ways with some companies I felt bad about parting ways with. I looked up some highly rated gutter service companies in our area and then called.
The person who answered at the first place was so kind. I said that I had no idea whether she could help me, and she said, “Well, let’s just see!” and I explained my problem, and it WAS something she seemed familiar with. She even gave me an estimate for replacing that rotted wood right off the top of her head ($475 in case you are wondering). But then she told me that sometimes getting all of your gutters cleaned can help address the problem, and that adjusting the gutter would be part of the cost of that ($495 in case you are wondering). I don’t think replacing the rotted wood would necessarily have been part of the gutter cleaning cost, but then again, I’d be getting ALL the gutters cleaned, which needs to be done anyway. She was so warm and knowledgeable that I wanted to book her right then and there, but… well, I have been swayed by warm and knowledgeable people before (I’m looking at you, Guy Who Said I Needed to Replace My Garage Doors When Really They Only Needed a Small Much-Less-Costly Adjustment), so I told her I would talk it over with my husband and call her back.
Gutter person number two was also very nice. He immediately asked if I could text him pictures of the issue and I did. But then he wanted to continue the conversation via text, which was a little less satisfying than being on the phone? I think, mainly, because a) we were discussing terms I wasn’t familiar with and b) the guy is not quite so wordy as I am (shocker) nor as wordy as I would prefer he be in responses. He said he thinks the issue is that “it” (the gutter?) just needs to be “pitched toward the downspout,” all of which are words I think I understand, but am not 100% sure I know exactly what that means? He can also replace the rotted wood and he is coming out to look more closely and give me an estimate.
4. On to the pool service task! I had one recommendation from a friend, one company my husband had suggested, and another company the previous owners’ pool guy had suggested (note: we used the previous owners’ pool guy last year and he does not provide the cleaning/maintenance we are looking for, plus he is impossible to deal with – like, he will just show up unannounced in the backyard). I called and left messages at each company. I believe I have left messages with each of these companies before; only the friend-recommended guy ever called me back, and then said his brother would be in touch, and then the brother never got in touch. WHY IS THIS IMPOSSIBLE?
5. There is a drip in our furnace. Plus, I got a text that said this was my LAST CHANCE to schedule the free furnace maintenance that comes with my membership to the HVAC company. I was confused, because I am SURE that we had someone come out last fall to look at the furnace; I remember very clearly because he told me that I was still eligible to get the extended warranty on the furnace, and then I called the warranty company and they needed my title within 90 days of the home sale, and the title hadn’t arrived, and I went back and forth with the title company and eventually we got the title but it was after the 90 days. So. No extended warranty on the furnace.
But I looked in my calendar, and it said the same company did an air conditioner inspection last September, so perhaps that’s what I was thinking of? So I called the HVAC company (my god this is a VERY BORING POST but somehow I cannot curb my desire to write out all the tiresome details) and the cheery gal I spoke to said yes, it had been an A/C checkup. So we scheduled a furnace inspection. Whew.
6. Next! I first updated our family calendar with all the important dates from my daughter’s 2024-25 school calendar. Good lord, there are a lot of days off. Like, so many days off. Then I called the dentist and scheduled her next checkup. This, if you are keeping track, is the only actual task I have completed.
7. Then I turned to the electrician, which has a very convoluted backstory. The TL;DR version is that I successfully scheduled an appointment for the electrician to come out and address multiple issues. The slightly longer version is that the company that we use has a very complex system that probably makes a lot of sense to them but is difficult to deal with. One person comes out to see what’s wrong, another person prepares an estimate for you and works with you to figure out exactly what work you want to do, then a whole other person schedules the appointment with you. On the day of the Power Hour, it took me multiple phone calls and multiple emails across multiple hours to finalize the work order and schedule a day for someone to come out.
8. I wrote a check to the orthodontist and put it in my car. I still need to take the check to the orthodontist’s office, but that can be done at a later time.
9. I followed up on a work email (and have still not heard back siiiighhhhhh).
10. Bonus task! I talked to Carla’s teacher on the phone and then made a follow-up phone call based on our conversation.
These were the tasks I got through before it was time to pick up Carla from school. (Although I did exchange three separate phone calls, two texts, and an email with the electrician and the estimate person while in the car, so that was fun.) (The email and texts I handled while in the car line, not while driving.)
All in all, it was a productive Power Hour. But do you see, Internet? DO YOU SEE WHY I HATE THESE TASKS?
I would like to note once again for the record that I spent THREE HOURS Power Houring my way through all these phone calls and emails and to-do lists and I accomplished one thing. Yes, yes, I got a lot of other things underway. But NOTHING ELSE is complete.
And there are still so many, many items at which to pick away.
One of those tasks is to call the hair salon and schedule an appointment for my husband. Since I have no voice, Carla is going to get to learn how to schedule an appointment today. Which is clearly a crucial skill every human must master.
“Are you loving the new house?!” This is the most common question I get these days, and it’s posed in an excited, expectant way. People are so happy for us! They are so excited to see the new place and hear all about how much we are loving it!
Well. It has been one month since we moved into our new house, and in general I feel like it’s been a huge, expensive, horrible mistake. This is supposed to be our dream house, our forever house, and I am instead feeling like we uprooted our happy, perfectly wonderful life for nothing. No, worse than nothing. We replaced something not-perfect-but-pretty-great with a money-sucking monster that we drastically overpaid for. I have been feeling so negative about the house and so overwhelmed with all the minutiae of moving and so guilty for feeling so disgruntled over something I CHOSE, ON PURPOSE, something I should feel grateful for and appreciative of, that I’ve had neither time nor inclination to blog.
I also feel guilty for getting so bent out of shape about what are very minor things. I know this! It’s not like we are lacking clean water. We aren’t dealing with family tragedy, we have food and shelter. All the REAL needs are being addressed, and I know – I know – we are super fortunate to have this house at all, and to have savings to apply toward fixing it up. Plus, we had a home inspection and the house is FINE, overall. It just feels like death by a thousand paper cuts, you know? Like I could deal with a corroded shower handle, and deal with replacing it… but then when the grill doesn’t work and the refrigerator leaks every time you open it and the oven makes a horrific rattling noise when it reaches temperature and half the light switches make a sizzly I-am-about-to-shock-you noise when you flip them and the other half seem to operate nothing at all and the garage door suddenly won’t close AT ALL, it feels like everything is falling apart. Plus, everything – EVERYTHING – seems to be at least $3500 to address. Every estimate we get is right around that price point, as though all the service companies in the state got together and decided that this would be the standard starting fee for any and every type of service. $3500 is not nothing!
This week, I’ve been able to dip my toe back into blog reading, and I do want to get back to blog writing. But it feels like all the negativity is clogging up my writing pipes. I think the only way to move forward is to write it all down. Even though it will sound whiny and self-pitying and unrelatable.
But! If you want to skip all the negativity (and I don’t blame you – there’s enough in the intro paragraphs of this post already), I did force myself, Elisabeth-style, to come up with some things that are bringing me joy and giving me hope that this low phase is indeed temporary.
Five Woes (and I recognize that I am tremendously lucky to be able to complain about these things)
5. Phone Calls and Appointments. I have made approximately five million phone calls and endured five thousand service appointments in the new house and spent an obscene amount of money. There are things that we chose to do, like installing new floors and asking an electrician to estimate the cost for installing an outlet in the floor of the living room and changing the locks and hiring someone to rein in the overgrown landscaping. There are things we had to do, like replace my daughter’s leaking trim kit in her shower, and install a pressure regulating valve on our water line, and replace the failing pool heater, and fix the garage door that refused to close. There are things that were supposed to be “free” (or covered under our membership plan), like flushing our water heater and getting a clean and check of our furnace, which both uncovered things that need to be taken care of. There are things that are still in the works, like installing a security/fire safety system and getting our air ducts cleaned. There are things I never ever would have wanted to spend money on, like hiring an exterminator to get rid of all the mice in our basement (yuck) or inviting a bat guy to assess and address our bat problem (wtf). I have had to be available between 8:00 and 12:00 pretty much every single day since we moved here, which is annoying and hard to schedule my life around.
4. Critter Corpses. Mice – five of them, three in traps the exterminator set after we discovered our mouse problem and two in our furnace intake valve, which the very nice HVAC person found and disposed of. Chipmunk – one, drowned in the pool. Frog – one, same fate. Bat – only one (so far) thank everything – in our basement, which the very unflappable plumber discovered and removed when he was installing the new pressure regulator.
3. Cold or Allergies? I have been sneezing nearly nonstop since we moved here. Early on, the sneezing developed into what seemed like a genuine cold: fever, runny nose, general crankiness. (Covid tests were negative.) But while the cold ended two weeks ago, I am still sniffly and sneezy and my head is stuffy and I feel ever-so-slightly like I need my inhaler. The previous owners had dogs and I really think that I am allergic to this house. We replaced all the flooring on the first and second floors, getting rid of all the threadbare, mismatched carpet… but the carpet in the basement was in great shape, so we just got it cleaned… and I’m afraid that was a mistake and we should have replaced it as well. I’m hoping that cleaning the air ducts will help, but I’m waiting on another estimate before we schedule it.
2. Commute. Our previous house was, on the worst, most-trafficky days, seven minutes away from my daughter’s school, so my daily commute was 28 minutes total (not counting after school activities). Our current commute is nearly four times as long (not counting after school activities), which means I am spending roughly two hours in the car each day. I am listening to a good number of audiobooks, but sheesh.
1. New Car. This has been the most expensive summer of our lives, so why not add a new car to the mix? My lease is about to end, and being a one-car family is not workable for us. But this is pretty much the worst time (ever????) to buy a new car, as inventory is nonexistent and prices are high. It would be prohibitively expensive to buy out my lease, so we are planning to lease another vehicle… but the current lease deals are also SO EXPENSIVE. (Nearly double the cost for a similar vehicle to what I drive now.) Plus, while my preference would be to lease the exact same car I drive now, there are none of that model available. So we are going with a totally different vehicle and even though it gets great ratings and I enjoyed driving it, I am not great with change. Plus, I am having trouble communicating with the salesperson, who seemed very eager to work with us at first, but now seems to have ghosted me??? And yes, I realize we could just get a smaller, less expensive vehicle so a lot of this woe is our own damn fault.
0. No One Calls Me Back!!!!! You might expect that with so many service appointments, this would be hyperbole… And I suppose it is. But it feels like no one will return my calls. I have filled out so many online estimate requests that go completely unanswered and left so many voicemails that go unreturned. A person from one of the landscaping/snow removal companies I called returned my call FOUR WEEKS after I’d asked for an estimate, and then when I told her we’d gone with someone else (the one person who did get back to me – this is now the bar: respond to me and I will pay you money!), wanted to tell me about all the things that had prevented her from returning my call right away. People who said they would send me estimates have never sent them. The salesperson who was going to lease us our car stopped responding to my texts and didn’t return my voicemails. WHAT IS HAPPENING. I get that there are ongoing staffing issues, but… how are businesses operating???
Five Wows
1. The Pool. Longtime readers may recall that having a pool was one of my wishlist items for my dream house. Since the pandemic, I’ve really come to realize how much we depend on our home to provide space for everything from exercise to entertainment to comfort. Plus, we still lean toward entertaining outdoors. So having a pool was definitely on my list. (“Be careful what you wish for” has been a cruelly gleeful refrain in my brain these days.) This house has nearly everything on the wishlist, including a pool. And, while taking care of a pool and getting it serviced is a massive headache, it is also one of my favorite things about this house because it makes Carla SO HAPPY. Since it’s the end of the pool season, we have been able to find pool toys for cheap and she is loving her inflatable shark and her scuba gear and her treasure chest of jewels to dive for. Fall has been very mild so far, so we are still enjoying pool time and it makes me so happy to see her enjoying herself so much. Plus, I have dreams of being the Teen Hangout House when Carla gets older, and I feel like a pool could be very attractive to her friends.
2. The Commute. Even though I hate driving on the freeway and I feel like I’m at the gas station way too often, I am surprised to find that I otherwise love the commute. Carla is so charming and energetic in the mornings. She is usually quite chatty and I get all sorts of tidbits about what’s going on her brain and at school. We often listen to the Kid Nuz podcast and that opens up all sorts of interesting topics for discussion. After school, she’s more subdued and worn out from the day, so we often listen to classical music or maybe stop at Starbucks on the way to her music lesson. I am loving this focused time with her, with none of the usual distractions of laundry or dinner or my phone. (Plus, as I mentioned before, all this time in the car means I am listening to a ton of audiobooks. I listened to eight of them in September alone, which is a lot for me.)
3. My Parents and My Husband. It seems like something goes wrong every single day at this house. (Yesterday: the gas line started making a weird noise.) I am stressed and worried about money. I feel like Tom Hanks in The Money Pit, with the hysterical seal-laugh and all, but my husband is being so calm and optimistic. He says soothing things like, “We’re just taking care of everything up front so we can enjoy the house for the long run!” and “These are all little things, and we will fix them.” and “We are going to enjoy this house, this is just a rough patch.” It is buoying and gives me strength. My parents, likewise, are being so matter-of-fact about everything. The mouse thing really shook me, I think because I expected to move into this brand-new house and found out it was full of mouse poop and scurrying critters. But my mom reminds me that I grew up in the country and mice are just Part Of Rural Living. She’s very blasé about the bat, too – bats eat mosquitos, after all. My dad inspects or fixes things every time he’s here, and is available by text when I need to ask whether I should call the gas company (yes) or just not worry about the weird squeak click click coming from the meter. He and my husband removed all the awful curtains and reattached the cupboards to my daughter’s vanity. He tested the bathroom fan to see if it is fixable and offers suggestions for how to deal with day-to-day issues and is helping me address the mouse entry points. My parents took Carla on a hike and picnic the other day! They come over to hang out by the pool occasionally! When I need a babysitter, I just ask them and they say yes! It is so nice to have them here.
4. New Neighbors. One of the hardest parts of leaving our old house was leaving our neighbors (and their dogs). We haven’t met everyone on our street yet, but we have met three of the nearest neighbors, and they all seem super nice. The across-the-street neighbors are SO lovely. They invited us to a backyard dinner (and by the way, they are extraordinary cooks!) and introduced us to a bunch of people who live in the neighborhood. Best of all, they have three children who have been so friendly and welcoming to Carla. She has already been over to their house countless times, has walked their dog, and has invited the kids over to play games at our house. One afternoon, the kids’ parent took all of them plus Carla to the park. I am LOVING THIS. I want kids running in and out of my house. I want Carla to have friends nearby.
5. All the Trees. This is my backyard. Do you see how one tree is wearing a scarlet sweater???!!!! I look outside and I walk around our yard, clipping some of the beautiful dahlias the previous owners planted, and I feel so peaceful.
(Until the next serviceperson arrives, or I get an email with the next $3500 proposal for work to be done. Oh look. Here’s the estimate from the bat guy. Do I want more bats, or do I want to pay $3,675 for bat prevention measures?)
What’s the occasion for your current pity party? Lay it on me.
Carla and I have been working our way through some of the family movies you suggested. So far, we’ve done Freaky Friday, in which I think Lindsay Lohan is excellent. Bend it Like Beckham which was more relationship-heavy than I remembered (and, dare I say, sort of boring?). Newsies, which has a banging soundtrack, and to which Carla said, “Why aren’t there any girl characters?” (She’s not wrong; by my count, there are four total women in the entire movie.)
Most recently, we dove into A League of Their Own. I started crying pretty much right away. I don’t recall it being a tearjerker, do you? The tears welled up so often that I started making a list. (Um, mild spoilers if you have somehow not yet seen this absolute masterpiece of a movie.)
When Marla’s dad blamed her lack of femininity on himself, because he raised her alone after his wife died
When Marla left her dad, who was so supportive of her baseball prowess, but is now all alone
When Shirley Baker couldn’t find her name on the list, and then when another player figured out that Shirley couldn’t read and helped her find her name and they all cheered
When all the women were so excited to be chosen as members of the All American League
When Doris talked about how her boyfriend made her feel less-than because she can play ball
When Mae said “they ain’t closing me down”
When the Black woman threw a ball to one of the Peaches and nodded to the Peaches in a way that said, “Yes, I know I should be among you and it’s super shitty that I’m not simply because of the color of my skin.”
When the stands were full of cheering crowds
The first time the Peaches sing Evelyn’s song in the locker room
When the telegram guy comes into the locker room with the telegram for Betty Spaghetti
When Dottie sobs with relief that the telegram wasn’t about Bob, and with worry for the potential that the next one might have his name on it
When Bob shows up at Dottie’s door and she can’t believe he’s there, in person, alive
When Dottie says “Can we just hold each other for the rest of our lives?”
When Jimmy gives Dottie the “baseball gets inside you” speech
The entire portion of the film devoted to the series when Dottie is up at bat against Kit, and Kit so fiercely wants to win and Dottie is so stoic and unflappable
When Dottie drops the ball and Kit’s team wins
When Dottie tells Kit the things she won’t miss from baseball and hugs Kit and tells her she loves her
When Old Dottie tells Old Marla she lost her husband just that winter
When Old Stillwell tells Old Dottie his mom died
I’m pretty teary these days. I always tend to get emotional around Carla’s birthday (although less so the past few years, which I thought was a good trend; maybe “turning ten” feels like such a big deal, it’s bringing up extra stuff?). I cannot believe she’s hitting double digits. I cannot believe I’ve known her for a full decade. I cannot believe she is about to head into her final year of elementary school. She brings me so much joy and fills my life with so much light and love and energy and glitter – literal and metaphorical – and I just want time to slow down.
Some people try to talk me out of these feelings. It’s good that Carla is growing up. It’s what she should be doing. It’s better than the alternative. And to those people I say: yes. You are right. I am so proud and overwhelmed by happiness that I get to watch this person grow and change and become ever more herself. It is a precious gift and one that I do not take for granted.
And yet I am unabashedly sentimental about Carla of yesterday. I want to feel unborn Carla kick against my hand pressed to my stomach. I want to cradle fresh-baked-loaf-of-bread Carla in my arms and watch her head loll, milk-drunk, against my shoulder. I want to trail toddler Carla down the sidewalk, stopping as she points out every acorn, every leaf, every ant with wonderment and glee infusing her squeaky toddler voice. I want to watch kindergarten Carla spin in her twirly skirt and second grade Carla slide down a snow-covered slide and fourth grade Carla play her guitar. I want all of these things at once, just as much as I want to see what middle school and high school and college and parent Carla will be like. I can hold both of those things – the joy and nostalgia, the excitement for what is yet to come and the grief for what no longer is – in my heart and I can give myself space to feel it all.
We also watched A League of Their Own on the day we put in an offer on a new house. I could feel it, that this was OUR new house. It has everything we could want – a mudroom! a crafting space! room for so many books! – and more. It’s in a beautiful neighborhood, with kids Carla’s age in houses on either side of the house and across the street (the one thing our wonderful current neighborhood lacks is kids her age). It has walking trails and ponds and a playground. And there are so many dogs, you guys. So many dogs. It’s pretty close to perfect, and we put in a competitive offer, and I had a good feeling we would get it, but then we had to wait. Watching A League of Their Own was as much a way to distract myself as it was exposing Carla to the great films of my youth. So I’m sure at least some of the crying was less about the characters’ situation and more about the opposing forces of wanting something so much while also being deeply afraid of letting go of the wonderful thing I already have.
Because when we say hello to a new house – a house we want, and love – we have to say goodbye to the wonderful house we live in now.
It’s just a house. But. This house is so inextricably tied up with Carla. With Carla and the rapid passage of time.
My husband and I decided, here, in this house, that we wanted a baby. I walked from my bathroom down the hall to my husband’s home office and announced I was pregnant. We painted our baby’s room the perfect shade of pale purple and carefully chose art for her walls. We brought baby Carla home to this house. I slept on the floor in front of her crib countless times. I sat with her on the carpet in the living room, pointing out the sliding glass doors to the wonderful goings on in the yard: the squirrels and bunnies frolicking in the grass, the sun moving over the lawn and peeking through the hedges, the leaves of the oak tree shifting overhead. She learned how to walk here, how to ride a bike, how to swing and blow bubbles and do multiplication. This home was our refuge during the lockdown of 2020. It’s housed ten thousand make-believe games, a hundred thousand art projects, countless hours of singing. How can I leave this house when it’s so full of Carla? So full of versions of Carla that exist only in memory and the molecules of these walls?
Letting go – even when it is a good thing, even when it is the way things should be – is so hard for me. Maybe it is hard for you, too. If not, I envy your ability to leap across the gap to the next thing, confident that you will find footing on the other side.
As always with anything: Things could change, things could fall apart. As it stands now, we close on our new house in July and will likely move in August or September. This will be Carla’s last birthday in this house, the house she’s lived in her entire life. I am so excited. I am so sad. I hold both of these feelings at once in my heart.
This is the week my parents move to my state, which is extremely exciting. And yet everything – everything!!! – seems to be going wrong for them. I am so furious at the community to which they are moving, which in my opinion seems to have the viewpoint that their clients should feel LUCKY to be paying them money, and should not complain about things like borked timelines and shoddy workmanship and complete lack of transparency about EVERYTHING, because there are a bunch of people lined up and ready to take the abuse that my parents are objecting to. I really could go on and on about their experience, which has been a shitshow and I do not use that word lightly. But I can’t do anything about it, and nor can my parents who have already paid a lot of money for the privilege of being jerked around. My ONLY HOPE is that this moving-in nonsense is all the fault of the one seemingly incompetent person in charge of bringing new residents into the community, and that once my parents are finally settled they will find it to be a lovely place that doesn’t suck.
Anyway, while my blood pressure surges with impotent rage, I thought I might type some things.
It’s been a busy few weeks, and the next few weeks don’t seem to have a whole lot of let-up on the busyness front. But it’s very nearly all good busyness, so I’m trying to focus on that and not on the stressy feelings that I get from being so regularly busy.
Realtor Guilt: My husband and daughter and I continue to look for a new house, which is adding to the busyness because it seems like every week or two we have to drop everything to squeeze in a viewing. We are in the excellent position of not needing a new house; our house and neighborhood are wonderful. But we would all like a little more space. And that has become especially clear lately, because we have had one houseguest and will have two more in a couple of weeks and it’s sadly VERY possible that my parents may also need to stay with us instead of in their newly renovated home which was supposed to be done June 1. No, June 6. No, we really promise June 8. We have a guest room; we have two full bathrooms. This is more than many people have! It really shouldn’t be an issue to have a couple of houseguests, and yet it just feels cramped and crowded when we do. My daughter gives up her bathroom so the guests can use it, and uses our bathroom. And it’s fine, it really is, but it would also be SO NICE if we had a separate bathroom that guests could use. Plus I really, really, really want a mudroom. You know how there’s that saying that kitchens and bathrooms sell houses? In my case, a house could have the most gorgeously appointed gourmet kitchen but if it doesn’t have a proper mudroom I’m not buying.
So we are looking for a house, but it has to be The Exact Right House for us to leave our perfectly wonderful existing home. And that means that we are being SO PICKY. Which leads to my realtor guilt. I love our realtor – she is a very brisk, efficient type of person who gets us in to see whatever we need. But I am a little worried that she secretly hates us. She never acts like it; she’s too much of a pro. But she takes us to see all these spectacular homes and then we find some little stupid thing to nitpick and I wonder if she thinks we are jerking her around. We AREN’T. We actually put an offer in on one of the first houses we had her show us, and she was so surprised that she kept saying, “I didn’t think you were that serious yet!” as we were scrambling to get pre-approved for the mortgage and find a lender and put together an offer on a Sunday night.
This was several months ago now (and we still think about the house that got away), and we have seen probably close to 20 houses. The market is BONKERS. A house pops up on the MLS and then by the next day, it has five offers – all over asking. So if there’s any chance of getting the house we want, it feels like we have to act immediately. And our realtor is great about getting us in right away, even if that’s at night or on the weekend. I am aware that she chose this line of work, and that this is apparently what the job entails, and that at some point whatever commission she makes must make it worthwhile. But I feel SO GUILTY.
Earlier this week, we saw a house at, like, eight in the evening. And it was GORGEOUS. The inside was perfection. The neighborhood was lovely. It had a beautiful pool and outdoor eating set up. And yet… the yard was small and not particularly private, and the lot was on a busy road and near the freeway so there was quite a lot of road noise outdoors. Plus, none of the doors seemed to want to stay open, which was odd. Like, you’d open the closet door and then it would slam closed of its own volition; the office had French doors and one was propped open with a door stop and if you opened the other door it closed by itself. THIS IS HOW PICKY WE ARE BEING.
Anyway. I am just feeling so guilty. Not guilty enough to put an offer in on a house that we aren’t fully in love with, but guilty nonetheless.
Skin Update: My face has been doing pretty well lately. I went to see the dermatologist and he prescribed me a) an antibiotic to take if I ever have a flare up again and b) a sulphur-based face wash. I haven’t tried the face wash yet. My dermatologist said that it smelled of sulphur while using it, but that the scent goes away once your face is dry. The pharmacist said this is a lie. The pharmacist’s wife, apparently, also has rosacea and so he has been able to give me both his professional opinion on the things I’ve tried as well as his personal experience. He says that the face wash smells revolting and that the smell lingers. “Your partner will be able to smell it,” he said, a look of revulsion on his face. How fun for all of us.
Also on the topic of my skin, I am still not eating dairy… although I have been trying to add it back into my diet in dribs and drabs. A little half-and-half here or there… A couple of slices of pizza… A taco with a little cheese sprinkled on. I haven’t noticed any big skin differences, so I am going to keep at it. My acupuncturist says that goat and sheep milk have smaller proteins in it than cow’s milk, so I should start there. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about the pizza, with mozzarella that definitely came from a cow. I don’t really MISS dairy, except that I do like pizza and I do occasionally want some mozzarella or goat cheese in my salads. I do sometimes miss yogurt, and I guess maybe the next step is to try a smoothie with yogurt in it.
Note: I have tried almond milk yogurt, which I do not like, and coconut milk yogurt, which is fine. (I cannot eat soy yogurt, so I haven’t tried it.) But I don’t like these non-dairy options enough for how many calories they have, so I’d rather skip yogurt entirely. Also, I tried almond milk sour cream and it was abominable.
SummerMovie Watching: My daughter has a gap between the end of school and the beginning of camp, and I plan to spend our time together doing fun things like going for long walks at the dog park and watching movies. I have decided that as long as we are watching a movie together, it doesn’t count as Excess Screen Time. We have already watched Freaky Friday together, which I think went over pretty well, and Bend It Like Beckham which was both racier than I remembered and also kind of boring, and now I want all your mother-daughter movie recommendations.
I have never seen Little Women, so that’s on my list… but I’m sort of afraid to ruin the book before Carla has a chance to read it. Maybe Thirteen Going On Thirty, which I am pretty sure we watched together several years ago; Carla has no memory of this. Another one we’ve watched together that she doesn’t remember is The Princess Bride, which I would be delighted to watch again. We watched The Labyrinth at some point in the past couple of years, but maybe that would be a good one to rewatch? I’m not as hip to more recent releases, although Carla and I did go to the theatre to see Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (it was just as well done as everyone assured me it would be). Carla loved it and wants to watch it again.
All movies are fair game. Just please don’t suggest E.T. ; she has thankfully already seen it and that is my most-hated movie of all time, right up there with Space Camp and The NeverEnding Story. (My husband watched the latter with Carla fairly recently; I cannot get past the agonizing death of the horse.)
I will say that my big bias against movies these days is content about sex and dating. For some reason, that’s what I find myself wanting to “shield” from Carla (although “shield” isn’t quite the right word), more so than anything else. Probably an impulse that requires more in-depth analysis, but I think on the face of it is that so many movies are so casual about sex and romantic relationships and tend to overelevate their importance. Like… Bend It Like Beckham has this whole side plot about the two soccer players both having the hots for their soccer coach. And… why? Why did that have to be a plot point? There was plenty of conflict already, between the protagonist and her parents, between her and her sister. If there had to be conflict between the two friends, why not make it about soccer? Or the protagonist’s refusal to be honest with her parents? And yes, I know that Bend It is also about how the main character’s culture plays up the importance of traditional values of femininity and marriage and wifeliness, but that was super clear without any sort of reference to shagging one’s soccer coach. (Or calling someone a bitch because she tried to kiss said soccer coach, after you specifically told her you didn’t like him!) And yet I am fine with The Princess Bride, I think? That’s a romance, and Buttercup doesn’t have a whole lot of agency if my memory is correct, but it seems different??? Maybe because the movie is an adventure, and yes, true love is the driving force and the reward, but the adventure is really what the movie IS, right? Am I remembering this correctly?
I don’t know; like I said, I haven’t really examined this bias in any meaningful way yet. Carla is not yet ten. We’ve talked to her about the mechanics of sex and have bought her books that are frank about sex and try to be open about any and all things she’s curious about, so it’s not like sex is a big mystery. Plus, romance and love are wonderful, in fiction and in life, and make for thrilling, excruciating conflict in movies and books. But I guess I don’t love how important sex and dating are in so many movies, especially those from my youth. Maybe I am just hoping to stave off, for a few more years, that all-encompassing, dizzy, yearning feeling of boy craziness I felt from fifth grade straight through until I met my husband???
Calcium Update: Possibly you remember how I regularly freak out about Carla’s poor calcium intake? Well, we have resolved this by simply giving her Tums during the day. (This is what my father suggested a year ago and we have just now come around to it for reasons unknown.) It’s probably not ideal, and she’s probably not getting exactly as much as she needs, but it’s better than nothing. There was a blissful period of time when Carla was regularly eating yogurt. She wanted the yogurt lumps I made back when I was still eating dairy, but they ran out. So she decided to mix raspberry jam and mini chocolate chips into yogurt each morning for breakfast. Yes, I know; high in sugar. But also high in protein and calcium! She has sort of fizzed out on that fad though, but it was really nice while it lasted.
Home Improvements Inch Forward: One of my aspirations for the past couple of years has been to get our house trim painted. And it is DONE. Well, sort of; the person who painted the trim around the garage somehow only painted the trim that faces the driveway; the trim on the sides is not painted. Looks like he sanded the sides and just… forgot them? The painter in charge assures me he will come back, and I really believe that he believes he will… but I think the nature of the jobs he takes on means that it might be a long while before he gets back to us. For instance, he was able to do the trim the same day I reached out to him because he had another job in my neighborhood and he was waiting on the go-ahead from a larger job. Sigh. I am also hoping to have him paint the front door, which is awful and peeling. In fact, I asked him to paint the door when I asked him to paint the trim and there was some sort of misunderstanding. Anyway I hope that he eventually finishes the job. We shall see. He did our deck last year and it still looks good, so I’m hopeful.
Birthday Angst Redux: We have finally settled on a birthday party plan for Carla, at long last, and after many permutations. It looks NOTHING like what she requested originally, but she seems happy and excited. The theme for her friend party will be succulents, because why not. (Do not ask me how we got to succulents from wolves.) I am trying to gather the courage to call my awesome local plant store to see if they can source party-favor size succulents for the guests. This is an okay thing to ask, right? I mean, I can order them online from multiple places, but I would much rather support a local business. But maybe they won’t be able to do it? Or maybe they won’t be able to do it as inexpensively as the online options? What then? Do I just spell it out up front: I am looking to spent no more than $X on Y small succulents in small pots – is that something you can do?
Also, Carla still wants a wolf theme for her family party. She wants a wolf head cake, and she drew a very detailed picture of her expectation. And look, I know my strengths and abilities and there is no way I can do something like this. Maybe I should just make the cake she wants and buy this cute topper from Etsy and hope she loves it???? I know that I could possibly call a bakery and ask them to do it, but I don’t know of any local bakeries that do this kind of detailed project and my experience with (okay, just the one) local bakery makes me reluctant to put the whole thing in their hands. Also it’s probably too late now, since I’ve been dithering about this for weeks and her birthday is IMMINENT. Please tell me there is some super! easy! way to do a wolf head that I am overlooking. Maybe I could print out a wolf head silhouette and cut a sheet cake in the shape of it and… it’s going to look awful.
The day before my parents were to arrive, I decided to begin some deep-cleaning projects that should really only be started when a person has many, many days in which to make a huge mess and then slowly restore order.
But perhaps you understand the intense and gripping panic of not wanting your mother to open the door to your pantry and think, “Has my child never thrown a single thing away in her life?”
Tidying the pantry was indeed one of my projects. I began by throwing out all the expired food. (We had a bag of chia seeds that puzzled me; have I ever used chia seeds? Turns out they expired in 2016.) Then I re-ordered the shelves, so that the breakfast foods that had migrated onto three shelves were now neatly arrayed in their own breakfasty area. Then I got rid of things that I knew we weren’t going to eat, like the box of fennel seed crackers my mother-in-law donated to us earlier this fall. Then I consolidated things: two boxes of Ritz crackers could be combined into one. Two tins of oatmeal could also be combined. And we had a jar of couscous that was only a quarter full, and two boxes of only recently expired couscous that I could add to the jar.
First, I opened the jar and gave it a sniff. We haven’t had couscous in awhile. The jar smelled distinctly stale.
It was such a little bit of couscous. I tossed it into the sink. Then I ran the disposal, just for good measure, and moved along with my day.
Finally, the pantry was clean and neat – so clean and neat that even my husband remarked upon it when he first saw it. But that was later. After.
At some point, I went over to the sink to wash my hands. The water didn’t fully drain, so I pressed the switch to run the disposal.
A geyser of couscous flecked water erupted from the non-disposal side of the sink, getting couscous and who knows what other bits of old food all over the counter, the window, the little corner draining board where we set the Scrub Daddy and dish brush. Ew.
But then… the water didn’t drain. It simply stayed in the sink. I ran the disposal some more. You need to run water while you’re running the disposal. The sinks continued to fill with couscousy water.
I have no idea why the Scrub Daddy remains so CHEERFUL.
At this point, I understood.
While I know (from bitter experience) that you cannot stuff potato peels, carrot peels, onion skins, celery, or other undigestible food matter into the disposal, I had forgotten that couscous is not a small dry grain that can be easily ground up by the blades of the disposal. It is a PASTA, that EXPANDS when it is wet.
I had broken the disposal. Right before my parents were to arrive. For Thanksgiving, a holiday during which my disposal does A Lot of work. Cue hyperventilation and tears.
Immediately, I called the plumber. In a tear-choked, panic-strained half-sob, I explained my problem and that I had guest coming the next day, please send help! The very kind dispatcher said they could put me on the schedule for tomorrow or the next day. As though there was a choice. TOMORROW, I said.
The Scrub Daddy continued to grin up at me, taking far too much enjoyment from my pain. My sinks were unusable. Even for hand-washing. They were disgusting, the water in them cloudy, bits of food and couscous afloat.
I opened the under-sink cabinets and that’s when I discovered the leak. Water was oozing out of one of the pipes and onto the bottom of the cabinet.
I removed everything to the counters.
Even in the midst of disaster, the urge to blog remains unrepressed.
Fortunately, the leak wasn’t a big one. It was just… a gentle ooze. I cleaned everything and then stuck a towel under the pipes.
Then I wandered aimlessly around the kitchen for awhile, texting my husband.
This is exactly the kind of text you want to receive from your spouse while you are AT WORK and can do nothing about it. Probably you will be shocked to hear this, but I may be a bit dramatic at times.
He wanted me to remove the fluid from the sink… but… HOW?
The panic was beginning to subside. A bit. So I googled. And found a video where some other poor idiot had messed up his sink and was now recording the fix for posterity and clicks. It looked… doable. Gross, but not impossible. Simple, really. You just disconnect some of the pipes from one another, clear out the clog, put everything back together, and you’re good to go.
At this point, the plumber texted me. They said something like, “We are going to try to get a plumber out to see you tomorrow if we can.” I seem to have deleted the text, so the exact wording eludes me. But it was not a confidence builder. It implied that I might be sitting here with my clogged, couscousy sinks until well past Thanksgiving.
The possibility of no plumber strengthened my resolve to Do Something myself.
I gently tried loosening one of the joints in the pipe. The leak intensified. So I went on a search for a container for the water. My bucket didn’t fit under the pipe situation, so I located a bunch of large-ish food storage containers. Then I had a stroke of genius and discovered we had a large aluminum casserole pan (the kind in which you bake food for new moms) in the freshly tidied pantry, so I got that out and set it on the towel under the pipes.
The pan is the correct size and shape, but it is Very Flimsy.
I turned off all the water. I unplugged the disposal and hung the cord up over the cabinet door, away from any water contact. I figured out how to separate two of the pipes from one another, very slightly, and I was able to drain the water from the sinks by holding the two sides apart. It was hard on my arms, but it really helped control the flow of water. Every so often, I would pour the contents of my aluminum pan into my bucket (it was too flimsy to hold much), and then dump the bucket in the toilet.
Once the sinks were clear, I reconnected the water and tried running it through the pipes again. The sinks immediately filled up with water and I had to drain them again. Once re-drained, I reconnected the disposal and tried running it. The disposal seemed to be working, but again the sinks filled up. Relieved, I felt confident I was dealing with a clog and not a broken disposal. Surely unclogging a pipe would cost less to fix than replacing the disposal.
But now that I’d had luck draining the sinks, I wondered if I could do more.
Perhaps I could unclog the pipes by myself.
T
My main concern was breaking the disposal/pipes/sink more than they were also broken. So I called my father to see if he thought it was something I could tackle myself, or if I could wait for the plumber.
When you are driving at high speeds on the freeway, getting a frantic call about home plumbing repairs from your middle-aged child probably isn’t ideal. Although who knows. Maybe it was just as entertaining as an audiobook.
His first suggestion was that I use a plunger to try to push the clog along… but that didn’t work. It was clear that I needed to remove the clog directly from the pipes. Communicating by text via my mom – my dad said he thought I could do it.
Supplies: A wrench big enough to loosen the nuts holding the joints together. A bucket or pan. Done and done.
He had me sent pictures of the pipes to my mom, so he could figure out which way I needed to turn the nuts. (I don’t know why he wanted to be sure; I kind of thought I would try it one way and then if it didn’t work, I would try it the other way. But when you are asking your parent for plumbing guidance, you do what he tells you.) He told me which direction to turn, and I used my tool to unscrew the nuts. I have no idea if I am using the right terminology at all. I complained via text that my tool wasn’t very effective, and my dad asked for a photo of it. I sent it to him and he told me I was not using a wrench, I was using pliers. But they should probably work.
And they did.
I got all of the nuts off the joints, I was able to clean out the clog, reattach everything, and run water through the disposal. It took me nearly THREE HOURS from clogging the sink to de-couscousing everything and putting it all back together. But I did it.
Here’s the text I sent to my husband:
Here’s the text I sent to my mother, who, I will remind you, was a passenger in a car my father was driving, TO MY HOUSE from their home across the country, this entire time.
It is very, extremely satisfying to resolve a problem. Especially, I would wager, when you are unaccustomed to both the type of problem and the methodology necessary to resolve it. It wasn’t easy, but it was simple and the result was wildly gratifying.
And the repair has held ever since, with no additional leaks. Even through Thanksgiving.
When I picked up Carla from school that day, I was so high on my experience – gleeful! triumphant! – that I told her all about the clog and my newfound plumbing acumen. I handed her my phone so she could look at the photos as I talked.
She was delighted by the story. I spared no detail. She was an ideal audience: rapt, full of questions. She loves to help my father build and repair things, so I think she quite enjoys DIY content.
“And I fixed it! All by myself!” I concluded.
“No you didn’t,” she said. “Grandpa helped.”
Okay. Fair.
Still looking at the photos, she said, “I have one question Mommy.”
Yes?
“Why did you use pliers instead of a wrench?”
Okay, Carla. Next time YOU can fix the clog.
As you will recall, I introduced this little experience with a guessing game and an associated giveaway. It was so fun to read everyone’s guesses about what happened. So many of you have had similar experiences, and I feel such kinship with you all. Also: I am VERY GLAD it was not mice.
The winner of the mystery giveaway is Gigi Rambles! Gigi, I will email you for your address. (And yes, you are not imagining that this is different than originally posted — I completely ignored the previous winner’s desire to opt out of the giveaway. Reading comprehension, folks! It’s a good thing!)
Thank you SO MUCH for your kindness and commiseration yesterday. It is so helpful to be able to spill one’s very minor and yet deeply irritating frustrations to friends, and have them respond with back pats and consoling words.
While the pest control situation remains VERY IRRITATING, I feel much better about the sink. My dad and I did a FaceTime diagnosis and determined that there is a leak in the sprayer hose for the faucet. This is good news in some ways because a) it should be a fairly easy fix; i.e., replace the hose or at worst the entire faucet, and b) the leak is pretty gentle; I left a bowl under it last night and there are probably a couple of tablespoons of water in there (it must have been leaking for A LONG TIME, considering the volume of water the leak produces and the amount of water that was in my cupboard), and c) the water is clean water, not anything gross from the disposal or anything.
The leak didn’t appear to have caused any damage, and I took the opportunity to clean out the cupboard (much more reasonable to clean as you need to than having a scheduled monthly-cleaning-of-all-the-cupboards, so there GRANDMA) and consolidate/get rid of near-empty bottles and containers and bric-a-brac.
The Scrub Daddies seemed unscathed by the experience. Nicole asked if I like them (HI NICOLE), and yes, I do like them. They are very good at getting rid of tough, stuck-on food residue and somehow they do not smell or grow mold the way sponges do. They are also dishwasher safe and very cheerful to look at.
My father and I determined that the repair was probably outside my skill set. Actually, as I was lying scrunched under the kitchen sink, my phone in one hand, a flashlight in the other, I think my dad was gearing up to explain exactly what the next steps were… but as he was pointing out some sort of brackets that hold the faucet in place, and telling me about some special tool one needs to dislodge them, my mom, bless her, said in the background, “Sounds like the next step is to call a plumber.” And I did, and they will be coming out next week. (While they are here, I will be asking them to unclog some drains that have been bothering me for weeks now, but not to the point of being able to get past my terror of Drain Hair to do anything about it.) (Unclogging drains is usually my husband’s job anyway, but I am not going to pressure him lest he turns over the job to me.)
This morning, feeling much better about life in general, I opened the dishwasher to empty it and noticed that the dishes weren’t clean. There was a plate with some chocolate on it, which is how I could tell. Also, the little soap packet was lying on the floor of the dishwasher, semi-intact. Okay. Sometimes that happens – the mechanism that releases the soap doesn’t open at the right time or something. Fine.
I fiddled around with the little soap door, added a new packet of soap. (What? Maybe the original soap packet was faulty.)
I ran the dishes again.
When the dishwasher was finally done, I opened it to empty the dishes… and now there were two soap packets on the floor of the dishwasher. One was still semi-intact, the other was fresh as a daisy.
It is a testament to YOUR calming powers that I did not burst into tears right there. I had some Dire Thoughts, including how I am never again shopping at the appliance store from which we bought our dishwasher (and the horrific, problem-addled fridge). We bought this dishwasher just a few years ago! It should be fine!
(Okay, maybe “a few years ago” was actually six years ago. But dishwashers should last longer than six years, right? My parents had the same dishwasher the entire 18 years I lived at home with them.)
I mentally ran through what to do next: who repairs dishwashers? Is it the same people who repair the fridge? Could I ask the plumber to look into it? (Probably not.)
And then I remembered. When I was under the sink, trying to figure out where the leak was coming from, my dad pointed out the valve that goes to the dishwasher… and had me turn it off.
So basically I ran the dishwasher twice WITH NO WATER. But I was able to turn the valve on very easily and now the dishwasher is running again, this time with water.
Sometimes the day just seems to fall apart before it’s even really gotten going. Like today, when Carla was late to camp because we (I) forgot an essential at home and we had to turn around to get it.
And then I went to Target to return some ill-fitting water shoes, and decided to pick up a couple more pairs of jean shorts for Carla because she prefers jean shorts to anything else. And there was a big display of Cat & Jack shorts that said “comfy jean shorts $10!” Under the sign were multiple piles of jean shorts, in multiple colors, and I looked suspiciously at some of the tags that clearly said $15 instead of $10… but Target is notoriously bad about many things that involve any sort of detail orientation, so I grabbed two pairs. Target also makes it nearly impossible to see what you are being charged as each item goes over the scanner: the only way to do it is to stand back by the conveyor belt and stare over the checker’s shoulder at their computer. Of course, I missed seeing the shorts scan. And I am terrible at math, so I thought maybe the final price was a little high, but could be in the realm of accurate? (I grew up in a state with no sales tax and have NEVER SINCE been able to figure it out.) I even asked the checker if the shorts rang up as $10 and he looked and said yes. This is a very long and boring story!
As I left the store, I looked at the receipt and one pair had indeed rung up as $15, so I went back in and asked at customer service what the deal was. And they shrugged and said, “Well, the display meant that THESE comfy shorts are $10, but not all of them.” And while I was trying to parse that in my head, I nodded and shoved the shorts back in my bag and left, and then fumed all the way home about not simply returning the shorts when I had paid $5 more than I intended to pay for them. Or at the very least saying what I wanted to say which was, “Well, that is a deeply misleading sign.”
Anyway! Home!
To discover a giant leak underneath my kitchen sink. All of the cleaning supplies and trash bags and extra Scrub Daddies were completely soaked.
And while I was removing each item and then drying out the cupboard and trying to diagnose the source of the leak (why? how? I am not equipped for that nor for addressing a leak should I find one), the pest control people CALLED ME BACK.
Which just added to my hatred of this morning because I had specifically asked – via email (after I had responded, via email to an invoice, and he left me a garbled voicemail) – that the guy EMAIL ME INSTEAD OF CALLING.
Not only is he boldly ignoring an explicit and reasonable request, he is trying to retroactively change the pricing terms we had discussed before I had the pest control people come out to deal with a Wasp Situation. And I was Very Frustrated and Sharp with him on the phone, and told him that I didn’t mean to be sharp, but I was dealing with a leak and this was not a good time (why did I answer the phone? why did I bring home the $15 shorts?) and would he please EMAIL ME all the rates that we had discussed, and instead of saying, “Sure,” he said, “Oh I understand completely, give me a call back when it is more convenient.” NO. EMAIL ME. OMG.
His reasoning is that their rates change, so I guess he didn’t want to commit to something in writing. Which a) is bullshit and b) can’t he simply spell that out in the email??????
I did finally persuade him to email me, but it took an increasingly strident and near-tears additional request.
Oh, and now that I am writing this out, I do think he finally agreed to email me what we’d talked about (EXACTLY) so that I could talk it over with my husband, which in retrospect seems VERY condescending and sexist and jerkfacey. I mean, I was being quite short with him, but wanting to see a list of rates rather than having to remember all the specifics shared during a conversation, especially when I am otherwise distracted, is a reasonable desire and not an example of my poor feminine brain being unable to compute simple numbers. And if I didn’t absolutely adore the guy who comes to do the application of pest spray, I would find a new pet control company in a heartbeat.
These things are all handle-able. They ARE. None of this is the end of the world, or even, taken individually, that big of a deal. I am not despondent, just frustrated. Frustrated because of these things and because today was supposed to be my one day this week to do some writing. (Does venting to you count as writing?)
Frustrated, too, because I am in a phase where everything seems to be falling apart: our fridge is still on the fritz, which means either an expensive repair or a new fridge; the shade in our bathroom no longer goes up more than a few inches; the WASP SITUATION; there is a stain on our front siding that I scrubbed off last week and has since reappeared, indicating a potential leak inside our soffit; we need to paint/stain/do something to both the trim on the front of the house and the playset in the yard.
And Father’s Day is this weekend, along with two birthday parties Carla is attending, and I am meeting a friend for her birthday tomorrow, so I have a million presents to wrap today/tomorrow and, this weekend, lots of good, wonderful reasons to not be writing. But it is all feeding the frustration.
And Carla’s birthday is coming up and so there are a bunch of things to think about for that.
And my in-laws are visiting next week.
Anyway. It’s just now ten o’clock and I am already DONE with the day.
We went on a little vacation over the long Independence Day weekend. And my in-laws are in town. And I’ve been dealing with Assorted Birthday Stuff. So the days kind of melt into one another and I am not really sure where I am or what I’m supposed to be doing. I think, it being Tuesday, I should be setting up a Dinners This Week post. But I haven’t even planned my meals this week, yet. (We are going out to dinner tonight, so I can delay that chore another day.) Plus, I have other things on my mind.
Did I tell you that we have new neighbors?
These are the Cute Neighbors.
They are very cute indeed. They do lots of frolicking. And they seem to see in Carla a kindred spirit because whenever she is in the living room, looking out at them from the sliding glass doors, they take great interest in her and often come up quite close to the glass.
Many new neighbors.
Still very cute, but more worrisome. Especially because she has at least THREE babies in her condo under that step. Yes. The step that is directly adjacent to our living room.
Unrelated — surprisingly — to skunks: today, I am also preoccupied with The Smell. My husband woke me up with a loving kiss, as he does every morning, and, instead of saying, “Good morning, my darling,” he whispered, “I think I smell something bad.” Just the kind of affectionate phrasing I most enjoy in the wee hours, let me tell you.
I couldn’t smell it; couldn’t smell anything, really, because my nose has been, of late, CLOGGED TO THE MAX. I’m pretty sure I have a sinus infection; my forehead is tender, as are the circles under my eyes; my head is in a constant state of achey-ness; my nose, as mentioned just a second ago, is thick with YUCK.
But Carla leaped out of bed – she wakes up the instant anyone else is awake, unless she wakes up first; in summers, she has been “sleeping in” until six thirty or so, which is lovely – and chimed in from her room, “I think I smell it!”
I don’t know if it was the power of suggestion, but I thought – after copious nose-blowing – that maybe I, too, could smell the underpinnings of something foul.
My husband and I tossed around the idea that maybe it was the aftereffects of some roasted broccoli we had last night. Broccoli, delicious as it is, has a bad habit of releasing a pungent fart perfume that lingers in its absence. Carla wondered if the flowers we have in vases throughout our downstairs might be causing the stink, but they all look relatively fresh and the vase water is clear, and passed The Sniff Test, so…
So I did what anyone might do when confronted with Something Smelly: I cleared out all the garbage cans, sprayed the insides of the cans with bleach, cleaned the toilets for good measure, ran a load of laundry (although none of the laundry baskets had a noticeable smell), ran the garbage disposal, wiped down the counters. I questioned Carla closely about whether she’s taken any food upstairs (this is verboten in our house, and I don’t know that she’s ever done it before… but you never know). (She looked at me with wide-eyed shock that I would even ASK her such a thing. Dost she protest too much? Hmmmm….) (I smelled each corner of her room carefully, but we have already established that we cannot trust my nose.) Then I took Carla to camp and went for my usual four-mile walk.
The Smell greeted me when I returned.
Sigh.
It’s steamy outside, but I have dutifully opened all the windows and doors, in hopes of coaxing The Smell to leave. I dumped baking soda in each of the kitchen sink drains, filled one side of the sink with a mixture of hot water and vinegar, and ran the disposal as I let it drain; that’s the best way I know to really CLEAN the disposal. I’ve refreshed the flower water, just in case that’s the culprit. I am running the dishwasher, in case I didn’t rinse last night’s dishes thoroughly enough. I’m not really sure what to do next. Toss the week-old Gerber daisies, I suppose. They still look fine, but maybe they’re not.
Now I need to shower, because I don’t want to add my own Eau de Post-Workout to the scents inside the house.
The abiding worry, of course, is that some animal has crawled in between our walls and died there, memorializing its life in a legacy of odor. I wouldn’t even know where to BEGIN dealing with that, should that be the case. But let’s try everything else, first.
What else have I overlooked? What are the likely stink culprits in your home, when you’ve eliminated “trash smell” and “bathroom smells” from the list?
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life of a doctor's wife 