Fish Out of Water

I haven't posted in forever

It's not entirely my fault. I wrote this really great post a week or so ago and then my Internet connection died just as I was posting it. Doh. So then I got annoyed for a while and didn't feel like posting. But I'm back.

Been a crazy few weeks. The post I lost was all about the adventure I had at the hospital on December 27. I had to have a minor surgical procedure, which itself went well, but I must have had a bad reaction to the anaesthesia because after the surgery I went to the bathroom and after sitting on the toilet, the next thing I knew, they were picking me up off the floor saying, "You passed out!" I then spent a few hours alternately throwing up and sleeping, and then had a crashing headache. By that time they had decided to keep me overnight for observation, and then I got a CAT scan for good measure, just to make sure I hadn't sustained a concussion when keeling over off the toilet onto the hard tile floor (I hadn't). I got to go home the next morning and I looked a little battered - cut on my cheek, bruises on my chin and arms (one huge gross one that was so yucky I got the nurse to cover it with gauze), and just feeling generally lousy. I spent most of that day in bed, and then the next day we had 30 people in our house for a huge 60th birthday party for my mom! It was fun but it was kind of exhausting especially after that ridiculous ordeal.

But I'm fine now. All better. New Year's Eve was quite wonderful, partly because I was so happy to be saying goodbye to 2007 and partly because I got to spend the evening with my spectacular husband. We got a sitter for the girls and we went out to a fantastic French bistro dinner including champagne, oysters and fabulous food. Then we wandered around the city until the fireworks over the Delaware River, which were beautiful. It was such a special evening.

So now here we are in 2008. I realized today that what I hope for this year is not ecstatic happiness or towering riches or anything to excess. I just hope for progress and contentment. That is my hope for this year. I do not make New Year's resolutions, so I have none of those, but I wish all of you the same good fortune for this year. (Also thanks again for hanging around my blog. It's nice to know the three - or so - of you are out there.)

Aaaaagh, or why I love being a homeowner

A few nights ago I was putting my older daughter to bed. As she was changing into her PJs I noticed a puddle of water on the floor next to her bed. Immediately I assumed she had spilled something and not told me. "What is that?" I demanded. "I don't know, Mommy," she said, the picture of innocence. "Seriously, you need to tell me what that is." "I really don't know, Mommy. I didn't do anything!" I was a bit impatient and edgy that night already and I almost started yelling (always a good thing to do with your wide-eyed and wonderful 4-year-old!) but then a little voice in my head told me to look up at the ceiling. OY. There was water coming out of the ceiling and dripping onto the floor.

I ran to get my husband and he quickly determined that the toilet in the third floor bathroom was leaking, and had filled up some amount of space in her ceiling with water. Being a somewhat nervous person around leaks and someone who has had just about enough of surprising and expensive disasters this year, I freaked out a bit. But then my daughter started to freak out so I had to go calm her down. My much smarter husband got his trusty Leatherman tool and a large soup pot, poked a hole in the ceiling and let the built-up water drain out into the pot. He thinks the leak is in the small pipe that takes clean water from the pipes to the toilet, so at least it's not raw sewage that is leaking into her room. Our noses would have told us in five seconds if that was the case.

We've been a tad busy since we discovered the leak so we haven't done anything about it yet. There's still a hole in the ceiling and a pot on the floor. Our daughter is now sleeping in the twin bed in her sister's room, so there's really no sense of urgency to get this fixed. Although I suppose she might want to go back in her room eventually. That twin bed was kind of an afterthought in that room and we don't use it very much, but it sure is coming in handy now.

So yay, there's a hole in my house! Thank goodness the leak wasn't worse and didn't make the ceiling open and send freezing water and pieces of sheetrock onto my precious daughter's face as she slept. That would have just about made me plotz.

Things you don't want to see in the rear-view mirror

A few weeks ago, while driving my daughter to school one morning (and, by extension, driving myself to work), I saw something quite disturbing in the car behind me. The woman driving had a cigarette in one hand, the in-visor mirror flapped down, and was plucking stray hairs out of her chin. In traffic.

Gross. Not to mention dangerous.

I might be scarred for life.

OK, I feel like an idiot

Recently I bid on a breast pump on eBay because I will need one soon for when I go back to work. I lost the auction and figured that was the end of that one, and I would try again another time. Then I got an email from the eBay Second Chance offer system, which is the system that allows sellers to offer the item to the first losing bidder if the winner's payment doesn't come through or is rejected or whatever. So I emailed the seller because the price was really good. He said I would receive instructions from eBay on how to complete the transaction.

When I didn't get an email immediately after that, I should have known. But I emailed him again a day or so later to tell him I hadn't heard from eBay yet, and shortly afterward I finally heard from them. But the email from them was a little weird. It had all the things you would expect to see in an email from eBay, and the links all worked, but there were little things wrong with it. For one thing, the auction itself had PayPal as an option, but in the Second Chance email, it said I had to pay by Western Union. I've used eBay enough times to have been surprised to see Western Union on there. When I reread the email, I found a grammatical error in it.

But it still took me going over the email a bunch more times and talking about it with my husband before I decided to investigate eBay's tutorial for how to spot fraudulent and scammy emails. Finally I found their spoof reporting email address, forwarded the email to them, and within 20 minutes I had a response from them confirming that the whole thing was a fake. Then I thought to go back to the original auction, and sure enough, the winning bidder had left positive feedback for the seller just yesterday! Now, if her payment hadn't gone through and she hadn't actually gotten the item, I'm thinking she wouldn't have left feedback for the seller.

So I wrote back to the guy and told him thanks but no thanks. Now he's emailing me trying to convince me to do the transaction. Well obviously I'm not going to send him any money, but now looking back at the whole thing, I am kicking myself for not realizing immediately that it was a fake! I mean seriously, these people must make a lot of money off this kind of thing, or else they wouldn't spend so much time and energy trying to relieve me of my hard-earned money. Honestly, if they showed this much dedication to an actual JOB or non-illegal pursuit, they could probably do quite well for themselves.

Blah, why are there always scumbags who make things worse for the rest of us? I am just glad I listened to my gut and ultimately didn't fall for it. Hopefully next time I'll realize sooner. Hrumph.

Grrr, pets

OK, I admit it, I am extra-grumpy these days because of the near-constant pain I'm in, the fact that I have no waist anymore so I can't manage to make a pair of pants stay up past the middle of my butt, and the periodic bouts of insomnia that like to hit me every few days, but really, I think that even if everything were peachy keen this would still piss me off:

My cat pees in the fireplace.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. We have thought it was because we were perhaps not disciplined enough in cleaning out the litter, but lately we've been doing it really regularly, and he still does it. My hubby cleaned out all the litter last night and put fresh litter in the box, and just now when I was locking up the house I found fresh pee in the fireplace. I sprayed my special cat pee smell remover on it, but at the rate we're going, it's going to take years for the smell to go away. It's worst when it rains. The whole living room smells like cat urine.

This is NOT what I signed up for when I got a cat! HELP!!!!!!!!!!! He is eight years old, no signs of health problems, he's an indoor cat and the only pet in the house. He used to be one of three, but after two clear signs from the universe that we were not meant to have outdoor pets, he is now the only one. I'm thinking this pee thing may be the latest sign from the universe that we are not meant to harbor more than one species in our living space! GAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Two very disparate posts in one

This morning I was thinking of a post to write about my daughter, because I realized I really haven't written about her much lately, and even though I'm having trouble staying patient with her, she has been doing some really cute things.  So I've been letting that post percolate all day and was going to write it after the World Cup game ended.  Unfortunately, before I write that post, I have to first write this post (about the game):

What the Fuck Was He Thinking?

As you may or may not know, I am half-French.  It's a big part of who I am although I don't go waving it around constantly.  But during this World Cup, it's been really fun to root for the French national team and remember how much fun it was back in 1998 when they won.  That was also a special year because the final of that World Cup - when they beat Brazil - was two days before my husband and I talked for the first time and got engaged (yeah, I probably owe you some more detail about that - wait, maybe I did a post about that already).  Hubby had actually been in Brazil on vacation for two weeks leading up to that final, so it was all very serendipitous the way it all worked out.  We were so excited when France won, and I remember talking on the phone to my aunt who lives just outside Paris, and she told us that my cousin had been out all night celebrating and came home with his face painted blue, white and red.  It was awesome.

So this year we've been cheering them on, watching the games, and enjoying seeing it all happen.  Today we got home from lunch with some friends, put the exhausted kid down for a nap, and settled into the living room couch to watch what promised to be a great game.  And for about 115 minutes, it was.  And then there was a replay of the French captain - and one of the greatest soccer players of all time - viciously head-butting another player when the ball was nowhere in sight, and the other player going down.  I sat there with my mouth open.  The commentators were at pains to think of anything to say.  It was totally disgusting.  He got a red card, which means he was thrown out of the game, and since he has already announced that he would retire after the Cup was done, that's effectively the last view we get of him, after a legendary career.  Not very nice.

I suppose I should also say that I am a big sports fan, so things like this are very important to me.  When I sit down to watch a game, I want to see a great game where everyone plays hard and puts in effort, and the best team wins.  I do NOT want to see one of the greatest soccer players of all time go out like that, like a petulant kid being a total asshole.  That just has no place.

So I am sitting here firing off pissed-off emails to all my friends and venting about how mad I am.  I'm actually kind of glad Italy ended up winning, because really, if France had won, I don't think I'd be celebrating anyway.  Grrrrrrrrr.  I'm just MAD.

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OK, that's enough about that.  Onto the other, happier post, about my daughter.  So earlier this week, I took a shower before work and bathed her as well.  While I was drying my hair, she was watching the Wiggles in the guest room, wrapped in nothing but her towel.  She asked me to put her hair in a ponytail, which I did, and then disappeared for a while.  A few minutes later, she popped back into the bathroom, wearing nothing but her ponytail and a pair of winter snow boots, and announced, "I have a ponytail, boots, and NAKED!"  I just about fell over.

This morning we were in the car on our way to our friends' house for lunch, listening to her very favorite album - the Best of Ray Charles.  "I Got a Woman" came on, and we kept quiet, because she was singing along.  So cute, I almost melted right into the front seat of the car.  Then she requested another song: Road Jack.  And there she went, "Hit the road Jack, and don't ya come back no more no more no more no more....." with her sweet little singing voice.  I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw her dancing along in her car seat.  I wish I had a video camera with me then - just so precious.

One night recently I was sitting in the living room, watching TV or reading - don't really remember.  She climbed up into my lap, gave me a big hug and said, "Mommy, you are a great lady.  And a great woman."  I don't think I could ask for anything better than that.

Pet Woes

We are having all kinds of problems with our pets and we are getting close to the end of our rope.  First, the dog.  He has forgotten that he is a house-trained dog.  He pees on the floor in the dining room, on his crate, in our office (on important business documents, naturally).  He poops in the spare room, our daughter's room, the third floor bathroom.  We walk him twice a day.  We let him out back several more times a day to pee.  I even let him out in the middle of the night, most nights!  And then it takes me an hour to fall back asleep.  I am really frustrated.  I keep talking to people who say that sometimes dogs forget their housetraining and you have to retrain them, but then I say, well what am I supposed to do - quit my job to re-housetrain my dog?  I just can't even imagine how we would go about doing that.

OK, now the cat.  He has always been perfectly fine with his litter box, but for the past week or so, he has been peeing IN THE FIREPLACE.  Sometimes the fireplace in the dining room, sometimes the one in the living room.  He poops in various interesting places too.  The litter box has been pristine for the past two weeks.  I am at a loss.

I have a new vet who does house calls, and she's coming on Wednesday night.  In the meantime, is anyone out there interested in a new pet?

I finished another quarter of school!

So the first big happy thing is that I wrapped up my quarter in school on Thursday night around 10pm, when I submitted my final assignment.  I now have three more classes left, and then I will officially possess a graduate degree.  WOO-HOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Also I was able to spend a perfectly lovely weekend without the specter of a homework assignment hanging over my head.  I'm off until January 3.  I'm going to enjoy my break!

My whole family has been weirdly sick for the past few weeks.  My daughter finally got over that endless fever that kept her home from school for a week, but a nasty cough has hung around.  She's still on amoxicillin, and we've also been giving her cough medicine, but she's still pretty congested.  On Wednesday morning last week, I woke up with a very puffy and red left eye.  I was a little concerned about pinkeye but I decided to wait it out and see.  By the next day, they were pink, swollen, crusty, itchy and painful.  The telltale signs of pinkeye.  I got a prescription for eye drops from my doctor and he told me if they were not better in three days I had to go to an eye doctor.  It is now Sunday.  They have improved but they are definitely not normal yet.  I guess I better call the eye doctor.

In the meantime, the dizzy spells that I started having a couple of months ago have returned, ten times stronger.  If I change direction, like walking down the hall in my house, or something totally innocuous like that, my whole head buzzes and I have to reorient myself or else I'll practically fall down.  This is not normal, is it?  My doctor did tell me last time that it could be because of the Prozac I'm on, but they started to get better, so I thought maybe my body had adjusted.  I ran out of Prozac on Thursday of last week and now the dizzy spells are insane.  Weird, huh?  I think this might end up being a week with lots of doctor's appointments.

My husband seems to have gotten a terrible attack of sinus-allergy-nonfeverish-flu or something - he has a totally stuffed head, can hardly breathe, could barely get out of bed this morning, and spent the whole day in his sweats lumping around the house (I went shopping with my mother in law this morning and left the sick husband home with the rambunctious kid.  Not very nice of me but I really needed some new black pants!).  He says he's feeling a little better but he doesn't look so good.

So it's Sunday night and we're already bushed.  Oh dear.................

The House Deal is Dead

Looks like we are back to square one.  We had to walk from the new house deal today.  It was actually pretty easy to come to that decision because we had received an email from the seller's agent containing a pretty vicious character assassination about my husband, and an offer of a $2,000 credit in closing toward the $15,000 of work that needs to be done on the termite damage.

Yeah.

So we told them to go fuck themselves and demanded our deposit back.  And we are now not exactly sure what is the next step.  We are still looking for another new house, but right now there isn't anything for sale in the area where we want to live that has all the things we need.  So we're waiting until something else comes up.

It's kind of disappointing, since we really loved the house.  But it came to a point where the people we were dealing with were so shady, and behaved in such an inappropriate, unprofessional and clueless manner, that we really had no choice.

My husband's pretty bummed tonight, but I'm actually not as sad about it as I thought I would be.  OK, well my husband is mostly angry at the slanderous accusations in their email.  It's weird because our whole plan for the summer is thrown off.  We won't be closing on this house June 20 and moving June 28.  We might be here another year if we can't find something good in the next few months.

Now I'm off to do a homework assignment that I should have started many days ago.  I did start it last night, but I'm way behind.  I think it's going to be a late night.  Oh well.

The Termite News, and happy mother's day to me

Well, it's kind of the worst case scenario.  My husband said the contractor's eyes kept getting bigger and bigger as the damage was revealed.  He estimates about $10-15K to fix it, and that's not including anything he might discover after he rips up the living room floor. 

The seller didn't even deign to show up at the meeting, even after she said she would.  My husband said her realtor appears to be totally cowed by her, afraid to tell her what she needs to do.  What we are requesting is that she give us a credit in closing for the amount that it will cost to do the work, and then she can just leave and we'll deal with the stress and inconvenience of having the work done.  If any money is left over after the work is done, it will go back to her.  So this is really her best option.  But based on her previous behavior up to now, I don't think this is going to go smoothly.

Oh, and apparently the reason she wanted $1,200 for her used washer and dryer was because she felt she had paid too much for them when she got them new, so I guess she wants to get some value back for them.  SO WHAT?!!  I really don't see how that is my problem at all!  I didn't even know this woman when she bought her washing machines!

So I am starting to feel like this deal might really fall apart and that is pretty disappointing.  The house is so beautiful and it's exactly what we want.  Our contractor assures us that he can do the work to fix the termite damage and it will be as good as new, so I'm really not worried about it.  I just feel like this woman is so out of touch with reality that this is going to get ugly before it gets resolved one way or the other.  You know what her solution for the termite problem was?  She rearranged her living room furniture so you don't need to walk in the part where the joists are all eaten up and falling apart!  EXCUSE ME, but that is not a solution.  If my husband had jumped up and down in that corner of the living room, he would have fallen into the basement.

But it's Mother's Day, and it's beautiful outside, and I'm feeling very happy and content.  My husband let me sleep late and he and our daughter made pancakes and bacon for breakfast.  We all had pancakes together, then I played with the sweet little girl, and we looked at her baby photo album.  She loved seeing pictures of herself as a baby, and I felt all warm and fuzzy inside remembering what it was like to become a mommy.  Then she and her daddy went out on an adventure and left me alone in the house to relax in the peace and quiet, which is what I'm doing now.  I have some homework to do and I need to take a shower, and then I'm going to a bridal shower this afternoon for a very old friend of mine.  It should be a very pleasant day.