To hell in a handbasket .......

I know it has again been a long time since I wrote, but you know that old saying  of "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all"?   Well, if I am being honest, I haven't had much nice to say.  It's been a tough few weeks ...... a tough month .......

I know I affectionately called the house a money pit early on, but it turns out that that moniker is holding on like a pit bull.  I told Brad the other day that all I really hoped for these days was maybe two days in a row where everything went right.   I am apparently still waiting.   I have had some good days, but they don't seem to string together.      It has been a tough "welcome home" to say the least.....

A lot of it centers around the house.  I think both Brad and I wish we could go back in time and perhaps reconsider buying it.  I suppose perhaps at some point I will stop kicking myself for it, but I am pretty sure I was the deciding factor in picking this house - just fell in love with a few of the features and it blinded me to a lot of the other things.  And Brad just wanted to make me happy.   Live and learn.

The advantage of writing each day would be that I could tell you each day about the antics of what went wrong on that day, but to be honest, by the end of most of the days lately, I am too worn out to want to sit and write and often I have just been ready for the day to end.   At the least I should have taken notes, but I haven't, so here is what I can remember so far:

• Went into the attic to find window screens (where the previous owner said to look)
• Did find window screens, in addition to apparently their alternate trash depositing spot.  Stuff everywhere!
• Found that said attic has three levels to it!  First two are pretty easily accessible, with one drop down of about two and a half feet. (This was discovered when I made the step down into unknown territory and cracked the ceiling drywall below!  Hooray!)    Got to where there is a small opening to the third, decided I would have to go on a starvation diet to fit, so chose not to.
• But wait, what is this?  Cold air in that part of the attic?  That can't be good!  Cold air comes from air conditioners and my attic should not be air conditioned!
• Looked all over the rest of the house for an access to the other part of the attic.  None seems to exist.  This means I will have to create my own!   Oh joy!
• Got the electric bill for our first month in the house.   I am too embarrassed to tell you how much it was, but let's just say it made me cry!   Literally!!!   Real tears!   There are MAJOR energy issues with this house!!
• After the electric bill, the motivation to get into the attic increases.   So I start taking down old acoustical ceiling tiles in the mechanical room off of the laundry room since it's the only room that is not dry walled.  
• First large tile removed ...... you HAVE to be kidding me!!!  A dog bed?  Seriously?!   They used a dog bed as attic insulation?!
• Removed more ceiling tiles - no more dog beds.  Finally a space big enough for me to get into the attic if I move myself just right.  It's a start, so up I go.
• Now in said attic...... dark, hot, ....   Ceiling fan number three is not working.   Height to move around seems to be about three to four feet at best, so spent the next hour either in a crouch or duck walking or crawling!
• Again, find three light fixtures with dead bulbs!  Change bulbs but still not sure where they turn on, though am guessing they are tied in with the ones of the other side of the attic (note to self to check that).  As opposed to previous occupants, I take dead light bulbs out with me when I go and don't just toss them aside.
• In search of cold air I felt from the other side, so head north on my hands and knees.  Cool...... cooler.... coldest!   There it is!   I gigantic duct that looks to be about a foot wide totally disconnected from the hose and nicely chilling the attic!   I was smart enough this time to take a camera up with me so I have proof!
• Try to follow all of the ducting to check it - cold air leaks in several places.  Hooray for Home Warranty!
• Decide to check out the rest of the attic for anything I might find.  Surprisingly, the rest of the stuff seems to be in order on that side, but there are wires EVERYWHERE!   The house has an old intercom system and I am wondering if perhaps that is what some of them are – or perhaps an old alarm system (since we seem to have three in the house – one of which appears to be from the ‘50’s and even has a red panic button!!!)
• Down out of the attic I come.   No way anyone bigger than me is fitting up there, so I expand the opening, brace a few of the joists and cut out a section of 2x4 so workers can get up there.  It’s still a little tricky, but as long as they don’t weigh 300 pounds, I think we are okay.  If they are 300 pounds, I don’t want them in my attic anyway!
• Wake up next morning to discover that the muscles in my thighs are on fire from having duck walked through my attic!  Not a position or technique one should spend much time doing when you are 50!

Okay, so what we have at this point is a poorly-functioning, energy-sucking antique air conditioner (x 2), a old HVAC system that has a fan that won’t shut off and runs 24/7 and seems to be putting at least part of the cold air outside (imagine how hot Wichita would be if I was NOT doing this?   Maybe 110 instead of just 106!), another HVAC system that has broken and leaking ducts, two out of three attic fans that don’t work, my refrigerator freezer that doesn’t get quite cold enough (all ice cream at my house is soft serve!), a cook top that has half of the burners that don’t work, a broken trash compactor, a few doors that scrape and stick, cracked ceiling drywall because of where I stepped in the attic and the sprinkler repair in the atrium that I have already done.  That should be it, right?!

NOT!   This morning it's cooler than normal for 7 a.m. (only 75 instead of 85!) so I decide to do a little work in the yard before it heats up.  I go over to the hose bib behind the greenhouse.... only to smell natural gas!  Great!   Call the gas company.  Long story short, I have a leak in a buried gas line in my back yard that leads to the pool heater!  Not like I need the pool heater right now, but I have to find the source of the leak.  Guess I will be spending tomorrow morning digging up the back yard in strategic spots!

It just seems like one thing after another and I am so tired of it!   I really don't mean to have a pity party, but honestly, just when I think I have found out all of the things I am going to find something else happens!  Forgive me my whining........

And it's not just the house.  My 50th birthday was last Saturday ....... Brad forgot.   I am usually not one for birthdays but this one was big and with everything else going on, all I really wanted was a hug and a happy birthday from him.  He remembered when he asked me why I was moping around and I started crying and told him!   Good times!   I know we both have incredibly full plates and I have forgiven him, but it was a tough day for me.

On my birthday, my mom took a fall in her bathroom and hit her back on the counter.  She ended up in Urgent Care (via my sister - thank you Mimi!) and they didn't see anything broken.  She has had pain all week and ended up getting an MRI today.  Won't know until Monday but they wonder if she has another compression fracture in her vertebra like he had several years back.  Then I got an email from my sister this morning: mom accidentally locked herself out of the house yesterday when she went out to get something.  My sister had planned to come over when she got off work, so knowing that, my mom just waited outside.  Knowing it was also incredibly hot, she thought to turn on the sprinkler and basically sat for a half hour where the sprinkler hit her and kept her cool.   While I applaud her resourcefulness, it's not something you want to hear.   Still, ....... I am worried........   I see more and frequent trips to Pittsburg in my future......

So this weekend, I have a plan.   I bought a sage smudge stick and I am going to burn it in the house.  I have not done this before, but it feels like time.  I need to clean the negative energy out of this house as it feels like that is all that has been around since we moved in.  I am really not wacky but at this point, I feel like I need to do something!  For any of you not familiar with this, the ritual of smudging can be defined as "spiritual house cleaning." In theory, the smoke attaches itself to negative energy and as the smoke clears it takes the negative energy with it, releasing it into another space where it will be regenerated into positive energy.  Let's hope it works!  I think Brad is a little skeptical, but like in so many other ways, he is humoring me.   At the rate I am going, I will be happy if I just don't burn the house down!

There have been bright spots, don't get me wrong. Otherwise, I think I would have given up on life altogether!  We went to a great beer and chocolate tasting the other night, went to our first concert at the Orpheum, had some great meals.  I got some new fencing put up that looks amazing and we took a fast trip to DC where we were lucky enough to attend a dinner prepared by 5 chefs from the All Stars of America's Next Top Chef - Brad knows all of the right people and I just reap the rewards.

So I am telling myself that as long as the house doesn't explode or burn down and my marriage survives that it's all good.   It's a challenge some days, but you just have to keep your chin up and keep looking to the horizon.   There must be a "greater plan" but this is not exactly what I had in mind when I thought of coming home!

So I will try to write more often - though I have no idea if anyone at all is reading this!   There are so many things that happen that I am sure I have left out many of them......  like my many adventures of working with the home warranty company and how somehow George has worms!  But I will save those stories for another day!   It's always good to keep the crowd wanting more!  

Some days I laugh, some days I cry.  But each day I get up and guess some days that's enough.  Here's to the summer of 2011.  I am hoping one day I will look back on it and laugh at all of them!    I promise I will try to post some pictures this weekend!!

"American Home Shield ....... please hold!"

Today is what seems like day bazillion of 100 degree heat!  Brad and I walked the dogs at about 6:45 in the morning and honestly we didn't go too far before all of us were ready to get home.  This heat and humidity just totally zaps all of your energy!   I am honestly not sure how people who work outdoors can do it.

And speaking of outdoor workers, it was day two of my tree trimmers.  I had already scheduled them to remove some dead wood from some of my many trees, when lo and behold, the previous owner forwards me a letter they had received from the city.  Turns out our southwest corner trees were determined to be a traffic hazard and they need to be massively pruned so there could be a line of sight.  So instead of starting with the ones I wanted to that will make my yard look better, they had to start back there, in the corner I never even see!   Good times.  That being said, they did some good work today and still have about a half days worth of work or so left.

I took lunch in to Brad's office and met his co-workers today too.  All of them seemed very nice and I know they love having Brad there.  The Med Students haven't started up yet so it was pretty quiet, but at least that will give him some time to acclimate to the new job before they arrive.  It was fun to help him hang pictures in his office too!

Seems like most of the rest of the day was spent on the phone .... talking to the moving company about some claims we need to make on some damaged goods, three calls to the home warranty company with the average time waiting before I got to speak to someone being about 25 minutes, and even had to clear up an old medical insurance problem from a bill from Salt Lake City!  Not much time left to do much else today besides pack.

Brad and I have a quick little getaway planned, and while it will be busy and hectic, it will be much appreciated to get away from the "job site" for a few days.  We fly to Washington DC tomorrow morning and will return on Friday, so as you can see it is a short trip.   It should be pretty fun though!   Brad is part of a group that is working with various agencies, including the US government, to try to standardize critical care.  He goes 2-3 times a year for meetings.  Well, the consulting firm they work with is having their 10th Anniversary and they invited a handful of people to a dinner on Thursday night and the cooking will be done by 4 chefs from America's Next Top Chef!  I must confess that I don't regularly watch the show, so I don't know much about our 4 celebrity chefs, but still know the meal will be great!   When we got the invitation in the mail it came complete with an America's Next Top Chef cookbook too!    Figured it was worth a plane ride to get to experience this!!   Time to dust off a dress and shave the legs!   Momma's dressing up!!!   I am not even going to worry about what I eat that night.  I just hope I don't need a seat belt extender on the flight home!

So my guy Adam will be here with the dogs.  He's going to demo the old non-functional in-ground hot tub and do some electrical troubleshooting for me.  It's too hot to give him too many outside tasks!

Time to hit the hay!   Not sure if I will blog again until I get back from DC but I promise I will try to take some pictures of the food before I devour it and post them!   I know, I know ...... I keep saying I am going to post all kinds of pictures and I haven't!   I'll try!

  

... too much of everythng....

I can't believe it has been so long since I last posted!  My apologies - though it's not as if any of you were calling me and begging me to write!   Ha ha!  The problem with so long in between postings is that I have no idea where to start.....

My oldest sister, Wren, made a comment that this house would humble me and she is correct.  Daily.   If I am totally honest, there are days lately where I am rather overwhelmed by it all and I am pretty sure  Brad is too.  You just feel like you have to ride out the storm and hope for calmer seas on the other side.

It seems like every project I start leads to two more.  Some of the thrills of the house can also become the annoyances.  Like sprinkler repair -  INSIDE THE HOUSE!    I have mentioned the atriums before in this blog but now I can say that I have done sprinkler repairs in one!  We kept noticing moisture in one spot and it seemed like the mud never dried up, so it was time to dig a little.   Nothing major and easily fixable, but it seems the stones that are the walking path through it laid right on the line, so it was time to come up with an alternate plan.   So of course the logical thing to do is build a little Trex walkway - INSIDE THE HOUSE!   Must admit that doing these things as interior projects were a first for me!  But it's done and looks great and I am glad for the improvement - even changed out the sprinkler heads for a drip system which will be much nicer.   Trimmed things up and pulled all of the vines off the wall, so it's looking pretty good!

On to the other atrium....  years and years worth of vine growth had to go.  Turns out there is a beautiful stone wall behind about a two feet deep wall of vines!   Or at least there were vines!  No more.  So much dust and dead leaves that I had to wear a mask and goggles.  It looks so much better!  Turns out there is no watering system in there but I can still water manually and can keep live plants to a minimum perhaps.  Can you say zen garden?!

Other adventures have included time spent in the attic.   Which is of course what any sensible person does when you are having a record setting heat wave of over 100 degrees for days on end, right?!  In my defense, I have gone up there only first thing in the mornings.  The task that took me up there in the first place was that one of the attic fans was not working so I wanted to look at it and see if I could see anything.  Well, turns out that attic fans don't work too well when there is a bird lodged in the blades!   Ugh!  I won't go into too much detail here or post the picture I took to prove to Brad what I found, but suffice it to say that he had been there a while and as badly as I wanted to leave him there and make Brad get him, I put on my big girl panties and did it myself.   Turns out that was not why it wasn't working though.  Hmmm   So next task was to put on my electrician panties and figure out where it was located on the circuit breaker so I could turn it off and fix a loose wire I noticed.  (By the way, a circuit breaker finder is a wonderful tool if anyone is interested!).  Did that.  Still didn't work.  I will be calling someone.

So once I got up in the attic, it seemed as if it was not well lit - only one light bulb that I could see.   Time to don the headlamp I used for night hiking in Utah - turns out it works great for home improvement too!  Once I could see better to get around, it turns out that there are four light fixtures but the other three all had burned out light bulbs!   What was it with these people?!?!   Once lit, turns out that they also thought of the attic as a giant wastebasket.  Old light bulbs?  Just toss them aside!  Car top carrier you aren't using?  Throw it up there!  An old TV mount?   Perfect spot!     I probably picked up at least 10 old light bulbs laying on top of the insulation, yards and yards of old cables that had been cut and left up there, a pair of crutches, the bag with crusty old dead bird and an assortment of other goodies.  AND I could only get to half of the attic!  The most scary part is all of the cables and wires that are just laying across the area and aren't protected.  That will be a project for the Fall when the weather cools!

When we got the home inspection report it said that this was a "uniquely built house".   Man were they right!  No place is that more evident than the attic!   There are elevation changes and one spot where you have to step down about two and a half feet.  Unable to see where the support joists were, guess who stepped down onto a piece of drywall that is the ceiling of the atrium?!  Yup, me.    Got to do a little ceiling drywall repair after that.    Then about the spot where there is only a narrow slit that I may or may not be able to squeeze through, I realized that there is nice cool air on the other side.  That is NOT good!  Means that there is an opening in the duct somewhere up there and I am cooling the attic!   So next week, the plan is to come through the ceiling of the mechanical room or laundry room to get access to that area and see if I can find it!  The fun never stops!!!   But I have to do it - we got our electrical bill and with temperatures over 100 for days on end and no relief in sight, I can't continue to air condition the attic and get another jaw dropping bill!

So there are days that I think Brad and I sit back and wonder what on earth we have done when we bought this house!  I guess it's like falling in love with the bad boys in high school - you know it's not good for you but you just have to have it!    I am hoping that eventually this bad boy of a house will reform itself.  I know any move takes time, but it just feels like this one has just been the perfect storm of so many things going wrong, needing attention and the oppressive heat outside has not helped at all.   Perhaps it's time to refresh myself on that meditation class I took!

The good news is that the move back to Kansas still feels like a good choice.  It has been fun to see family and friends more often and the people we have met here have been wonderful.  Brad has started to work and the people he works with are all great.  We've already been to dinner with the Dean and his wife, went to an event with several people from his office, had dinner with the in-laws and we have tickets to a concert Saturday with another co-worker.   On Saturday two friends of mine from JUNIOR HIGH came over!  One has a daughter who just graduated from college and will be teaching at a Wichita area high school and the other was about a half hour away at a family gathering, so we coordinated it and they all came here.  One friend brought two of her daughters and the other brought her husband, son and daughter so we had a great time catching up and then went out to eat dinner.  I love the fact that I can do things like that now!

I have decided that today is picture hanging day.   Maybe it will help to feel a little more settled and "homey" and less like I am living in a job site!   I am sure there are a million other things that I have done in the last two weeks and if I can think of any other good stories I will let you know.  For now, it's time to find the hammer and some nails and get to work!

A Miracle and a Menace!

George can swim!!   Who knew?!

It's been a busy few days filled with family, fun, fireworks, food and of course, moving related things.  The last one was not as much fun as the first four, but what do you do.

Mom and I got to Wichita about noon on Friday, followed by Jeff and his friend Peter later that afternoon.  Let the games begin!  All seem to approve of the new digs - or as Jeff calls it: "the compound"!   Within an hour or so of Jeff getting here, they decided it was time to swim.  So of course the three dogs went out with them.  One dog in the pool ..... two dogs in the pool .... one dog running along the sides looking longingly at the water.  I went away for a few minutes and was beckoned to the door by Brad.  Lo and behold, George is on the top step with Jeff!  Cool!!!   A few minutes later, George is a few feet out into the pool and not a bit panicked!  I go away and come back a few minutes later and George is out in the middle of the pool, apparently having the time of his life!!   I step outside to ask Jeff what he did.  Duh - treats!   George will do ANYTHING for treats!!   He had a great time for the next hour and by the time all was said and done, he was jumping off the sides like the other two!  According to Jeff, he just didn't realize he had to use his back legs too and once he discovered that, it was cake.  Never said he was the sharpest tool in the shed but he is loveable!!   Photos to follow!

So we have no created a monster!  Like Madison, he thinks he can get in whenever he wants!  He swims like a maniac and if you throw a stick or a toy, he will will literally jump ON you to try to get it first!   (Just ask Madison!)   Hence today's title - it's a miracle and a menace!   Other than the dog hair, I am actually glad.  In this heat, it really helps him to cool off.

It was a great weekend.  Jeff and his friend Peter were wonderful company and did so many things to help out around the house - got on the roof and cleaned out the gutters, trimmed branches hanging on the roof, helped fell a leaning pine tree and proceed to cut it up with the chain saw  (you should have seen the smile on Peter's face as he had never used a chain saw before!), moved countless heavy pieces of furniture from point A to point B, put together the pool cleaner Brad had bought,  acted as fireworks ignitors, made Grandma breakfast the first day.  I am sure I am leaving out several things, but you get the drift!   They will be a tough act to follow for the next guests I have!  Don't worry - I don't expect work out of all of you!

Mom loved the house too and believe it or not, she loves to pull weeds, so I let her have her fun!  Lord knows there are TONS of them in this yard!   It was nice to have her here and even nicer to know that she is close enough that we can do this more often.  I think if she could, she would live in my greenhouse!

We had our celebration on the 3rd since Jeff and Peter both had to be back to work on the 5th, so the 4th was their travel day.  Had over my mother and father-in-law, two sisters in law, a brother in law, a nephew and his partner, another nephew and his wife and new little baby girl.   Lots of food,  fireworks and just a good time had by all I think.  It is so nice to be back here!   I didn't even care that the house was a wreck, boxes were everywhere and the dogs were all wet!   In some ways it's nice!  No expectations!!!   It was nice for them to all get to see the "before"!

So now, Jeff and Peter are back home, Mom is back in Pittsburg and I have a couple of weeks until the next event to try to settle in a bit.  I just may sleep for 24 hours or so - not sure when I remember ever being quite this tired, but it's all good.  Still feels right.   Good to be back in the Land of Oz!   Now I am off to bed!