Bear with me - I'm sick (I've been for about a week now, unfortunately) so I'm feeling a bit negative right now. Just skip over if you don't need to hear my crap. ;P I promise to write a feel-good post sometime soon. Promise! :)
I haven't written anything in a while, so it's time for another rambling post. We've had a lot of ups and downs recently, in regards to things working and more often - not. Ironically, I did a wordle recently with my blog as the url input, and one of the biggest words that showed up was "bathroom". (Incidentally, if anyone knows how to get two words to stay together in a wordle - like "Jelly Belly" - I'd appreciate if you'd share. I made another wordle later, using quotes to see if I could get the phrase to show up together and was less than satisfied.)
The reason it's ironic about the bathroom, is because once again one of our biggest issues with our new place is the plumbing. I don't remember if I wrote about this yet in my plumbing/toilet post, but we have had several incidences (incidents?) of flooding in our big main bathroom. This isn't the typical, plugged-toilet-overflow issue; rather, this is a water-bubbling-up-out-of-the-holes-in-the-floor-where-the-toilet-is-bolted-down problem.
Wha? Yeah. I think the place we're living used to be all one house; and the piping would seem to prove that. Not to mention our water heater supplies the *entire* building; that's fun, trying to take a warm shower in between other people's laundry loads and such. I should've known or asked when we moved in, because our water heater was so luxuriously large; but it wasn't till I did try to take a shower and had nearly 5 minutes of warm (not hot) water before it ran out that I began to suspect. When I got out (freezing!) and discovered the upstairs people were doing their laundry (you can hear it quite clearly through our back door - which opens to the inside back of the building where their machines are located). Given that I hadn't used *any* hot water up to that point, it was the only explanation. Talk about a huge frustrating let-down. *sigh* I got it confirmed when the plumber was here finally fixing our flooding issue; more about that now.
So when we moved in, the bathtub was filthy. Ew. I cleaned it out, and gave the girls a bath (whereupon I found out the bathtub holds water like a sieve) and within a couple days, suddenly the bathroom floor was wet and the tub had something nasty in it. Later that day, I heard water running, went in, and found it literally bubbling up through the holes where the toilet was bolted down. Yikes! I couldn't shut it off; even with the water to the toilet off, it was still flowing up and out all over the floor. I could hear the water coming through the pipes in the ceiling and wall, and could see it coming in up through the drain in the tub too. Great!
So I told the guy who heads the maintenance for our rental-management company, and he said he'd have someone come look at it. Didn't happen. :/ No phone call, nothing. So, I waited. Cleaned up the bathroom, of course, and hoped it wouldn't happen again. Well - it happened again - several times. I finally called him one evening last week, after it happened several times in one day - and he promised he'd have someone come the next morning. Then, days go by, the weekend comes... nothing. I found out later, the plumber was vacationing in Cali with his family. That's totally cool - but to not hear anything at all - I was unhappy about that. I was almost panicking, to be honest. My girls' room is on the other side of the bathroom, and they have to walk through there to get out of their room. Not knowing the next time it might flood, and getting tired of cleaning it up, I didn't know what to do. Then I get a letter from a property management company, saying they were taking over management of our unit. Huh? I hadn't heard a word of this from our current landlord.
So with this change looming, and several issues still unresolved with regards to where we live, I figured I'd better fire off an email. Besides the bathroom, our shed/storage area leaks like... well - it just leaks. Apparently the whole structure is full of cracks (we *didn't* know this when we moved in) and the water pools like crazy in there (something else we didn't know. Lot of good storage will do us with all our stuff getting wet and possibly ruined - I just hope everything else in there doesn't get all moldy!) We were told they were going to do something about the leakage once it dried out - which it was for a good couple weeks-ish - as in, paint the roof to seal it somehow. The other thing is the pile of broken-up concrete, bricks, wood, and other crap in our front yard. They came and tore out the old sidewalk and put in an awesome new one - worked really hard on it - but they left all the rubble behind! Even a soda can that one of the workers drank out of - just crumpled on top. :/
Well, the response I got was that he'd forward my maintenance issues to the new company. Oh. Ok...
So, with me being sick the last few days (not just icky but lay-in-bed, don't-want-to-move kind of sick) I thought, well - at least I don't have to worry about anyone showing up to my house. I mean, I wanted the stuff taken care of, but at the moment I just wanted to sleep. Of course, with 5 kids, that's not really an option. But a girl can dream, right? ;)
So guess who shows up right before 5pm? Without calling or any forewarning? Apparently, he'd been working allllll day, and only found out right before that we were having this bathroom issue. I know it's not his fault. But geez - where is the communication here? It's apparently non-existent.
He took a look, but couldn't do anything because it was too late in the day. So he and his assistant came back yesterday and spent a good while trying to fix the problem. They had to take the toilet out, and use a snake - but it wasn't big enough, apparently. So they had to go get a bigger one. They snaked that thing all *through* the house. I could hear it working at the complete other end, in the pipes. They were finally able to shove whatever the blockage was out to the city pipes, but wow. I don't have a clue what it was, but it sure gave them trouble. I just hope it never happens again. :/ And they did a great job re-attaching the toilet. This time they sealed it down, and put covers on the bolts and everything. It looks a whole lot better. And we'll actually be able to use that bathroom again!
I don't know what's going to happen with the piles of crap in the front yard, or the wet storage shed, but at least we won't have a wet bathroom floor anymore...
And now, to counter all the negative in my post; I'll leave you with what I *do* like about the house; I think we should always end on a positive note. :) So... it's big enough for all of us. It's affordable. It has lots of windows; I love natural light. Our kitty loves the window sills too; and so do the hyacinths and tulips I bought right before Easter. :) It has two bathrooms (an absolute essential when you have this many people in the house ;) and they will now both work properly! It has lots of wall space for my pictures - when I finally get them unpacked and/or framed. I did buy a couple cute wooden wall plaques already - some distressed-looking veggie ones for the kitchen, and seashell ones for the small bathroom. I love seashells, sailboats, ocean glass, surfboards; all types of coastal stuff. And living in a land-locked state, I'll take any seashore-type imagery I can get. ;) Unfortunately, our seashell and surfboard bathroom rugs got ruined at our last place. :( But anyway...
And even though we have a small kitchen, with no diswasher or garbage disposal; it does have awesome light and a window looking out on the back yard. :)
Ok, my head is getting fuzzy again. I have to get out and get some baby supplies and lunch stuff, because - being at the end of the pay period, we're getting low on some things - so I need to stop now. I have other things I want to write about, but not now. I haven't even done any photography for several days; no taking pictures, no editing, no posting... and I've not commented on anyone's either. I'm so horrible. *sigh*
Oh - one last thing. It was snowing this morning. Snowing!!!
And Monday is my 7th wedding anniversary. I won't even get to spend it with my husband except a few hours in the evening, because he has to work (though I've asked him to see if he can get it off... but we'll see.) We were talking last night about taking a trip to my mom's over in WA - it should only take about 12.5 hours if we drive straight through - maybe 14.5 with feeding the baby a couple times (we'd drive overnight) - and I thought this weekend would be a great time to pack up and go - but we'll see about that too. *shrug*
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