Feeling Icky

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*

Toilets Hate Me

Kind of an odd title, I know. I thought about getting a photo of one to illustrate this post, but first I thought that would be kind of crude; and then the thought of what might come up in my search for a cc-licensed photo to post with this scared me. So, no pic. Just a bunch of words that hopefully make sense in my pre-coffee ramblings.

I'm not kidding though; I think they have it out for me. Since moving out and getting married, I've only lived in one place that had a properly-functioning toilet. We lived there for about a year-ish; and it had these industrial-type toilets with a push-button rather than a lever - that could've sucked a small child down into its vortex, it was so powerful. It was odd too, the shape of the seat and bowl. All elongated and narrow. Really weird. But I digress.

I honestly don't know what it is. We can't seem to find a place that doesn't have something wrong with its piping. The very first place I lived after I moved out and got married was this pathetic apartment in Silverdale, WA. First of all, it wasn't the apartment we were supposed to have. The one we were going to rent, the tenant changed her mind and decided not to move out. So we got a different one, sight-unseen (as many Military wives will attest, most places you end up moving into are sight-unseen. And that is reeeealllllly unfortunate, given the condition of some of the places you end up. I can regale you with stories of the places we lived growing up, when my dad was in the Navy... especially Virginia. *shudder*) Turns out this place was infested with black mold. The entire bathroom wall was covered in it. In fact by the time we moved out several months later, the mold had come through the wall to the bedroom that was on the other side. I truly believe I'm lucky to have survived living there... though I didn't know why, my asthma was so horrendous that I literally was gasping for breath almost all the time. I had to suck on my inhaler after climbing up the flight of stairs to the main level where our car was parked, just to keep from passing out. I was also pregnant at the time, and my blood pressure was sky-high (I normally have very low blood pressure - think 90 over 55) and I was always exhausted. My poor son who was only 3 1/2 also had to deal with it. I am so glad we didn't live there any longer than we did. You wouldn't believe how many of our possessions had mold on them after living there.

But I've completely gone off on a tangent. Heh. :) The toilet. Yes, the toilet. (Sorry, my kids are watching "Flushed Away" for the first time, and it's just kind of ironic; here I am getting distracted again.) Again, as many Military wives will attest, everything goes ka-boom when husband leaves. The first day he left with the sub for a week and a half for some exercises, my poor child went to flush and *WHOOOSH* the toilet overflowed. 'Kay, not just a little bit. It *flooded* the bathroom. I had never had a toilet overflow before, and I panicked. My brain finally kicked in and I shut off the water, but not before there was at least an inch of standing water in the bathroom. (I'm sure that helped the mold problem, right?) I soaked it up with a bunch of towels, which I then put in the bathtub, and decided to go to my mom's house. And of course, on the way, got pulled over by a cop with an attitude for having a headlight out. Just what I needed, right? :)

The next place we lived had the super-suction toilets, so I didn't have to deal with any plumbing problems at all. No, just having some unknown person looking in my window at night when I was home all alone with my new baby and my son. That was exciting. Thankfully, I had good friends for neighbors who were very aware (they were the ones who noticed the guy looking in), and the husband came over and gave me some dowels to put in the window frames. Talk about a completely freaky feeling. Our back window looked into the woods after about 10 yards of grass, so it's not like someone couldn't just hide out there and sneak up whenever he wanted. I was on edge for pretty much the rest of the time we lived there. In fact one day, it was all bright and sunny, and I was walking past my window and noticed someone out of the corner of my eye. I gasped and froze, and then realized it was just a landscaper. But it nearly gave me a heart attack.

After we moved from there, we lived in another place on base... and at the moment I can't think of a whole lot of problems with the plumbing. No, wait. The kids' bathroom. We had 3 bathrooms in that place (3!!! I think my entire growing-up life we never had more than one) and for some reason, the kids' toilet never seemed to work right. It never overflowed, but it would never flush right either. I spent more time plunging that thing... It got to where the kids just weren't allowed to use it. Period.

Fast-forward to a whole bunch of stuff happening to where we got transferred across the Sound to the Everett area (north of Seattle). I don't know what the deal was at Carroll's Creek Landing... but lemme tell you, they must think that because they have a "captive" population, they don't have to keep the place up to standard. They're part of the public-private venture the Navy decided to undertake in regards to housing, and IMO it's failed miserably. Anyway - I don't think one toilet worked right in that house. As soon as we'd get one working again, another would stop. We couldn't use the bathtub in the kids' upstairs bathroom either. Whomever lived there before had somehow allowed so much water to accumulate on the floor that it had soaked in to the linoleum and caused it to start peeling up around the edges. When we first moved in, I said something about water damage on the ceiling of the living room. We weren't able to be there when the maintenance people showed up (I had to finish cleaning the other place we were moving out of) so I couldn't point it out and demand something be done about it. When we came back, the maintenance sheet said it was a "bad patch job" and had something to do with a sliding door. (In the middle of the living room?!?) I never pursued it, but I wish I had. Because all it took was one time for my son to splash enough water out of the tub by accident to cause water to suddenly start dripping from the ceiling. You know in the Secret of Nimh where the animal's house is being submerged in mud, and it's starting to drip in? (At least that's how I remember the scene... something that has given me a life-long morbid phobia of mudslides and being buried alive) Well, it was reminiscent of that, though on a much smaller scale. I know it sounds almost humorous to compare the two, but you didn't see my oldest daughter's reaction. She was *freaking* out. She thought the house was going to be flooded and the ceiling was going to cave in. Finally, the water damage on the ceiling made sense. When I investigated further, I found the entire edge of the floor in the bathroom was actually sunken, and there was a crack running up the wall in the hallway that matched up with the edge of the bathroom wall. Just so happened, that this part of the floor was right above the living room, and the cracked wall looked over our stairwell.

Though I again said something to the management, they didn't do anything about it, and we even got charged after we moved out to replace the damaged linoleum. I sincerely hope whomever is living there now doesn't get a bathtub in their living room one day.

Have you figured out yet I have a hard time sticking to one subject? ;) Ok back to the glorious main subject. ;P Would you care to guess how many times the toilet (the single only toilet in our one bathroom we have now) here has overflowed? Just the other night, when the idea to rant about it in my blog first hit me, I spent a good half-hour trying to fix the stupid thing. We don't know where our nice heavy-duty plunger (that we got so much use out of at our last place) is at the mo., so we've had to use the old fashioned, wooden-handled plunger the last residents so generously left behind. I can tell you, by the time I got that stupid thing working again, my arms were sore and my hands were nearly raw.

Besides a big kitchen, a dishwasher, and lots of windows... if we ever buy a house, my major prerequisite is that it have working toilets.