My computer is acting up again. I can’t say it’s broken just yet but it sure is making life difficult. So now I’m back to using Waldo’s computer and not having my photo editing software and I have so many great pictures and things to share. Thankfully I am married to a hardcore geek who will be looking at my computer tomorrow evening and I’m betting that I will be back to using my own computer by the weekend.
Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging and that is what happened to me in the last couple of weeks. The main things are Lily (of course she’s my main distraction) and work, I try to get in as much work time as possible which usually amounts to 2 hours a day. Since Lily is my first priority I try to only work when she’s playing happily or napping and since she doesn’t really nap much I don’t get much time in, oh well. On top of these two important things I’ve had two other dramas or at least semi-drama stuff keeping me away. And that is what I’m here to tell you about tonight.
First the simple one. I turned my computer on one morning last week, I think it was Monday and while Waldo and I talked I started smelling something really weird. We determined it was my computer and so I turned it off and used Waldo’s all day. After work my Knight in shining geeky armor pulled my tower out of my desk and started inspecting it. We realized my power supply fan wasn’t running, turned it off and ordered a new one. It came in Thursday evening and pretty much the second he got off work Waldo went to work putting the new power supply in because he wanted his computer back. This whole power supply crap is what kept me from uploading Lily’s Monday picture.
The other drama that I’ve been dealing with is a whole lot stinkier and energy draining. Oh funny I just went and got a piece of angel food cake and when I got back reread that last sentence and realized how accidentally funny I am. The situation was energy draining but that was the only thing draining. You see the whole time we’ve lived in this rental the kitchen sink has drained really slowly. At first we used drain cleaner and it would fix the problem temporally. Then I bought one of those tiny plungers and that along with the drain cleaner would work and then all of the sudden not a darn thing worked. And just in case you are wondering this wasn’t a problem because we were putting food down the drain, we are very careful to not let stuff go down especially since we don’t have a garbage disposal and the drains have always been slow. So a month or two ago it started taking about an hour for the water to drain and then one day I was nursing Lily and the dish washer was running and I hear the very distinct sound of water hitting the floor. I checked on it and sure enough the sinks were full and water was running onto the floor. I swore a blue streak at Waldo on AIM, I was so mad.
The water hitting the floor started a very long annoying DIY streak at Casa Jinxyisms. Yes we are renters but didn’t want to call our landlord because they have been weird about repairing stuff in the past and just didn’t want to deal with it. My Dad suggested a shop vac so Lily and I went to Home Depot and bought one, it worked great to empty the water out of the sink but it did nothing for the clog. We bought a cheap pipe snake, it did nothing. My Mom said that you can rent stuff like a snake so I found a place in town and rented a pretty hefty one and can you take a wild guess at what happened? Not a darn thing, well Waldo did pull some white flakes out of the pipes. Oh and during the whole snaking fun Waldo also took a lot of pipes apart and really stinky water went all over the basement and him. I felt so bad for him. This DIY plumbing adventure took over a week and during it my cousin Melissa and my Dad kept telling me to call our landlord but we just didn’t want to. Oh and after Waldo got done with in the basement with the hefty snake he burst into the living room stating that he was going to the hardware store to get some really scary acid that is labeled for professional plumbers. When he got home he poured it down the drain and I went and got in the shower, when I got out I inquired about it’s effectiveness and was totally shocked when he told me that the water isn’t draining at all. I mean this stuff is sold with a protective plastic bag around it and when you pour it down the drain you have to put a pot over the drain in case water volcanos out of the drain or something like that.
At this point I gave in and called our landlord the next day. Mr. Landlord came over the next evening and had a bottle under his arm of the same scary acid and when I told him we already tried it he was shocked. I told him everything we had done and he left because he knew he didn’t have what he needed and wasn’t going to be able to come back till after the weekend (it was Friday by then). We weren’t happy with the fact that he wasn’t coming back till Monday or Tuesday but we had called the real plumber (yes that’s right we were going to pay out of pocket to have a plumber come, that was where I drew the line) and knew that Monday afternoon was the soonest we could get a appointment. So we ate more fast food and waited. Tuesday afternoon Mr. Landlord showed back up and worked and toiled in the basement cutting pipes apart and making the whole house stink. In the end he had to replace about 12 feet of pipe because the guy he had hired to paint the house before we moved in had cleaned his paint brushes in the kitchen sink night after night and the pipes were full of dried white paint. Waldo looked at one of the pipes and was amazed that we ever had water drain at all, he said there was about this (hold your index finger and thumb very close together) much room under the paint for drainage.
After Mr. Landlord left I cooked my little heart out I was so happy to have a usable kitchen again.
The moral of the story is DIY plumbing sucks.
We went to our office Christmas party on Friday night and had a great time. It was at a nice local restaurant and just about everyone we work with was there including Lily. 
Who was just an angel, she only got upset once and we nursed for a few minutes but she really just wanted to look around at everyone and check everything out.
The only other woman that works for our company ended up with my name for the gift exchange and let me tell you I’m so happy that she did. She’s a scrapbooker and she took all the letters that I write Lily and the weekly pictures I put on my blog and made it into a beautiful scrapbook. I couldn’t look at it at the party because I didn’t want to cry and smear my makeup. Heck I still can’t hardly look at it without crying but I guess at home that’s acceptable. I told everyone at the party that I didn’t care what they got I got the best gift and I was showing it off to everyone.
Thank you Renda, I will cherish it forever!
After the crappy way that yesterday started I have been thinking a lot about things that make me happy. In no particular order…
Thinking about all this wonderful stuff really helped turn the day around.
Our Halloween got started with a bang or a bell really, the door bell. The very nice police officer had to ring our door bell probably 20 times before he woke us up at about 3 am today. He wanted to let us know that a not so nice drunk guy had plowed into Waldo’s truck which was minding its own business parked safely in front of our house. He also wanted me to know that Waldo’s truck then crunched my Honda’s rear end. This is how all great days start right?
I got dressed and went outside with the cops while Waldo cuddled Lily and kept her calm. She wasn’t thrilled to be awake so early, I will have to remind her of this next time she decides to play in the middle of the night.
I took pictures outside in the dark rainy street and was so glad I did. Both because now I can blog about it and show you all and because I had no idea how bad it really was till I edited these pictures this morning.
By the time I got outside the drunk guy was either already taken away or in the back of a squad car because I never saw him and I don’t recognize the car as one from my neighborhood so I asked the cop if he lived around here and he said he didn’t know. He must have been going pretty fast because Waldo’s truck ended up with the front right tire on the curb and my car was like 5 feet further forward then where I parked it.
This morning we found out this wonderful human being is uninsured. We thankfully have full-coverage insurance because it’s a good thing they are financed. Waldo is on his way to pick up a rental car. We’ll find out Monday or Tuesday if they are repairable. Man I really hate this guy.
Happy Halloween everyone!!
A couple of years ago we took my cat Jingle to the vet because she was vomiting (we call it haurking) more often then normal. I have to put it that way because this cat has haurked all her life and she always does it in threes. The first one is the biggest, then she’ll walk around to a clean spot on the floor and do it again and then just for fun she finds another clean spot and dribbles a little more. Sometimes there’s something to clean up at all three spots other times there’s nothing but foam that soaks into the carpet before I can get a paper towel. Anyway she was doing this sometimes a couple or more times a day so we took her to the vet. He couldn’t find anything wrong with her but gave her a worm pill just in case she has some kind of lovely parasite and prescribed this super expensive cat food.
We have three cats that have free access to food, so all three cats had to start eating this super expensive cat food. None of them liked it but they had no choice, we don’t feed them people food so it was eat the food in the bowl or don’t eat. By the way they are indoor cats, so they don’t have the option of fending for themselves in the wild.
After a couple of days Jingle was better, just haurking once or three times a week which was pretty normal. We were afraid to switch from the super expensive cat food in case that was the key for Jingle besides we knew from past experience that you shouldn’t just switch a cats food, you should slowly incorporate the new food in with the old food.
Then one day we got home and there was a bread bag in the floor of the living room with bits of bread everywhere. It looks like Hansel and Gretel had been by. Since we weren’t there to know who or why no cats got in trouble. Things like this started happening more often. Then one day I was home and heard a noise from the kitchen caught Waldo’s cat Kitty eating bread or tortillias. So we started putting all that stuff in the fridge (because they could open the cupboards). And then a month or so later we noticed Kitty was very lethargic and getting skinny.
To the vet Kitty went and she stayed there for a couple of days because she was almost dead and had jaundice. They weren’t sure what the problem was. Apparently when a cat gets unhappy and doesn’t eat for a couple of days their livers and kidneys start to shut down and they well… they die. Something like $900 later and a feeding tube for two weeks Kitty is fine.
All of this is to say that we are very careful about what we feed them now. Since they all hated that super expensive cat food we switched over to a less expensive but still pricey natural cat food that everyone seemed to enjoy. Well no one has died from it yet so I think we’re good. But I don’t feel they ever loved it like they loved the food they had before all this vet stuff started.
So a couple of days ago Waldo and I decided that we couldn’t keep spending so much money on cat food and we needed to switch back to Purina. I went to the pet store and bought another bag of the pricey natural stuff and at Target we bought some Purina. When I got home I pulled the super huge bowl out and dumped both kinds of food in and started mixing it. Kitty though she had surely died and went to heaven.
I missed the picture of her taking a bite before I shooed her away so I could put the food away.
I know for a lot of us a better question would be “are your baby’s beauty products safe?” This is a great tool for those of us that are concerned about what we put on our bodies. The Skin Deep Safe cosmetics database has a toxic rating for just about every beauty product out there. They range from 0-10 with 10 being really toxic. It has products broke down into baby care, eye care, nail care, etc and then broken down further into subcategories.
I have only used this for baby items and was shocked and not so shocked by what I found so far. The Aveeno baby soap and shampoo that I have been using on Lily was rated a 3, I guess that’s not really so bad but I want better. I was not really surprised to find that just about all Johnson and Johnson products were over a 3 and most much higher. I didn’t see anything lower then a 3 but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.
I want to know why it is that products that are made specifically for our babies are harsh and toxic when they are labeled safe and gentle?
The nurse that facilitates my breastfeeding/mom support group gave us the web address last week and I wanted to share with you all. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.
It’s official, I’m a stay ay home Mom. I emailed my letter of resignation in on Tuesday. I still have to turn in my keys and pick up the rest of my crap which I’ll probably do next week. I am so happy. Money is going to be a little tight but it shouldn’t be too bad. It will all be worth it though. I can’t imagine leaving Lily with someone else all day. It might be different if we had some family to take care of her, but we don’t.
Sweet girl
Originally posted: 5/7/08
Darn lungs
Last year I had walking pneumonia and my lungs have never been the same. They feel tight quicker then they ever have in the past, I’m more prone to cough at the smallest tickle and anytime I even start to think that I might be getting sick I feel it in my chest first.
Last week I woke up with a sore throat and my lungs felt heavy. I was determined not to get sick before my long awaited vacation/honeymoon so I used the power of positive thinking to keep myself well. Unfortunately stress weakens the power that positive thinking holds and I got a chest cold over the weekend. It is now Wednesday and I feel like my head is going to pop when I cough, but I hold out hope that just being on vacation will work wonders on me. I really really hope so.
Originally posted: 5/6/08
Getting closer
We are getting so close to vacation and our list is getting longer. But we are marking stuff off of it all the time. I better get back to burning CDs. You need a lot of verity for a long road trip.
