Rite of Passage

It finally happened. Earlier this week we wondered what had happened to the spring in the middle of the toilet paper holder. It's fairly common that one of the kids knocks it down, but we couldn't find it anywhere in the bathroom. We eventually got a confession out of Noah that he flushed it.

We lived with some very poor flushing performance for a few days and then yesterday I finally had to do the deed. I took the toilet apart and was able to pry out the spring, some toilet paper, and assorted whatnot. I asked Lily if she wanted a Tootsie Roll, but didn't get the joke right away.

The good news is that everything is back together again. It just was not how I wanted to spend my Saturday morning. I spent the afternoon putting up a new mailbox as the wood on our old post had given way. It was time for a new mailbox as well, so we have a nice new plastic one. Lily wanted us to buy an $80 mailbox so we could have a slot and a lock, but I think I convinced her it was unnecessary. Either way, we weren't going to buy it.

After the Storm

Yesterday ended up being another very blustery day. It started off rainy with a balmy 60 degrees around 6:00 AM when I went out to jog. I ended up getting soaked by the waves of rain that came and went.

I had planned to take Lily and Noah to the grocery before Noah's morning nap, but it didn't work out. I can't remember the specifics, but we were delayed by Lily's theatrics. It was a good thing because otherwise the three of us would have been caught in a nasty rain. I ended up putting Noah down and taking Lily out by myself. It was still pretty balmy so I wore long sleeves and shorts.

I took the kids out before Noah's nap so Amanda could have a little peace. What started off as an errand to do a little shopping ended up being a long time at Petsmart watching doggie day camp. I can't imagine being one of the workers for this thing. It's held in a large, triangle-shaped room with a floor that is tiled and has two drains in it. I think there must have been at least 20 dogs by the time they were done emptying the kennels. Lily, Noah, and I enjoyed watching it behind the big glass wall.

As we left there we were belted with some chilly wind. Noah handled it better than Lily did. By the time I got home I realized that shorts were not going to cut it anymore. I took the kids out after dinner to get Amanda some dessert (note: I recommend the It's a Grind cafe near Five Guys on High House). By that time I needed jeans and a fleece. It was quite blustery and starting to feel cold. Think San Francisco in August near the bay on a particularly foggy day.

By this morning it was 32 degrees. Oh, and our house is down one more shutter too. It seems like this is the time to paint a new color if we want to go down that road. The wasp nests in the corners probably were a factor in that they pushed the shutter far enough from the house that the wind could get behind them. Looks like I'll be spending some more time on an extension ladder. I need the practice...

An Unwelcome Guest

Lily has a pumpkin bucket full of candy that we keep in the cupboard. It basically gets filled twice a year -- at Halloween and Easter. If she eats a good meal she gets a treat out of her bucket. She got her bucket out after lunch yesterday, but we were surprised by how some of the candy looked. There was a Butterfinger bar that looked like small bites were taken out of each side, all the chocolate sucked off, and then put back in the wrapper. There was a Kit Kat with the sides nibbled off. This seemed strange, so we confronted Lily and asked her if she was getting into the treats when she wasn't supposed to. She vehemently denied the accusations.

As we looked further, we saw some of the little candy bars had just a tiny bit taken off the corner of the wrapper and a little bit of the chocolate got eaten. That's when we realized that Amanda's worst fear was coming true. We had a mouse.

Amanda is pretty tough when it comes to household pests. She is merciless when killing a bug or a spider. We have a snake that lives under our garage and sometimes suns itself in the yard or on the bushes next to the steps. The snake doesn't bother her one bit. However, rodents are a chink in her armor. She made it clear that I had to address this problem yesterday.

I took Lily and Noah to the local Lowe's in search for the perfect mousetrap. They were all out of the standard wood-and-spring "snappy" mousetraps that you see in Tom & Jerry cartoons. I figured a rat trap would be way too big for what had to be a pretty tiny mouse, so I had to look at the fancier traps. I ended up with one package of these. Just before bed I put a little peanut butter in each one and set them in the cupboard.

First thing this morning I checked to see if I had caught my quarry. Sure enough, there was a mouse stuck in one of them. It looked like he tried to run past it and it caught him in the middle. I gave the trap a little tap with one of the nearby BBQ utensils to make sure the mouse was dead. He didn't move, so I got out my leather gloves and grabbed the trap. His beady black eyes were all bugged out. Given where the trap was, he must have tried to scurry away from it, but he couldn't break free.

Unfortunately, when I tried to drop him in the outdoor trash can I also dropped the trap into the can. I admit to being a bit squeamish when it comes to these things. I feel like I protected my household adequately, but I still would rather not have to handle the little critter.

More Signs of Life

This surprised me today. I was glad for it though!

Pray for Rain

I seeded the new lawn today. This process started when guilt and shame overtook me while my dad was visiting. My lawn had a preponderance of crabgrass. It also had a pretty nasty mixture of dirt, clumps of fescue, and some pretty healthy bermuda in the places not shaded by the pear tree. This was kind of a shame to my heritage considering that if my dad lived in Cary he would have the only green lawn on the street while everyone else's suffered the effects of our prolonged drought.

It felt good to work the land a little bit today. I put down some starter fertilizer, used the garden weasel to work it in, spread some seed, weaseled that in a little bit, then put down a little extra seed just for good measure. That last bit may have been a waste, but I just wanted to be sure...

I had planned to do this tomorrow, but we're supposed to get some rain today. I figured it would be good to get natural water on it rather than the sprinkler. Plus, it's been a crazy week at work, so I used about 90 minutes this morning to get this done. Amanda was walking with Noah during some of this time, so I had Lily outside with me.

As I was weaseling the yard Lily announced, "I'm getting tired watching you." Funny, but she wasn't the one with beads of sweat on the end of her nose.

I'll post more photos as we start to have actual seedlings.

Drying Out

Our water woes are behind us! Through the magic of the internet we found a great plumber. He ended up charging around $300 to come out and fix the problem. He had to chip away some concrete and run a new pipe through the wall. What I didn't expect was that he put a lot of the dirt back in the hole. That was an unexpected, although welcome, bonus.

It turns out that our main supply line is what is known as "blue poly", which is the stuff that had the class-action lawsuit against it. In other words, it's a matter of time before we end up having to replace the main supply line. I'm not in any rush to do that though.

All Wet

I wrote about this in my other blog, but I think that this bears mention in the one that everyone actually reads. For the past couple of weeks I've noticed a hissing sound near the water pipe in the basement. I turned off the main shut-off in the basement, but I could still hear the hissing. I turned off the water at the meter by the street and the hissing went away. I called our general contractor and spoke to some coworkers who are knowledgeable about home improvement. We all came to the same conclusion -- trouble.

I started digging yesterday afternoon. I hit paydirt in the form of some serious Carolina mud. I could see the general source of the water, but I couldn't pinpoint it. I figured that I would have to do more digging today, but it turns out that I only had to spend another half hour or so on it. I found the source of the leak. It is really spraying out from inside the wall. I had hoped that we just had some PVC coming from the water meter and that I could just repair the break, though I dreaded how much I'd have to dig out to accomplish that.

So the good news is that I don't have to dig anymore. The bad news is that we need a professional to fix this. I have someone coming out on Monday. In the meantime, we're sort of camping out. We keep the water turned off except when we really need it. For those who are wondering, we save $90 by waiting until Monday to get this fixed. Personally, I don't think running out to the street to turn the water on and off is that big of a deal. I suppose if it went on for more than a few days it would be though...