So, Back in April...Part the Second

Do y'all remember a little over a year ago when THIS happened? Well, back in April, it happened again.  Wow. Almost one year to the day. Anyhoo.

 

Tuesday, April 23rd, was a not-so-great day.  Josh was off, traipsing across the globe, and I was having a bit of a rough day with the boys.  I lost my cool more than once, if I remember correctly. So, here we are, I finally get the boys in bed, I have about 10 minutes before my Bible study group shows up to get the house set up and ready, when my toilet overflows.  Oh yeah. It just kept coming out too so I had to stand on the toilet seat and turn the water to the toilet off, just to get it to stop so I could freak out clean up properly before the ladies started coming in.

 

I didn't really have time for that then, so I threw down a whole bunch of towels, turned on the fan (in my mind that helped somehow), then closed the door and put up a sign saying that that bathroom was out of commission for a bit. The ladies came, we got it all set up and we started study.

 

But then...I heard it.  I heard what sounded like a stream of water flowing coming from somewhere inside the house! Having a bad feeling about what was going on I rushed downstairs (excuse me for as second ladies) and saw water, water, everywhere.

 

Much like last time there were pouches of toilet water forming behind the paint on the wall (which is just plain gross, if you ask me), and, AND unlike last time, there was a pretty steady stream pouring out from from the center of the ceiling. I put a bucket under the stream and went back upstairs and finished leading Bible study.

As soon as the ladies left I called housing. They said they'd send someone right out (it's about 9pm now). While I waited for housing to show up I got to cleaning up the bathroom floor - wringing out the towels and "mopping" a little bit.  While I cleaned the floors I called Ryan. After I called Ryan I called Linda. I needed to vent I guess. Actually, I needed some prayer.  While I was talking to Linda, Matt (Ryan's husband) showed up with more towels. He then came up and turned the water back on and plunged the toilet for me and pretty much got it working again.  Isn't he the sweetest? Now it's like 9:30.

 

Having done all I could do at this point, I sat and waited until a little before 10, when one of the guys from housing showed up. He took a look at the toilet, plunged it again, shoved huge wads of toilet paper down it, and declared it "perfectly fine". Then he and I went downstairs and he was all, "Oh wow.  This isn't good." No, no it isn't. Now, I'm pretty much convinced that there is something like a crack or something in one of the pipes in the wall, because there was A LOT of water in our ground floor.  He said it was just coming down from the bathroom above, but 1) the water from the bathroom stayed in the bathroom and I know this because I had to clean it all up, and 2) the water coming from the center of the ceiling doesn't line up with the bathroom at all. It's probably a good 3 feet outside of where the bathroom lines up. But what do I know? So the housing guy spent the next half hour or so cutting away some of the wet stuff to make sure there weren't any more leaks.

 

The next day, Wednesday, he came back and made all of the holes bigger so that they could dry out over the weekend.

 

He told me to call Monday or Tuesday to make an appointment for them to come back and start the spackling process (2 or 3 coats of spackle, each a few days apart, then a few days later sanding and painting to finish).  So I called Monday the 29th and got an appointment for Wednesday, May 1st - two days away. which they never showed up to. Nor did they call to say they weren't coming. Yup. After running into the "boss man" on Thursday and ratting them out, one of the ladies from the housing office called to apologize, explaining that she had put our work order in for the wrong day and would Friday work since that's when they were planning on coming anyway.  Fine. May 3rd, the housing guy came back and did the first round of spackling.  This was also his last day working for housing, which meant from here on out a different guy would be taking care of this situation.

So I call again on Monday to set up the next round of spackling, get an appointment for Thursday, May 9th, which, once again, they didn't show up to and didn't call to say they weren't showing up. Now, I'm getting angry. I called the office and rather politely let them know they were supposed to be there that day and no one showed up or called. A few hours later the other lady from the housing office came to my house to apologize in person and explained how she was the one who messed up and didn't put it in their books and blah, blah, blah, let me take you out to lunch to make it up to you, blah, blah, blah and would tomorrow work? I did not take her up on her offer of going out to lunch, but to make her feel a little better I accepted her offer to bring us some pizza for lunch the next day.

 

Friday, May 10th, she showed up with pizza, but the guy did not show up because he had an emergency repair.  At least this time he called and explained and rescheduled for the following week. And that was fine - I totally understand about emergency repairs. It was hot that week and someone else's airconditioning takes precedence over my ceiling.

 

Eventually he made it back for the second round of spackling, and probably about a solid month after this all started, my laundry room ceiling was all patched up and painted.

 

Awesome. (You might have to squint a little to see the slap dash paint job - in the wrong color.)

There's Not Enough O's in Groooooooss

Yesterday morning our main floor toiler overflowed for probably the 6th time in the last 3 or so months. Water went everywhere, Josh just happened to come home for a minute as it happened, so he plunged the toilet and told me to call housing, which I did. They sent someone out right away. He flushed the toilet a few times and it was working perfectly. "Your husband did a great job plunging" he said. Then he snaked the toilet anyway while he was there, and said if it happens again to call again and next time they'll take the toilet off and snake it the other way. Yay.

A wee bit later I heard what sounded like the cat peeing in his litter box, only a little bit weird. And loud because I can't usually hear him peeing when I'm upstairs. Thinking that maybe I should check on him, but not really wanting to get off the couch (I was tired from cleaning my bathroom floor, mopping up all of that gross water), I ignored him. A few minutes later though I went downstairs to put my towels into the dryer. And that's when I saw this:

A puddle of pee ON MY WASHING MACHINE! Of course, I immediately blamed the cat because how else would a pubble of pee wind up ON MY WASHING MACHINE! Sigh. I ran back upstairs for my camer (well, my phone) and for some cleaning supplies. When I got back down I stood there for a moment in disbelief. I mean really, WHY would he do that, it didn't make any sense. His litter box is literally 3 feet away from the washing machine and on the floor. Why would Peavey walk past his box, jump onto the washing machine and then pee? Figuring he wouldn't, and then remembering that our toilet overflowed and flooded our bathroom, I wondered if maybe it leaked through the ceiling?

>I looked up, directly over the washing machine, but the ceiling was perfectly dry. My eyes wandered over the rest of the ceiling to where I saw this:

That is the paint bulging out after being filled with gross toilet water. My guess now is that when the toilet overflowed and filled the bathroom with its nasty water, the water seeped through the floor into the ceiling of the laundry room, where it collected behind the paint, forming this bulge. It then must have sprung a leak and squirted out of the paint bulge onto my washing machine. I know, I know, WHAT?!

Peavey, I owe you an apology. I'm terribly sorry, and will put my "Jump to Conclusions" mat out with the trash this week. And maybe give you a belly rub to make up for blaming you for something you didn't do. But we'll see about that, I am still pretty annoyed with you for crying all night the other night, keeping me awake for WAY too long.

So, after cleaning my machine and what's it, I called housing (again) and got their answering service. As I was trying to explain my situation the guy on the phone I saw one of the housing men outside talking to a neighbor. Praise God! I quickly ran downstairs and as he was about to get into his van I said, "Could you come look at something for me REAL quick please?" He did and confirmed that it must have been from when the toilet overflowed. He then cut away the buldge and all the surrounding area:

Now I have to let this dry over the weekend, and then call housing once more to have them come back to repaint and fix up that portion of my wall/ceiling. Good times y'all. Good. times.

Not So Graceful Actually

For those of you who didn't know, my middle name is Anne. The name Anne, means "grace". Grace, however, is something, physically, that I lack. It's part of the reason I don't like to dance. It's the main reason I constantly walk into things and bang various body parts on various items (like the top of my head on the refridgerator "ceiling" this morning). Let's just say it, I'm clumsy. So, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I fell down the stairs last week. (In fact, I'm a little surprised it took me until last week to fall down the stairs here.)

So last Wednesday, Josh left in the morning for Tuscon. So I got up, got the boys up and breakfasted (yeah, I'm making it a verb now), and brought them back upstairs to get dressed. Zeke does fine on his own, so he was no problem. As I was picking out clothes for Finn, Deacon informed me he had to go to the bathroom. I told him to go, and continued getting Finn ready for the day. As I took off his pajama pants I saw that he had pooped - for the second time that morning. I went to the bathroom to get a diaper and some wipes, and realized that Deacon was still in there. I opened the door and Deacon said, "Mom, I pooped."

Oh, did he ever poop. Apparently he pooped while standing in front of the toilet, so there was a bit on the floor and a bit running down both of his legs. Awesome. So I turned on the tub, washed him down, washed the floor and piled up all the poopy clothes and towels so I could wash them after we got Zeke on the bus. (I did take the time to tell Deacon he did a good job by NOT pooping in his underpants, but that next time he needs to poop IN the toilet.) By the time I got all this finished though, it was already time to get shoes on and get Zeke to the bus (apparently if you're late here they leave without you, even if they're early - ahhh!). But Finn was still poopy and pantsless. SO I sent Zeke and Deacon downstairs to put their sneakers on, and quickly changed Finn's diaper.

The evening before, Josh took Deacon school shopping for new jeans and sneakers. And of course, Deacon picked out the same sneakers Zeke has. It is very sweet and cute, but made for a bunch of yelling that first morning, "MOM! ARE THESE MY SNEAKERS?!" "MOM! IS THIS MINE OR DEACON'S?" Already stressed I picked up Finn and headed for the stairs, telling the boys to wait until I got down there and then we'd figure it out.

I still don't know how it happend. I was rushed, I was stressed, I was in boots I haven't worn in probably 2 years, Finn was wriggling, and I missed a step (I guess) and stumbled down the stairs in slo-mo. I know it happened in slo-mo because I had the where-with-all to clamp down on Finn and position myself so that if I acctually went down my body would absorb most of the blow. I also saw Deacon sitting at the bottom of the stairs, directly in my path, staring at me, completely ignoring my constant yelling of "MOVE DEACON!" "DEACON GET UP!" "MOOOVEE!!!"

Now, I never actually "fell" as in falling onto my butt or my back or my side. I did "fall" in that my feet kept slipping out from under me and I flew/slid down the majority of the stairs, stopping on the step right above the step Deacon was sitting on. This didn't help my stress level at all, by the way.

After I stopped falling, and sat down to try and stop myself from shaking I looked at Deacon and yelled, "God dammit Deacon! When I say move, get off your butt and MOVE!" (I owe Linda $5 for her "consequenses jar" now.) And no sooner do I finish yelling at Deacon and stand up then Zeke says, "Is this my shoe, Mom?" I screamed. AAAHHHHH!!!! Then he asked if I was hurt, and boy was I. My entire left side was SO hurt. My shoulder, wrist, thigh, ankle and 2nd toe were all so sore. At least everyone else was alright.

I then calmed myself, showed Zeke how to determine which shoes are his and which are Deacon's by their sizes (and it's never been an issue again). I got all of us to the bus without further incident, and on time. After Zeke got on the bus, the other 2 boys and I went to PWOC, came home, had lunch, and as I put Finn down for his nap (after changing his 3rd poopy diaper of the morning), Deacon did it again. As I walked into the bathroom to help him Deacon looked up at me and said, "Mom, I need another bath." After assessing the situation it was clear that this time he had tried to poop in the toilet as he had put the little seat in the toilet and there was poop on it, but I guess he just didn't make it. So, I cleaned him up, again, put him in a diaper, lest there be more poop, and gently collapsed onto the couch. And that was just the morning...

Too Gross Not To Share

I'll start by saying that I do not have any pictures to go with this story, so you can rest easy about that. I'll also say now that the story involves poop so if you want to avoid that topic then feel free to read the first half about Zeke, then skip the rest. Or skip the whole post, it's okay, you won't miss much.

So, yesterday afternoon Zeke decided he wanted to go outside to play again. When Deacon got up, he decided he didn't want to go out again. When Zeke found out that Deacon didn't want to go out he was shocked. You could see it in his face. His face was all, "What?! Why NOT?! There are rocks outside. And dirt! And sticks! And balls! And dirt! And rocks! And bubbles! And dirt! And trucks! And rocks!" But Zeke went out on his own and had fun getting dirty by himself.

Since Zeke was the only one who went out yesterday afternoon, he was the only one who really needed to be washed last night. And not really wanting to do the whole "bath thing" for one kid, I decided to let him try taking a shower for the first time. He LOVED it. He stood there, in the shower, for a solid 10 minutes, fogging up the mirror and driving Finn insane. (I set up the baby gate in the bathroom door so I could poke my head out and check on the other two while staying close to Zeke in case he slipped or something. But this meant that Finn spent the entire shower time at the gate crying to get in as the little man loves him some water.) So, Zeke had his first shower and it was a huge success and I'm so excited because it'll make things a lot easier this summer.

Here's where the poop comes into play, so feel free to leave now if you want. Apparently, while I was in the bathroom with Zeke, Deacon, who before yesterday was scared of the shower and HATED even the IDEA of it, decided he wanted to take a shower as well, and as such got himself ready to go. And by ready to go I mean he took off the shirt he had on (he was still pantsless from naptime) as well as his diaper. His diaper, which he had pooped into. So, I took Zeke out of the shower and started to wonder why I was smelling poop, I mean, Zeke was clean. So I let Zeke out of the bathroom, cleaned up the bathroom, walked out of the bathroom and saw Deacon, laying on the couch naked, his bottom covered in poop, with a little turd hanging out (I told you this was gross). On the other side of the couch was his diaper, nicely folded in half, but with a giant poop ball laying on top of it that Deacon had apparently put there manually, as his fingers were covered in poop. Ahhh yes, motherhood is SO glamorous.

So, I wiped up Deacon's butt, cleaned up the couch, threw out the diaper, and showered Deacon, who handled the shower quiet well. He was as excited and in love with showering as Zeke was, but he wasn't scared anymore either. Looks like I will be able to get away with more showers and less baths than I had originally anticipated this summer. Whoo! \o/ (<---that's a guy with his hands in the air)

Bed Heads and Potty Trials

They cancelled school again today. I'm just putting that out there in case anyone cares or is interested.

The boys woke up with some sweet bed head today:

See, with it being winter, it stays dark until pretty late in the morning here. This means that the boys do a much better job staying in bed (usually sleeping, but not always) until I finally roll out of bed around 8 or 8:30 and get them up. Yeah! On days there is no school, obvioulsy. I've been waiting for days like this since we were living in Oklahoma and the boys would wake up every. single. morning. around 6:30 or so. That's still not as early as some kids get up, I know, but it was kind of rough going for awhile there, since I'm not much of an early morning person. Back to the kids - you can tell they slept well by the state of their hair as they bounced out of bed this morning. Well, Zeke bounced, Deacon sort of slowly slithered out of bed and up the stairs. And then there was Finn, who I'm pretty sure is in here somewhere:


Here's the thing about our mornings lately though, Zeke will get up, go upstairs, play or walk around or whatever for a few minutes then realize he has to pee. So he'll go to the bathroom, and then go about his day. However, many is the morning (like today) where he pees on the floor instead of in the toilet. I don't know if it's because he has to go so badly from holding it all night that he just goes figuring he's in the general vicinity so he'll be fine, as long as it doesn't get on his underpants? I don't think that's entirely the case because it doesn't just happen first thing in the morning. He just doesn't seem to catch himself and aim better in the mornings, like he will later on in the day, and that just might be because he's still kind of waking up. I don't know if it's because he's in such a rush to get back to playing/eating/whatever that he isn't careful about it? I'm starting to get tired of cleaning up the floor around the toilet though.

And while I'm on the subject of Zeke and the toilet, here's the other thing: Zeke won't get out of bed on his own if he has to go to the bathroom. It doesn't matter if it's naptime or bedtime, he will not leave his room on his own. I know many parents have the opposite problem where their kids will not stay in their beds, so this may seem weird to them. But if he has to go to the bathroom while he's in bed one of 3 things happens. One, he just holds it until it's time for him to get up, then he runs to the bathroom like a bolt and goes. Two, he starts to sing really loudly until one of us goes downstairs to tell him to quiet down, at which point he'll say he has to go to the bathroom and then get up and go. The third option is that he lays there crying until we hear him and go down to check on him.

I'm not sure what to do. We've repeatedly practiced with him what he should do if he has to go to the bathroom with him while he's bed. We've acted it all out, had him act it all out, quizzed him and got appropriate answers from him, and still he just won't get himself out of bed and into the bathroom. He used to always get permission to go to the bathroom no matter what time of day it was, but lately he's been going when he has to. So maybe he'll start going on his own when he's in bed too? I just don't know.

But, now I'm off to do some dishes, and all that sort of fun stuff before Josh gets home from work. I said to Josh, "Why don't you just try and take today off so you don't have to go out on those horrible roads?" He said, "How am I supposed to come home early if I don't go in at all?" Silly me. Or maybe silly Josh? Either way, in closing here are a few more silly people - Deacon looking kind of crazy and Zeke proudly wearing his "bird school shirt".

Okay, that's not actually the super proud picture, that's the "try smiling with your mouth closed a little bit" picture. But it's still sweet, so I'm leaving it. I hope you all have a safe and happy Thanksgiving (since it'll be almost over for most of you by the time I get around to posting tomorrow)!