Vigilance

Saturday Morning I awakened to the sounds of construction. My first thought was Yea! Someone is fixing up the drug dealers house Woo-Hoo! my second thought was It better not be 6:30am, ‘cause I will kick some ones ass for hammering four feet away from my head at this hour, no matter how good the cause.

I am so naive.

They weren’t fixing up the house. They were boarding up the windows. The drug dealers house not longer a “house” it is now a hulk. Thank You Drug Dealer! It’s just what I wanted next door. If there is one thing worse than a successful drug house in the neighborhood, it’s a boarded up hulk of a drug house in the neighborhood. It’s a contagion, it spreads faster than teen pregnancy though a junior high.

Later, I went out to shoot dirty looks at it. I also checked to see if it was all the windows boarded up and not just the ones on the one side - The fascia has rotted through and the down spouts have fallen apart and I was going with the idea that perhaps they had just decided that that wing of the house was no longer habitable. Again, I am very naive. The desire to think positive thoughts sometimes gets in the way of dealing with reality. At times, this is a good thing. Other times it is just a tool to evade reality. I would love to think about the drug dealers drug house being officially abandoned and boarded up, but I would prefer to see it as some form of home improvement. edited to add, I checked more closely, the front door is not boarded up. Do you think if I called the city and alerted them to it, and asked politly, if they would burn the muffer fuffer down for me?

Speaking of home improvement. The Washer works! Broskey came over, waved his hands over the front of it and lo and behold, the washer works like it is supposed to. Shockingly, without bracing in place it doesn’t hop skip or jump during regular operation. Still though, I felt that I needed to supervise the first cycle just to make sure. Have you ever watched an otherwise healthy washing machine go through a wash cycle? I went between thinking Wow! Look at it working! It’s so cool! Go machine, Go! Spin baby! Spin! Woo-Hoo! and How long does it take to do a load of wash? Did the old machine take this long too? Is this taking too long? Should I worry?. I shouldn't have. Everything was fine. Woo-Hoo!!

I let it do the second load in privacy. I even left the house while it was running. I bought a new toothbrush.

Later on, secure with the knowledge that my washer was going to work and life was back to normal - I was emptying the dishwasher and I noticed a lot of water in the bottom of it. Dogger took that moment to ask to go out, I picked up her leash from the kitchen floor where it lives and I noticed it was damp. I put it out of my mind and took the dog out. I came back inside and studied the buttons on the front dishwasher. I pressed one marked “clear” and it made the machine very quickly go through a cycle. I imagined it draining the water, again with the naivete!. It turns out I have a vivid imagination and a problem with my dishwasher. I noticed that the water was not draining and was in fact being added to. IT was then I noticed my sink filling with water as well and there was a lake spreading across my kitchen floor.

First I grabbed a plunger and plunged the hell of the sink drain,- it is not an official sink plunger, but in an emergency it doesn’t matter what is backed up or which floor is flooding, any plunger will do. The water in the sink stopped backing up and the water in the bottom of the dishwasher found it's own level and stopped filling and the flood of water from the machine slowed to a trickle. I found something to bale out the dishwasher and used towels to sop up the rest that I could not bale out. The interior of the washer was dry but my kitchen rug was submerged. I moped it up and turned a fan on.

I went to watch TV.

The only major appliances the gals on Sex and The City had any issues with were the men in their lives. We did have one thing in common though, thanks to my new toothbrush, I think my gums reached orgasm, twice.

Read it live it learn it

When bad things happen to marginal nursing homes

3 Rules for placeing your loved one in a home:

1. If it's operated by a chain, walk away.
2. Non profits only
3. Know the difference between Assisted Livings (Adult Care Homes) and Skilled Nursing facilities. SNF's have 24 hour hot and cold running nurses and ACH's do not.