You say you want a resolution...

With deepest apologies to the fab four.

So, well....I have had a hell of a year, eh?

Everyone has, I know. So of course, what's on tap for 2011? I have been thinking about that for days now.
I'm still in the phase where when we pull up to the house sometimes I have to just sit there for a second and look at it and enjoy the cuteness and think "how the hell did I get here?" and wonder how it was ever possible.

So what am I wanting to change in the new year? I changed pretty much everything in the last 4 months of this year.
in 2011 I plan to:

• not buy any yarn for personal projects until February 23. Longer if I can do it. I would really like to use up some stash this year.
  

• Choose locally more often.

• Return my library books faster, thus depriving Milwaukee county of tens of dollars in late fees.

• Embark on the kitchen and main bath renos which will surely be a test of my patience, creativity, and skills. I have been watching kitchen shows on DIYNetwork for weeks now and their idea of a barebones kitchen is 15,000. Yeah, well, I plan to do it for less than $1500. Because I don't have anything more and even that is stretching it. All my existing appliances are staying, I'm not gutting anything, and I plan to use paint and elbow grease to pull off a fucking miracle. Oh, there will be pictures, do not fear.

• I want to write more in 2011. Blogging as well as personal essays and getting back to fiction. Shitty fiction. I was all revved up for NaNoWriMo this year and did the first two days and then thought "What the hell am I trying to do here? Push myself the rest of the way around the bend?" So I stopped and let it go.

• Letting more things go. It's a good thing.
  

• I need to finish unpacking. I am such a freaking slackMASTER!

• I want to knit more things, too. I had such a good creative mojo going on until July 22. I want to catch that wave and do stuff again in 2011. I have continued to be creative but it's been more about creatively jamming all my shit into boxes, picking paint colors which I love, but damn...after a while even that gets old, creatively financing this move and creatively living in a construction zone while I scraped and painted and sanded. I wanna do some fun creative stuff. I have not been able to even unpack my beading crap yet and I miss it. I have barely sewed in the past 5 months.
  

• And of course there is the usual: finding balance. Oh, it's so elusive. I commit to working on this as well. In addition to the kitchen fix up, I need to paint and spruce up the upstairs living room and include a little yoga corner down the hall from my craft cave. And then unpack my yoga dvds so I can make that happen on a regular basis. I picked a sunny yellow for this room and can already picture how delightful it will be to settle in there and work on simmering down. In my mind I can erase the 1950 sculpted green carpet...ahhh.
  

I guess that's kind of a lot. But it's nothing compared to this year and none of this was planned. I wish everyone a year full of light, laughter, dry basements, and much joy!

So that happened....

I have been busy.
Last time I blogged was nearly 3 months ago. I was till starry eyed about being able to sell my house and was painting it and making it pretty.
HA.
Oh, so naive!
So here is how it went down. We started to go to open houses, we looked at houses all over the city and outside of the city. We googlemapped and Trulia-ed and Zillowed our asses off. Two neighbors down the street from us had major dig up your front yard sewer repairs done. Our neighbor next door gave us reason to believe the likelihood of a sinkhole near us was more than a passing obession of mine with the discovery of some long neglected storm sewer pipes the city put in 50 years ago and then abandoned. In our yards. We saw many house going up for sale all around us with people who are just done and fed up, and also some houses where people just packed up, moved out and walked away from their mortgages. And of course we had the bank-owned house rotting next door to us that was never cleaned out.

And I was going through the motions, but still not sold on selling the house. Because it was my home, my first home where I was in control, where no one was yelly and scary and where no one could kick me out. I loved my little house. Too much. I was so in love with feeling stable and safe there. And then one day I was scrubbing the kitchen counter grout, the grout I put in myself, and I realized the safety? The stability? The house did not create that. I have a stable and secure life now because that is what my husband and I have created. We argue, yes, but no one is a drunk, no one screams, no one carries on and stirs up drama for the hell of it. What we have isn't confined to a specific house.

It was eye opening to realize all of that. So, we called a national house flipping company and set up an appointment. The whole thing went like this:
September 8: he came to see the house, gave a lowball offer and then said he had to check some other numbers before letting us know.
September 9: he called back and cut his offer in half and told us he might know some other people... I wasn't completely on board with selling it until I realized that even the "we buy any house" guy might not even be willing to buy our house. Then I realized I wanted to get the fuck out. I cried. A lot. And then put on some lipstick and went out to see a house we had driven past several times.
September 10: we wrote an offer on the house we saw! Jeff called back lowballing man and told him we'd take whatever he was offering, send us paperwork to accept.
September 12: the seller accepted our offer
October 4: our 13th anniversary. We closed on our new house! We moved in on October 9.
October 18: we are officially no longer the owners of Shitty House.

And now it's a month later and we are still settling in, painting like mad and trying to figure out which box we put any of our crap in. And it's coming along slowly but surely.

And in the middle of all of this FEMA did reverse their decision and decided to cover individual claims, but by then we were in the middle of buying the new house and would have to make an insurance claim which would be two large claims within 3 years which could make us unable to get a policy on the new house or possibly make it more difficult for the buyer to insure our house and then we still might get next to nothing from FEMA. Our neighbor got $200. For her furnace and water heater and the cleanup costs. Yes, that is two hundred. We had more at stake than we stood to gain so we didn't file with them in the end. We just left it, cleaned and scoured with a new water heater but no operational furnace.

So that is what is going with me so far. I'm starting over and so far it doesn't suck.

It's the deshit.

The deshitting (decluttering) continues apace.
I have just about an entire plastic tote's worth of tea. Seriously. It's a bit out of control. I had no idea how much I had. And I tossed anything not sealed or that I knew was freakishly old, and anything with caffeine. I had an entire cupboard full of tea in my tiny kitchen! Ridonkulous.
Part of it is the amount of knitting swaps I do. I get a lot of tea in them and it's always good and then I get a new swap and have a new favorite.... I kept 5-6 varieties out in a red gingham tin I unearthed and the rest is into storage for now! Also in that tote was a big ass cast iron dutch oven and lid, though. So it's not wall to wall tea. And some metal mixing bowls, and some recipe books.

And from the garage The Man has removed a reel mower (we had two, do not even ask), that was snatched up. Our kitchen table? Spent 2 days outdoors. It was super cute handpainted by me when I was really in a whimsicle fuckery (props to regretsy) phase, but the table was free from a friend's basement and was really too large for the breakfast bay, so it gots to go. It went today. Our electric snow blower (oh,the Wisconsin snow laughed at that one!) that the starter sort of caught fire when I was using it? Someone started to look at it, but when hubs walked by they ran away. So we put a sign on it saying it was broken and free. Gone.
Garbage pickup is Wednesday for us, and the city will take a LOT of crap, so we just put stuff on the curb and if it's gets taken, sweet. If not, the garbage guys will deal with it.

I just went out and helped figure out some keeping/tossing stuff and guess what I realized. Ok, so remember how when this "500 year rain" happened, I wasn't even home? So I never actually SAW my neighborhood in the worst of it? I saw many neighborhoods near mine that were terrifying, but not mine. Well, MY GARAGE FLOODED. That is so fanfuckingtastico. It looks like 2 inches of water at the front of the garage judging by the water line on the things I had stored there. I know, it's been a month, but I avoid my messy garage, it's the manly domain and he likes it to be ferociously slovenly. He walks in, takes whatever tool, power equipment, mulch, dirt and drops it 2 feet in front of the door. A huge pile of shit builds up and then he complains that he can't find anything. So he was sorting through the junk and came to get me to rule on a few items. He held up this little table I had out there to say "keep or toss" and I just looked at the legs thinking "where did that come from? it was in the house up until a few months ago? What did I spill on it to go exactly two inches up every leg of this table? And cover it with grass and yuck?" and he kept asking me where to put this stupid table while my mind was just trying to absorb all of that at once and process how bad it must have been and then I just stood there looking around and seeing that everything has a 2 inch water line on it. A second table, a bookshelf, a carpet steamer, my plastic bin of calcium chloride for the roof, the wheels on the garden cart.....the whole damn thing flooded.

It is completely amazing that we did not end up with more than 4-5 feet of water in our basement now, we could have been flooded all the way up to the first floor and then some. Because it took us so long to get home and the gates were opened so dumping into the lake could begin, the street was empty when we got here. I knew it had been up over the curb, but ...wow. I'm pretty glad I didn't know until now....I think.

But there appears to be no real damage, it was all crap stuck in a nasty garage so it must not have meant too much to me. Aside from possibly the starter on our electric mower which went out about 2 weeks ago...... The transformer was probably sitting in water and gave the mower a jolt while it charged and after a few charge, use cycles..kaput on a 1 year old mower. Black and Decker already replaced the starter for us with a better one, so now I feel guilty. But only slightly.

But mainly, OH MY GOD HOLY BALLS OF SHIT, MY GARAGE FLOODED. It's a shitty, tiny gross bare studs detached building. and it's elevated maybe 4 inches on a concrete pad. You have to step carefully over the threshold or take a header into sharp, oily, dangerous yard implement hell. And it's set back from the street further from my house, ON A HILL and my driveway? Is like 5 car lengths long. Not big cars, but we very comfortably parked three there for 2 years when we had three cars and had plenty of room left. The water was THAT FAR UP PAST MY WHOLE DAMN HOUSE!
It kind of gives me the vapors. I have to get the hell out of here before I end up in a curled up in a corner pulling my eyelashes out.

Yeah, I'm still here

1. FEMA basically told us all to suck it. They count basements only if they are sleeping spaces, mine is obviously barely suitable as a "most expensive appliances storing space" since it is a "turd collection and festering space". So, yeah. That's nice.

2. I guess I'm moving. I don't now when, or where or anything, but we can't do this anymore. We can't afford to do this anymore. I have no idea how the hell I am going to sell this house, but I'mma try to do it. We are painting and sprucing like a pair of mofos right now. Kitchen is going from applemint to sky blue (called bubble) and pretty blue bedroom is half painted "steamed milk" with "extra white" trim. Yeah, it's exciting. I may very well have to sell it to a house flipper. I don't feel great about that, but I also don't know what to do. The Man? Is all for selling it to the first bastard who will agree to buy it for any price. So we will finish the painting projects, but we will get some feedback from an investor or a realtor before we embark on fixing the plaster ceiling in the living room. From the roof leak that seems fucking impossible to ever fix EVER.

3. I am basically freaking out about all of it. All the time.
it's not helping that he decides to paint the kitchen while it's still dirty, does not pack anything up and just carries it all to a clean room and farking leaves it, all piled up precariously, and then walks away. Like this:
This does not make me happy, not even a little tiny bit. It makes me bitchy. A whole LOT.

You can haz updates!

1. Servpro was just here to pick up their 4 huge ass fans and 3 huge ass dehumidifiers. If you want to feel better about your carbon footprint, rent a few of those puppies in the summer and see what a real big foot looks like. So glad we do the budget pay so I won't feel it all in this month's bill.
The total damage was...gulp.....$2600.73.
Oh that sucks. But you know my saying, it beats a lake of shit in the basement!

2. Hot water, coming soon! Maybe it's my Pisces mojo, maybe it's just me but I love water. Looking at Lake Michigan calms me, swimming thrills me, if it didn't make me have to pee ever 5 minutes I would probably have a tabletop fountain. My morning shower is very important to me. If I feel bleah, tired, cold, cramptastic, achey, even sad, I take a nice hot shower. I have felt all of those things since July 22 and I canot just go hop in the shower! Some people drink (or knit obsessively...ok, I do that too) I shower! Wait, not like 23 time a day, but I really miss that easy once a day shower. And even though I can wash with hot water, you can't just stand under it and let it relax your back muscles when you have to be bending over to scoop it up with a rubbermaid food storage container, you know? I cannot wait for hot water again!

3. Washer and Dryer: yah, we're going to get them again. We did laundry over the weekend and it was $25!! That's 1200 a year, which is $400 more than a new set, not even counting damaged clothing from washed tubs with snags in them from people washing work overalls and stuff. Also, we have found ONE laudromat that isn't scary. And it's actually pretty nice, it's behind the CVS on 76th by Park Bank. but it's always jam packed!! And it's still $25 a week to do the wash there!!

4. my cursed afghan continues. not cursing, but growing. This is the afghan I had the ucontrollable urge to make when the flooding hit. it was not raining or even looking like rain when I left mah house! it's way bigger now, but Erma already seems to approve. I'm not too sure about it the more I see of it, but The Man loves it and it does seem to be nice and warm. and will hopefully soften up with a vigorous washing and tumble dry. I realized i was doing half-double crochets for the center, so switched to double crochets which helps it not feel quite so much like an X-ray blanket now. Good times.

Cleanin' on uuuu-uuuup!

on the Northwest side!
I don't have a piece of the pie, though. At this point, I probably cannot afford a piece of the pie!
Guess who dropped by yesterday?
Awwwww, yeah. Not bad, it only took 6 days this time. Honestly, I think they got overwhelmed really fast. We called on Saturday morning once the water was down and we knew we still had intact walls and they thought they might be here Monday. We knew from experience that they were going to get slammed. They did. People who waited for the weekend to clean out and then saw how bad it was, people who had been unable to even get to their homes until the weekend and people who realized the damage was worse than they thought all found their phones and started calling.
But we don't have drywall down there and it's an old drafty house, so mold was not a huge concern for us, aside from a pile of wet clothes down there rotting away, of course.
But now my house smells sort of chemically clean, with a dull roar from all the drying equipment in the basement and it should be smooth sailing from now on. At least until the next big rain, right?
Ugh.

cracking me up

The Man is taking an ice cold shower right now and last night the noises emanating from the bathroom were like nothing I had ever heard before so I videoed the door to catch the noise and then played it back for him.
So tonight he is trying to be as stoic as possible and instead of high pitched yelps and squeals, there are these freakish moans and groans that are really freaking out the cats. I am such an ass that I am laughing so hard.

And for the record, I totally pussed out on the ice cold shower. I tried putting a tub of water out in the sun thinking it would warm up. It really did not, I did a quick wash with it but screamed obscenities the whole time because it was miserable. I skipped washing my hair becuase I was pretty sure my head would fall off.

This morning was downright lovely! I boiled a huge stock pot of water and mixed it with the cold and remembered the routine I had down from my 21 days without hot water adventure in 2008. Dip the shower fluff in the water, lather up, lean over the bucket and pour water over your head so the run off goes back into the bucket. Lather up your hair. Rinse everything from the top down. It's not so bad. As long as you don't need to shave your legs or anything, which is IMPOSSIBLE in ice cold water unless you want to look like you hacked away at yourself with a dull hatchet because you cut off all the goose bumps.

Clarifying

I just want to make sure I make this clear that the real problem is that THE CITY (the city who cannot seem to figure out who to keep the poop out of my house!) has no idea what to do as far as it goes to get people hooked back up to power if they are still without.
We Energies requires the safety inspection after an emergency disco, because it's safe and that's how to keep your house from catching fire or exploding.

They just usually require a City of Milwaukee inspector to come out, who then informs them it's safe. Well, the city can't possibly handle everything right now and has changed the rules on them in the middle of a crisis and given them the confusing information. Both women I spoke to with WE's customer service were very clear that all of this was new information and being updated and they took the time to read clearly and help me as much as they could with the information they had.
And furthermore, this is TWICE now that WE has had to haul a truck to my house for emergency discos during a sewer backup and both times I have been amazingly grateful that such a large company can get to individual homeowners while a disaster is literally ongoing. And both times I have called back to thank them

Which is actually what I told to the city supervisor yesterday, that his department was steering people wrong and he was going to be dealing with a lot of upset people until they clarified what they needed.

Brew City Flood Blues

Today is a very frustrating day.
The city has no idea what is going on.
Our HVAC guy was supposed to be here beween 8 and 12. Well, this magical affidavit that the power company is telling me to download and print does. not. exist. for. home. owners. to. access.

I called WE Energies, they only have the address for the permitting site. I called the city. Sweet fancy moses what a clusterfuck.
After 10 minutes on hold with the main number it occurred to me to bypass this crap and call the permitting department directly. So I did.
I made it through to the electrical desk, I spoke to Mario.
I have dealt with Mario before. Mario is the man who inspected us in 2008 when we had to have an electrical upgrade in conjunction with installing our new furnace. Mario has some freaky BO problem. His general state of funk seems to be smelling like he has been smoking ass scented cigars in a tiny room for 27 days without changing clothes once. He is not my favorite.
After 15 minutes of "no, listen to me" he transferred me to his supervisor.
Who promptly informed me he wasn't sure what WE Energies was going to need because he wasn't at work on Thursday or Friday becuase he was supposed to go on vacation, but the weather took care of that and he actually sounded really bummed out about it.
Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?!
When he said that I just sat there and then verrrrry quietly, the kind of quietly that usually scares the crap out of the husband, said "I.am. so. sorry. this. is. causing. you. to. miss. your. vacation." and then we started to get somewhere after that. He decided maybe he better go do some investigating and call me back. So he did and now my electrical contractor will be here between 1 and 2 pm today and hopefully we can get somewhere about getting my power back on.
UPDATE: I can haz power!!!! :D

We are awaiting someone to show up and inspect the sewer situation. A city sewer inspector. I have seen 2 on my street thus far and both times have run out to the macaroni and cheese colored trucks to ask if they have my forms. Nope.
I called the city and I am in the system, and they were forwarding my file to a supervisor to get inspected. But until they come, I am stuck here. They do not call first, they just show and up and knock. And if you miss it, there is no notice left behind. I just saw them do a neighbor's house and what they did was knock and then stick a thing down his lateral line. And then leave. WTF does that do?

In most glorious news, Servpro called us back today. We got on their list on Saturday morning when the count of sewer backups was still just under 3000 in the city of Milwaukee. By this morning it was 6000. They are hopping busy!
So they are thinking they should be here by the end of the week. OH FINGERS CROSSED!!!!

My house smells so, so bad

So, good news: we did not reflood in last night's heavy rain. Sweet.
Actually, I have a few more not so shitty newses.
Servpro: we're on the list and someone should be contacting us within 24 hours and they think they can get to us this week, possibly, POSSIBLY, on Monday. We need power, though, and we will not have that until Monday night at the earliest (omg fingers crossed the power can be turned back on!!!)
I finally reached the city to report the backup via the phone AND I submitted the report online, so fingers are super crossed we go FEMA disaster tomorrow or Monday because we seriously need all the help we can get and will probably need to apply for a loan to dig up the sewer lines and put in a backflow preventer and possibly do some structural reinforcing. My walls have not moved or shifted, but they are old and one has a crack that did leak in 2008 (though FEMA was unconcerned about it during inspection and said it might have let the pressure off the wall a bit)
I looked up the timeline from 2008 and it took about 5 days for FEMA to get here then, so fingers crossed soon. I know the ball is rolling. People just need to keep reporting damage.
If there is no help, we will find a way, but the help would, well, it would help.

My house is RANK, it's hot and humid and I can't even turn on a fan. Tonight, Saturday, is our last night at the nice clean La Quinta. We simply cannot afford to stay and get too used to it and it is supposed to be cooler tomorrow and sweet fancy moses I hope it's breezy.

My inlaws are visiting tomorrow, because they are insisting on it. I have some feelings on it, but whatthefuckever. If they want to smell my house, more power to them. I can't vacuum, so the cat hair is at record levels. I have no hot water and I can't boil any on the stove to mop the floors and I am not even going to bother with cold, becuase why? We have two emergency litter boxes in the kitchen and the cats are social so they are happy take a dump in full view of anyone who happens to be around.
My carpet got drenched and smells A-maz-ing, too.
I put out mixing bowls full of baking soda around my house today to just try and keep the funk down. Wishful thinking.

Jeff and I had a giggle today when discussing why keeping the flood kit in the basement was maybe not a great idea. I figured it was a good place for it, because hey, I was probably going to be home when it hit, right? But I have been battling the anxiety beast so hard and I never reassed my situation and therefore forgot to get my bleach filled garden sprayer, my shop vac, my 3 bottles of germicidal bleach, my box of latex free gloves, my contractor strength trash bags and the rest of it out to the garage!

My pumps should still be OK, though, they will just need to be washed off really well. I will hose them down and when I have power again, I will pump some disinfectant through them to douche them out so they aren't full of rot and nasty. Too bad they did not get used this round.

Annie, are you ok? Can you tell us, are you OK, Annie?

I AM OK!!

The Man, The Turd Herd and I are all ok.
The house is in rough shape.
We got 4 feet of backwater (sewage, backflow, the poop, turd soup, whatevs). Everything in my basement is a loss, again. The water was higher than in 2008. And way way way more unpleasant. In the past we have had largely clear water with slight funk. This was...so not clear. This was viscous and dark grey brown. I could not see even 8 inches into the water. *gag*
But it's down to bare, shit smeared floor now.

Here is how it went down for me, and I tell you, for being agoraphobia girl, I picked a HELL of a time to be out and about. Ugh. I wanted to make an afghan. No, NEED to make one. I have a vision. So yesterday afternoon when the man got home from work we headed out to Michael's for some acrylic yarn (since I know my cats and no WAY am I not having this be idiot proof to launder it) I found the colors i wanted. We went to pay and holy hell, the sky was just about pitch black. Some little shit in front of us started screaming he could see a tornado. I wanted to just pinch him. He did NOT see a tornado, but there I was stuck 5 miles from home to see this bearing down on us and I knew. I KNEW it was going to be ugly. And then the rain began. And it was honestly unlike anything I had ever seen before. We were trapped in the craft store. When we were finally able to leave it took us 2.5 hours to travel 5 miles. We simply could not get home. Every southbound street was flooded, cars were submerged and floating. Disabled cars were everywhere.
The rain would stop and then just be coming down in sheets again.
We drove through neighborhoods where the water was just gushing up from the sewers, saw manhole covers missing, saw houses flooding up to their front doors. I was shaking so hard from panic that I ached this morning like I had aerobicized like it was 1987. My elbow joints were just on fire all night long from shaking. Who knew?

We finally found a place to get gas and the man at the next pump spoke to my husband, we found out if we went much further west we could get south. They shook hands and wished each other well and we left. Well, we detoured to Yen Ching so I could pee someplace nicer than a gas station. And they were gracious about us rushing in just for that, we will have to order from there this week! Anyway, so homeward bound.
We knew it was going to be bad. We knew. We tried to brace ourselves for it.
We weren't even sure if we were going to be able to get into our area once we got south, but we tried it and our street was not very bad. But when we got out of the car we could hear the water alarm blaring and it was just a matter of seeing how bad it was going to be, and I was hoping against hope that none of my basement walls had caved in.
So we saw it was high, very high. And the power was still on (amazing given the number of downed lines and people who LOST power. If ever there was a time to lose it, it was last night!) and I had things plugged in down there. And all of that water had come up FAST so I just didn't know if it was going to stop at 4 feet. We called the power company and got in queue for an emergency disconnect as the danger of the house catching fire was pretty serious. We realized we could not stay there and I called La Quinta and they were slammed with people in our situation, so I hopped online and made a reservation (crafty!) for us and after checking back and making sure the disconnect could occur without us being home, we left a sign on the door saying where to find our meters and left.
The plan was to check in and come back to wait. But when we got here and checked the news, the city of Milwaukee was asking people to stay off the streets because of the sinkholes (!!!!!) and all the missing manhole covers. We made the hard choice to stay put.
This morning was a very tense ride home to see if we had a house left at all, and if the cats made it. We did and they were all OK. Even Hellvis. The water was a smidge higher, but had drained completely by 3 pm and we were finally able to see our walls were intact.

We are still without power and will be until Monday at the earliest. We have to have an HVAC contractor come out and disconnect the electrical from the furnace and sign an affidavit from the city and THEN and only then can We Energies come out and reconnect us. Consolidated Heating and AC will be there Monday morning, first available appointment. We can't clean anything up until we have power, so it's going to be grim.
My house smells like a hot turd.
All of my neighbors flooded with the poop. Someone down the street had a cave-in. A few more blocks away a whole neighborhood was evacuated do to multiple cave-ins.
There are piles of ruined junk heaped all up and down my street. People up on hills also flooded. I also had 2 feet of standing water in the back yard this morning, the low part. I thought 2008 was the worst I had ever seen. Today was worse. More widespread. The air just smells of sewage everywhere.

But, we are still OK. We're going to be broke as a joke, but we're OK.
I will try to not accost any elderly Asian couples this time around, pinkie swear.

Oh, hai!

So, The Man and I were sitting in the living room around 10pm. I heard a noise and wonder what the cats are getting into. I ignore it. Then I hear more and then I realize it's tapping on glass, as in my window. And then it's more than tapping and WTF IS GOING ON?!
We ran to the office/den/mancave (even though it's butter yellow
with a mini chandelier) and lo, there was a raccoon hanging off my window screen and 4 more on the deck trying to get into my house!
WHAT IN THE HELL?!

I sprayed them with water. Jeff dumped several buckets of water on them. They kept coming back. My cats were losing their minds.
And I wasn't too thrilled with the situation, either.
I asked The Man to go pee on the deck, larger predator, bigger stink, right?
No. Not just no, but HELL NO. With my luck they would probably know from his scent that he is a vegetarian and attack us even more enthusiastically.
He kept saying he was sure I was joking. I wasn't joking but whatever. I could deal with peeing on the deck, but not with a ton of critters underneath it with tiny little gross hands. EW.
So plan B. We went to CVS and I bought the most bizarre assortment of crap ever. Ammonia, rubber gloves, 3 packs of kitchen sponges and a rubbermaid snack container large enough to hold a good amount of ammonia and several kitchen sponges at once! And the hubs also wanted chocolate milk, so we got that, too.
We must have appeared to be freaks.
Anyway, sponges have been soaked and lobbed (happily, I can go fetch them tomorrow and use them again tomorrow night!) and no more critter action so far tonight.
Knock on wood.

a snapshot of my idyllic eveing

The husband came home slightly cranky. I ignored it and went about my evening, took a 30 minute walk on the treadie, tidied a bit and read for a while.
I made a semi-kick ass dinner. I made a homemade fig-balsamic dressing and drizzled it over some shit I swear I could have pulled out of my front yard. I really think I ate dandelion leaves for dinner. I threw in some feta and dried cranberries and sliced a nice garlicky chicken breast over my salad for dinner. Honestly, it was nice, but I would probably like it better with plain old ranch dressing. But I am still on a mission to try new things and fig vinegar is new. And slightly freaky.

But wait, before I could drizzle my swanky vinaigrette over these weeds, I planned to enjoy some romaine. But my fridge has once again gone wonky and my romaine was frozen. GROSS.
Which involved me throwing a lettuce tantrum and The Man yelling at me that my behavior was not acceptable and then running out to Aldi for this bag of fancy weeds.

I ate dinner with my headphones on.

Then deciding my silence wasn't doing it for him, he went out to do some yardwork.
I laid down to take a nap.
The front door burst open, and he asked where the watering can was.
We had a lot of rain this week. So I know immediately that something stupid is afoot. But he won't tell me. he runs in and out a few times with the watering can. Then he casually says he caught the hedge trimmer on fire.
WHAT IN THE HELL?!
Off the couch, throw a cardigan on over my tank top and out to see WTF he has done and there is a big scorch mark on the neighbor's driveway. And it hits me it really was ON FIRE. And we have a fire extinguisher. Did he come in and get it? No he did not. And it was the power cord that caught fire, so the whole house could have gone up. I got really mad and started yelling at him, in the yard, with neighbors out all over the damn place. And oh, he yelled back! it was a nice, classy moment.
Then the 12 yr old neighbor kid came over to talk to us about his plan to mow the lawn tomorrow. He's short for 12, so he usually talks to my boobs. Tonight, he was especially riveted. I looked down. In my rush to go see what happened I didn't check my top after the nap and I was showing a healthy inch of bra, much to his delight. I yanked the top up, gave the child a dirty look and walked back into my house.
I sent the husband back out with baking soda, dish soap and a scrub brush to clean up the scorch. And while he did, the neighbor kid showed up up to stand over him and say "aww man, she's making you scrub the ground??" in pity. But scrub the ground he did, and then go over and apologize to the homeowner who was OK with it all.

So to sum up:
there was a fire
we argued in public
I flashed a child.

yeah, it's a typical night for me.

I should feel wittier

or something. But I don't. I just feel this empty blog yawning before me, mocking me.
So I scrounged up a cute template. I wanted to add one of those kick-ass project-o-meters I see on all the cool knitting blogs. Oh yes, there are knitting blogs by the bajillion. But I had permanent fatal errors with my shitty code abilities. By which I mean my copy and paste in the right hole abilities. I don't write code. Oh, no. I leave that crap to the hubs. But thanks to computer genius knitters, I triumphed! And now it's cute, it has meters and all that's missing is some navel gazing. My speciality.

So here I am, world: a new blog, a new outlet for my bitchery, and my knittery. I might bust out into song, or tears, I never quite know what the hell is going to happen. If you're here, you probably know me. Or you think you know, but you have no idea...ahhh, remember when The Real World was something other than a drunken, spray-tanned herpes nest?

Here is a crazypants moment that is pretty funny:
At knitting group a while back my knitties Beth and Erin were discussing crockpots. Midwesterners love the shit out of some crockpots in case you never knew this. I think it's genetic. I use mine a lot and many of my friends do as well. I go through them a lot, too, sadly. They drown, they get smashed all to hell by the husband, I threw a dirty one away at 3 am during a basement flood just because, well, it seemed like a good idea at the moment (I miss that thing!) So knitting group, yeah...
My friends both have new traveling crockies. With locking lids. So no more spilling hot chili in the car as Beth explained enthusiastically (she makes some awesome chili, but it's probably less awesome to drive the chili mobile around for a few weeks)
I exclaimed how much I wanted one. And then added "Wait, why does the agoraphobic girl need a TRAVELING crockpot?" Because , yeah...not so much, really.
I got one, though. After The Man smashed my old one to hell by dropping a full third of my glassware into it I figured why not shoot for the moon? Big crockpot, big dreams and all that.