because i feel vaguely guilty about misrepresenting the state of the bathroom in the prior post.

of course, i forgot (as with all the home improvement projects going on) to take a “before” picture.

i like baths. really i do. (if you don’t believe me, scroll down.)

but i’ve been without a functioning shower for over a week. and while baths are nice, and relaxing, and blissful, and yadda yadda yadda, they take time. which i don’t have in the mornings.

and it’s hard to wash my hair. or rinse off properly. and i go to bed damp, and my hair sticks up like a haystack in the morning.

*sigh*

can’t win for losing.

[ed note: the photo is quite misleading, as the tiling of the shower was finished today. all that remains is to have the plumbing finished and a door put in.]

and in the nick of time, too - great flying spaghetti monster, there’s a terminator television series starring summer glau!

too bad it’s on fox.

i’m sure there will be more exclamations of surprise from me (and responses of, “duh, laloca” from my cadre of four devoted readers) as i re-enter the world of the living.

oh, and a word to the wise (or those who would be wiser than me): working 155 hours in 13 days, trying to keep on top of laundry, remembering to eat, finding time to sleep, trying to notice an ongoing home remodel (kitchen - done; laundry room - done; bathroom… er….) is not the way to live one’s life. not even if you’re limiting it to 13 days.

you’re liable to end up in the ER with nervous exhaustion. no kidding. i’ll tell you all about it one day.

the more interesting story is that you get there because your husband, who has been running himself ragged trying to take care of you and not just noticing the remodel, but actually coordinating it, as well as working 13 hour days himself and trying to get a book finished, play with the dog, exercise the ferret, and fill in for a perpetually absent boss… you get there because he spikes a 103 degree fever, has rigors, chills, and a host of other symptoms that make you think he’s got meningitis.

and when you take him to the ER… lo and behold, he’s got meningitis (viral, not bacterial). yay differential diagnosis skills of the MPH. (as opposed to the differential diagnosis skills of the JD, who says to her friend, “you know, your wife is about to file divorce papers on your ass.”)

anyhoo. that’s been doings since the new year. i’m tired and going to sleep.

make for a cozy home. so does shutting the chimney damper.

awhile back, my laptop was OOC (out of commission) due to a broken dc-in board. jesse, a tech-head friend, was kind enough to fix it in return for some beer and a trout-and-asparagus dinner. for several months, all was well in the world of laloca’s laptop computing.

then, just this week, i noticed the strangest thing. my laptop wouldn’t connect to the house wireless. or rather, it would connect, but it would self-assign an IP address. it was driving me nuts. could verizon’s service really be so bad that the router was konking out at least twice a day?

well, i’m sure it could, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. because i discovered that my laptop connects just fine as long as there’s another computer in the house actively connected to the router.

strange, ain’t it?

###

other things i won’t have time to properly blog about:

• two problematic windows in the house were replaced, and a whole passel of storm windows were installed today. they’re burgundy, which is going to necessitate a repainting of the house’s trim. the difference on the first floor is amazing. suddenly, there’s no breeze.
• what with g and me working long hours, the dog’s getting more neurotic. i considered giving him a klonopin yesterday, but decided against it.
• i had to take 4 hours off work for a doctor’s appointment today (and managed to make it from south of 66 to walter reed in half an hour). i still put in an 8.5 hour work day.
• i should sleep more.

the plumber’s here.

the leak is coming from the ancient jacuzzi tub. only he can’t get to the leak from the gaping hole in the ceiling, because the copper pipe in question is tucked neatly up behind a whole mess of other pipes, both copper and PVC.

so the obvious solution was to shut off the water source to the tub. but the water to the tub has no shutoff.

so the next obvious solution is to shut off the main water pipe for the house. but the water shutoff for the whole house is nonfunctional, we discovered. it needs to be replaced.

from there, it’s the the shutoff valve at the street. which is corroded to the point of being nearly impossible to close. fortunately the plumbers were eventually able to close it.

the plumbers are now busting a hole in the platform surrounding the tub so they can get at the leaking pipes. tile chips and sawdust galore.

i’ve never liked that tub. other than it being a tub, and me liking bubble baths, of course.

my anxiety level: code orange.

i asked g if he heard it.

he went into the kitchen to check.

“no, i think it’s the living room,” i said.

next thing i know, he’s hollering for me. the drip drip drip drip is indeed in the living room. directly onto his (thankfully closed) computer. he was leaning over the ‘puter to shield it. i unplugged everything. grabbed the ‘puter. then the monitor. and the lamp and the printer.

snagged the crab pot from where it had been sitting next to the fireplace. put on the desk under the leak. climbed up with a razor to slice through the smallish piece of drywall that was visibly wet. didn’t count on opening up the fos de iguaçu. really didn’t count on rotten floorboards/ceiling struts tumbling down onto my noggin.

but both did.

*sigh* and g? he realized the entire book he’s been working on (publisher deadline: later this month) is on his ‘puter, with no backup. i think that’ll change tomorrow.

you’ll need a chainsaw to cut through the anxiety in this household tonight.

recent doings in these parts, now that we’ve resigned ourselves to the architectural horror that is our new neighboring home (complete with clay lion heads adorning the front doors and a garage door that looks like it belongs on a barn):

we had our boundaries surveyed. turns out the fence between us and our rear neighbors is, at one point, four and a half feet into our property. and this spring, said rear neighbors poured a concrete slab one foot from said fence as the foundation for a shed. we’re planning on tearing down the existing fence, and erecting one a few inches inside our side of the property line, to match the lovely fences we had erected when the architectural horror went up.

so they’re busy next door jackhammering away at the concrete slab, so we can put up our fence.

so kind of them.

oh, yeah - and the maintenance/repair of ten of our windows is going to run us slightly over six grand, which all said isn’t horrible, but does mean that i should get off my duff and get re-employed.

and snuffy is licking my laptop in sympathy. great pooch, ¿no?

and by “everything” i mean “wallpaper.”