Wednesday, May 18, 2011

my perfect vehicle springs a leak...

so today . . . it rained.

IT RAINED!!! does anyone know that it is already the middle of may?!?!? we should not be having rain. we should be having lovely sunshin-y days, the kind of days that make you want to skip work and lay in the backyard under a tree with a book. that's may! not dashing from the house to the car, juggling bags and drinks and car keys and trying to find an umbrella...

of course if my car was in the garage where it belongs, this wouldn't be such an issue. but right now, my car is living out in the cold.

my car is living out in the cold, because the hot water heater is leaking. it is a small drip, but small drips add up! and since the hot water heater is in the garage, leaking creates issues. you may remember the last time there was water in the garage... my poor car paid the price! so the first thing i did when i noticed the leak was to move my car out of the garage and onto the driveway!

the second thing i did was to move all of the boxes of stuff that had the hot water heater surrounded, out into the main area of the garage to dry out.

and that's about as far as i got. i thought maybe i would just start my sorting and packing and getting rid of stuff with those boxes. but then i got busy... and so the boxes still sit in the garage where my car belongs, while my car languishes in the driveway...

...which might be ok, if we were having our normal weather. but it is RAINING!! which would still be ok, if the roof of my car didn't have a couple of tiny cracks in it.

oh yes, my most perfect car has two small cracks in the top. apparently there are two stress points on my convertible top. they have been reinforced, but i put the top up and down all the time. up and down and up and down. i noticed that it was showing some wear and tear, but i had no idea how bad it was, until a couple of months ago when i was sitting in the car while putting the top up, AND I SAW BLUE SKY THROUGH MY ROOF! it was just a teeny, tiny sliver of sky, but still, it was sky!

after the initial shock, i didn't worry about it too much. it rarely rains here and my car is in the garage most of the time. and then i realized that rain was not my real enemy (well, it might be my enemy, but it never rains in california...) my real enemy was the car wash. and when i realized that i couldn't take my car to the car wash with those two tiny little cracks in the roof, i decided i needed to get it fixed! i sure didn't want to drive around in a dirty car--black cars should be shiny and sleek.

so i called to see how much a new roof would cost. and then i decided i wouldn't be getting a new roof for a while. for quite a while.

my next move was the internet, because you can find a solution for anything on the internet, right? so i started searching for ways to repair a vinyl roof top. and i found some, but they all looked like they had the potential to go disasterously wrong! and it was going to take time, which is something in kind of short supply for me right now. i needed a quick solution, because my car was dirty and scattered rain showers were in the forecast. i thought maybe i could use that wide, clear packing tape short term, but i couldn't get it to stick to the roof! the vinyl on my roof has a pebbled texture, and that clear tape just wouldn't seal.

so i came up with another solution.

duct tape.

yes duct tape. it is strong, it is water resistant, and i already had some in the garage. i am of the opinion that you can fix just about anything with duct tape. so i got out my scissors and my roll of duct tape and headed for my car...

it was a pretty simple process to cut a piece of duct tape and cover the cracks in my roof. but as i surveyed my handiwork, i was not satisfied. my roof is black and the duct tape is silver. normally i like things that are silver, but this just looked tacky, tacky, tacky. this was not a perfect soution. i needed something else... something black... something like a black permanent marker...

did you know that if you want to color a piece of silver duct tape black, you have to move your black permanent marker slowly? because if you don't, it leaves little silver tracks...

well, it wasn't a perfect solution, but i thought at least it would keep the water out until i could decide what to do. it rained a little bit, and my car stayed dry inside, so i thought maybe this was going to work!

and then we had a sunny day. and another sunny day. and a hot sunny day. and then a whole week of hot sunny days. and that is when i learned that duct tape adhesive sort of melts in the heat, because it wasn't long before my customized duct tape had loosened enough to blow off my roof. so now, not only was my roof back to being at the mercy of any passing water, but as a bonus, there were big white rectangles of leftover duct tape adhesive on my roof!

i tried to get it off, but it was soooo sticky! and it had melted down into the spaces between the pebbled texture of the vinyl--not enough to seal the cracks of course, just enough to make a big ugly mess.

i gave up. it hardly ever rains anyway, and i decided i would just have to drive around with a dirty car until i could save up $2,500 for a new roof!!!

and then, a couple of weeks ago while i was at school, rollie somehow miraculously removed all that icky adhesive, washed the car, and temporarily repaired the cracks. with electrical tape. black electrical tape. black electrical tape that also eventually fell off the roof, but at least any adhesive residue is black. it was a brilliant solution.

so my car is once again waterproof. i hope. because while the rain is supposed to end today, i am thinking my baby needs a bath!

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

inspection day!

so today . . . was our house inspection--not of the house we live in (thank goodness!) but of the house we want to buy...

this house has had me on a roller coaster. the first time i saw it, i liked it. but then i wasn't sure. then rollie saw it, and he loved it! and i liked it even better the second time. but i still wasn't sure...

(of course, it took me so long to make a decision about a new camera that rollie just finally bought me one. i fear that buying a house is going to be the same.)

and then the husband refused to sign our offer. and i thought, "ok, maybe this isn't the house for us after all..." but i was kind of sad about it. and then the wife said, "oh nonononono! he is not going to mess this up! he will sign those papers if i have get a judge to order him to do it!" (ok well those might not have been her exact words--i don't know what her exact words were--but it must have been something like that.) so we waited for the judge to rule. and i worried that someone else would swoop in and steal the house away from us, because by then i had decided it was the only house for us! and if we didn't get it, i was going to be seriously bummed!

but no one swooped in, and the judge ruled, and then the ball was back in our court. so we scheduled the inspection and got excited to see the house again! and then the sellers said we had to move the inspection a few days. and then i got impatient and irritated by their shenanigans! (at least, i thought it was shenanigans. maybe it was just circumstances, but it felt like shenanigans to me!) and so we waited through another weekend... and hoped that it was going to be ok...

but while we were waiting, again, our realtor emailed us the report from a home inspection that had been done last october. she told us that after the home inspection, those prospective buyers had backed out. oh great. now i was back to thinking that maybe this wasn't going to be our house after all. maybe it had insurmountable issues. maybe there really was a dead body buried under the deck...

maybe i should just pretend i was shopping for a camera and let rollie choose one for me.

which brings us to today. finally, we were going to get back into the house for a closer look. i had my clipboard. i had a 25 foot measuring tape. i had paint chip samples. i had my camera. i was prepared to document that house to within an inch of it's life! and i was excited. i was done waiting. it was time to spring into action and buy a house!

and then i got there...

rollie was already there with our realtor and the inspector. i took diandra in to show her around, and was quickly met by the the seller's sister (you know, the one who was "sick") who decided that i should not be let loose in the house unattended. she was not in a very good mood. this spoiled my plan. and my fun. i don't think she wants to sell the house, either--which of course makes me determined to get it!

i know, i am perverse.

with the seller's sister there (who, it turns out, really was probably sick--she still didn't look so good,) i didn't feel all that comfortable wandering about measuring things and looking at paint chips. so instead of spending two hours preparing, in detail, my plans for redecorating, i followed rollie and the inspector, surreptitiously measuring windows and floors and closets as i could, and then trying to remember the numbers in my head until i could note them in my phone. because while i started out with a clipboard, i had left it in the car. thankfully i still had my 25 foot tape measure and my camera in my purse...

as i listened to the inspector talk, i started swinging back to the "maybe this isn't the house for us" camp. because although he wasn't finding anything major, there sure was a lot of little stuff that needed to be taken care of. and it just sounded like a lot of work! and it made me irritated that we were spending so much money on a house and still had to fix it up!

when the inspection was over, the inspector said that it was a good house--no red flags. it was safe to go ahead and buy it. so i think we will. the location is good. it has lots of space and light. and the kitchen is awesome! (i know, you think it will be wasted on me, but maybe i will start cooking more often...) we should get the full report tomorrow, and then we will start making lists and scheduling workers and planning color schemes and looking at plants and prioritizing it all...

...because now i am very firmly back in the "this is definitely the only house for us" camp! i love it! so i am getting off the roller coaster now and heading to home depot.

i'm pretty sure that before we are done, rubio's is not going to be the only place where they know us by name ;-)

Sunday, May 15, 2011

some weeks i laugh, some weeks i come unglued...

so today . . . i realized i haven't blogged in several days. again. i've been a little distracted lately...

we need to buy a house. like right now. after looking at several, we put an offer in on one that we liked. the owners finally accepted and signed our offer, but it took a court order to make it happen. and time. we have spent a lot of time just waiting. but finally their signatures are on the right lines...

this was no simple task. first the wife signed, but the husband wouldn't. so the wife took him to court and the judge ordered him to sign. so he did. but not on the same document as the wife. or on the correct line--he signed on the buyer's signature line, not the seller's...

i'm starting to think that he doesn't really want to sell this house...

but the judge ordered the papers to be signed last monday. so we scheduled the home inspection for friday afternoon. we were pretty excited. we made a plan. rollie was going to follow the inspector around so he understood all the technical "inspectory" stuff, and i was going to take photos like crazy and measure everything! because we want to have new windows installed upstairs, and some grass put in the back yard, and some carpeting possibly replaced. and we will need window coverings and a security system. so if i take pictures and get measurements, we can have all that scheduled as soon as we know when we will get the keys!

which was a great idea, until we got the call on wednesday saying the home inspection had to be postponed, because the husband's sister, who is living in the house with their parents, was sick. and apparently was planning to be sick through the weekend. so we had to put all our excitement on hold for four more days...

four more days is an eternity to me right now. patience is not one of my virtues. in fact, patience doesn't even try to hang out with my other virtues! (hey! i have other virtues... i'm sure i do...) so of course, all i have been able to think about since wednesday was the house. and not being able to see it. and mentally placing furniture in it without knowing if it would actually fit. and wondering if milo will be able to haul his chubby little body up the stairs since they aren't carpeted. and worrying that the inspection will uncover insurmountable issues and propel us back to square one! and we will have lost three weeks in the process! and we will have to live in a tent in the park!

this is why i haven't blogged. i am not so much funny right now, as sort of starting to come apart at the seams.

and i don't have time to come apart at the seams, because buying a new house is not the only thing in my life right now! i wish it was!! but it isn't...

school is winding up for the year in just five weeks. open house is next weekend, which means producing copious amounts of amazing artwork, mounting it, and hanging it on the walls. which means taking down all the stuff the kids have been randomly taping up for the last several weeks. which seems kind of backwards to me... so now i have to decide how to incorporate the amazing artwork i am sure we are going to do this week, with the "artwork" they have been producing on their own that they are so proud of, and display it all! and clean the room from top to bottom. and prepare my presentation for prospective kindergarten students. AND complete the curriculum that we have to complete this week. and then spend four hours at school on saturday morning AT the open house...

oh, and create a photo album of one of diandra's weddings for an impatient bride. i say impatient, but she is just excited to get her album. and we promised it to her by the weekend, so i have to get busy! i should have started it weeks ago, especially since i am using a new program to create it which will take time to figure out. but as i said, i've been a little distracted...

and then, assuming we get to do the inspection tuesday afternoon, you know where my mind is going to go... it is going to go into house fixing overdrive!! and then there will be the packing to do. and now i am freaked out about packing anything, because after the cock roach blog, my mom said to be careful that we didn't take any WITH us!! YIKES!! i hadn't even thought of that! so now i am afraid to pack my boxes in case those sneaky bugs (and i'm not really sure they should be called bugs, because they are waaaay to big to be squashed...) try to hitch a ride and move with us!

and so, i haven't blogged much this week. i didn't think you would enjoy hearing me whine about my life every day. so, to spare you, i just crammed it all into this one whiny blog that covered the whole week.

lucky you ;-)

Sunday, May 8, 2011

so today . . . i've procrastinated too long and now it is late and my eyes are closing...

i had a nice mother's day. and i want to tell you about it, really i do. in fact, i have the blog about 1/3 written. but my brain is turning to oatmeal. and i have to get up in the morning and go to work. and it is the mother's day blog, so i want it to be good! so rather than stay up for another hour (which is probably how long it would take me to write it, as tired as i am,) i am going to bed now. i will finish the mother's day blog tomorrow and just post it under today's date--because i can manipulate the date and time of posting, you know ;-) and then i will also post a regular blog tomorrow... providing something blogworthy happens...

... and if nothing interesting happens, i guess i could always let a cricket loose in diandra's room...

;-)

mother's day meals

***disclaimer***
although there is some humor in today's blog, it is NOT going to measure up to the cock roach story. i'm sorry, but that kind of hilarity doesn't happen every day. however, that doesn't mean you won't smile once or twice...

so today
. . . was mother's day. normally mother's day for me is all about a day spent shopping with my daughter. but not this year. this year all the drama revolved around food...

it started at lunch. diandra was busy until later in the day, so rollie and i had lunch at tgifriday's. although we eat out a lot, we rarely go to tgifriday's. i don't know why--i love the food there, and we go right past it on our way to rubios... but since today was mother's day, i got to choose the restaurant. this meant we were NOT eating at rubios--we were going to eat someplace where you got to actually hold a menu, and you didn't have to order standing up.

i am not averse to eating holiday meals at fast food places, but i just wanted to go someplace different today. when i got to the restaurant, rollie was already sitting at a table. yes, i said table. i looked around. there were empty booths, but for some reason they made him sit at a table... and it was noisy in that part of the restaurant--no cushy booths to soak up the sound, i guess. i sat with him for a couple of minutes and realized that if we stayed there, i was not going to hear a word he said. and more importantly, he was not going to hear a word i said!! so we asked if we could move to a booth, and were quickly moved... into the bar.
although we don't drink, i don't usually mind sitting in the bar. usually it is dark and quiet there, and you get pretty good service. i thought it might be an especially good idea today, since it was mother's day and the restaurant was probably soon going to be swarming with children and dads taking mom out to lunch. but not in the bar. in the bar, it was going to be nice and quiet and child-free...

we perused our menus and made our lunch selections. the waitress brought us our cokes with lemon wedges. and then a funny thing happened... suddenly i was surrounded by basketball players wearing purple and gold! yes, the evil lakers had invaded my mother's day lunch!!

i don't know why i hadn't noticed the giant tv screens when we sat down. (this is rollie, making an "L" with his fingers. i always thought this was the universal symbol for "loser," but he tells me it is for "lakers." today, as it turns out, it meant both...) i guess, since they were mounted high on the walls and were each showing something different, they just didn't register with my brain. but when they were all suddenly tuned to the same station, and the volume was cranked up, my brain sat up and took notice.

somebody, somewhere, who probably lives thousands of miles away from their mother, had scheduled game 4 of the second round of playoff games for mother's day, and the evil lakers were down 0-3.

just my luck! mother's day, and everyone in that restaurant was trying to get a look at that game! because this was not just another game. this was big. this was "win it now or go home" time. and we had the best seat in the house--well, the best seat if you are a laker fan. which i am not. we were surrounded by eight big screen tvs, all playing the game simultaneously. on mother's day!!!

i weighed my options. oh, i had options, all right... i could pick up my diet coke and move as far away from those tvs as i could get, but then i would be back to the noisy, child-filled part of the restaurant. i could demand that rollie totally ignore the game and focus on ME--after all, it was mother's day! but realistically there was no way he could avoid those eight giant tv screens. i could politely ask if they could turn just ONE giant screen to shopping tv :-) yeah, i'm sure they would do that...

i opted to stay where i was, eat my delicious food, and ignore the evil lakers. which i did.

shortly after we got home i got a text from diandra. she was going to be gone longer than she had thought, which was ok with me--i found i was pretty sleepy (probably from staying up too late the night before,) and a nap sounded like a great idea! which it was.

by the time diandra got home, we had decided to hang out in the family room with our computers and the tv and the big bag of snacks that she had brought home! yes, it was going to be a goooood mother's day! but after decimating the contents of the bag from 7-11 (which had a few surprises in it,) we thought maybe we should eat some real food. you know, to kind of dilute the amount of sugar we had just eaten... this meant a trip somewhere...

i wanted jack in the box. diandra didn't know what she wanted--all she knew was that she didn't want jack in the box. she finally settled on el pollo loco, and off we went. and everything was fine, until we were sitting in the drive-thru lane at el pollo loco. because the car ahead of us had a wienerschnitzel hotdog on it's antenna, and that's when diandra said, "we never think of wienerschnitzel when we are deciding where to eat!" "do you want wienerschnitzel?" i asked her. "yes, i think i do!" she said.

well, this was just great! there we were, boxed in at the drive through at el pollo loco, and neither of us wanted to eat there! i thought we might just refuse to order and then drive right on out the other side, but that seemed sort of rude. and yet, neither of us wanted their food!! so when it was my turn to order, i found myself ordering a diet coke. and that is all.

we drove back past our house to wienerschnitzel. i thought. until diandra said, "where are you going?!?!?" "to wienerschitzel! isn't that where you wanted to go?" "yes," she said, "but you are going the wrong way!!" "no i'm not! it is just up here a little further, by the gas station." "NO," she said, "it is over by target!"

ok, there is a wienerschnitzel over by target, but i had forgotten about that one. and now we were almost to the other one. but the one by target is closer to jack in the box, so we ended up turning around and going back, again, the way we had just come...

you would think gas didn't cost almost $4.50...

there was some discussion as to how we were going to get to that wienerschnitzel, but after a couple of nearly wrong turns we found ourselves in the drive-thru lane.

i've only eaten at wienerschnitzel a couple of times. i mean, i can make a chili dog at home! i don't need to go out for that. but by now we had been gone for over half an hour, and i was getting hungry! so i just decided to get my food from wienerschnitzel and save jack in the box for another day.

as diandra pulled out her debit card, she said, "you are a cheap date." i took this to mean that it wasn't expensive to feed me. "well," i said, "cheap dates get asked out again." this is my way of thinking--i would rather eat at jack in the box (or wienerschnitzel or el pollo loco or even mcdonald's) several times than at a really swanky restaurant once. so i guess i am a cheap date.

not that i don't like to eat at nice restaurants, but it is a lot of money to spend if it turns out you don't like it...

or if a whole basketball team shows up to try to ruin your mother's day lunch!!

Friday, May 6, 2011

an uninvited "guest"

so today . . . the cock roach is dead. rollie must be home.

rollie left on tuesday for kansas city. he had to attend some meetings with all the other new guys doing the same job he is doing, but in different parts of the country. now that he has actually been doing the job for three months, i guess it was finally time for some training...Italic

and so, diandra and i were home alone.

i don't mind being home alone. i never really feel like i am alone anyway, because of our two pups. and this time i had the added advantage of having diandra living with us--which is a situation that i am not going to be able to enjoy much longer. because at the end of the summer her husband will come home from kuwait, and then i am pretty sure she isn't going to be living with me any more! so i was looking forward to having some fun with my daughter while rollie was gone...

...and then i heard the scream. "MOM!!!!! THERE'S A COCK ROACH IN MY ROOM!!!!!!!" (believe me, the uppercase letters and exclamation points are not an exaggeration!)

this is not the first time we have found a cock roach in her room. this is the second time. in a month.

the last time we found one, rollie was gone too. diandra saw it on her dresser, behind a box, among some envelopes. and that's when she screamed. i went running up to her room, but when she showed me where she had seen it, i did not know how we were going to trap it, because it wasn't on a flat surface. and those things are hard to trap even when they are on the floor! then i remembered how our preschool director had sprayed a spider with an aerosol substance to kill it, so i said to diandra, "go get some hairspray!" she looked at me like i had lost my mind! i explained what we were going to do with the hairspray, but she said, "what if it doesn't kill it--what if it just makes it mad!!" an interesting idea. i wasn't sure i wanted to deal with an angry cock roach. what would an angry cock roach do? it occurred to me that it might resort to flying to escape. i said to diandra, "ok, maybe we shouldn't do that. it might try to fly away." "IT MIGHT TRY TO FLY AWAY?!?!?! COCK ROACHES CAN FLY?!?!?!?"

oops. perhaps i should not have mentioned that to her, because this resulted in some hysterical crying. now she had one more thing to worry about. "GET IT, MOM, GET IT!!!" i was trying to get it. but i didn't want it to get me! and it was not cooperating!

i finally decided that we were going to have to get it off the dresser and out into the hall, where we could trap it, (because it didn't look like killing it was going to be an option for us if we couldn't hairspray it to death,) but we were going to have to accomplish this without losing visual contact--which is not that easy, when you remember that cock roaches prefer the dark and will just keep trying to move out of the light. and they are fast! i thought about it for a minute and formulated a plan.

"ok," i said, "here's what we are going to do. i am going to try to flick the cock roach off your dresser toward the door. hopefully he will ricochet off the door and out into the hallway. then hopefully i can get out there and trap him under the cup before he scuttles away." "BUT WHAT IF HE STARTS FLYING?!?!?!" she said. and then the hysterical crying began again.

this was not going well. i was not all that confident in my abilities, but somebody had to be brave here, and it was clearly not going to be diandra. it was time to be the mom! "diandra, get on the bed! you should be safe there!" the bed was behind me, the exact opposite direction i was hoping to fling the cock roach. she was not reassured. "BUT WHAT IF IT GETS ME?!?!?!?" she said. and so i said, "put that blanket over your head. then if it does fly, it can't get you." i said it couldn't get her, and technically it couldn't, but i'm telling you... if that thing flew into the blanket she now had over her head she would feel it, and i did not think there were enough sedatives in the world to calm her down if that happened!

i carefully positioned myself between diandra and the cock roach, and prepared to fling it against the door and into the hallway. i just prayed it wouldn't fly and land on me. because if that happened, i was pretty sure i would scream or faint or something, and if that happened, i would probably just die, because there was no way diandra was coming out from under that blanket to save me! she would probably run screaming from the room and leave me there, passed out, at the mercy of the giant cock roach...

the cock roach climbed up on an envelope. i lifted it, (the envelope, NOT the cock roach,) ready to fling, but it just sat there. so i slowly moved toward the hallway (yes, i had the heebie-jeebies--i could just feel it crawing on me...) and then it moved! i screamed and threw the envelope out into the hall. diandra screamed, and started crying again. i yelled at her, "GIVE ME THE CUP, GIVE ME THE CUP!" i was trying to maintain visual contact so that it wouldn't crawl under something and escape. she practically threw the cup at me, ran back into her bedroom, and closed the door--leaving me alone in the hallway with the cock roach...

clearly, we were not in this together. it was sink or swim. do or die. i was on my own...

i zeroed in on the cock roach. it attempted an escape--it headed for the bookcase and tried to crawl behind it. had it been successful, it would have evaded capture. but i did NOT want that thing loose in the house. if i didn't catch it, we were going to have to load up the dogs and head to the motel 6! so i kept pursuing it, until i finally managed to trap it under the cup.

and there it waited until rollie got home the next day.

which brings us to last tuesday night. again, rollie was out of town. and again, i heard the scream, "MOM!! THERE IS A COCK ROACH IN MY ROOM! AGAIN!! COME AND GET IT!!!" i grabbed the cock roach cup and headed up the stairs. diandra was on the bed crying. she was crying, because she had LOST visual contact and didn't know where the cock roach was.

i wanted to cry too. this was serious, people!! that thing could ambush us at any moment!!!

but i couldn't cry--i'm the mom. so i talked to her in soothing tones, moved her away from the danger zone, and started slowly moving things around, sort of hoping i would find it. (and sort of hoping i wouldn't! because if i found it, i was going to have to try to trap it again. but if i didn't find it, it would be loose in the house! talk about being between a rock and a hard place...) and then diandra screamed, "THERE IT IS!" which resulted in me screaming, "WHERE?!?!?!" as i jumped up onto the bed with her. ( which, let's be honest here, was not going to save either one of us. this was a cock roach, not a mouse. and as we both now knew, cock roaches can fly!!!) she pointed, "RIGHT THERE!!" i slammed the cup down over the cock roach. i didn't even think, or gauge distances, or take into account the size and position of it's ridiculously long and creepily roving antenne--i just slammed that cup down and trapped it. it started running around and around and around the inside perimeter of the cup. this creeped us both out, so we ran out of the room and closed the door.

and left the cock roach there for three days until rollie came home.

i sort of figured it might just suffocate before rollie got to it. but it didn't. those things are tough! diandra, of course, had to occasionally go back into her room to get stuff, but there was NO WAY she was going to sleep in there. the cock roach was trapped on her dresser, right next to her bed! she said that every time she went in there, it was trying to dig it's way out!! now i had a whole new nightmare to deal with... because not only can cock roaches fly, they apparently can also dig!

i'm not sure we are ever letting rollie go out of town again. ever.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

my failed attempt at "teaching" humor...

so today . . . it occurs to me that five year olds just can't tell jokes...

"if april showers are may flowers, then what is it?"

"pilgrims. AHAHAHAHAHA!"

yes, the "hilarity" continues. i heard various versions of that joke all. day. long. i kept trying to correct them, and they kept mangling it. and it didn't matter how they told it, they always ended it with a big, fake laugh. and then i heard more "jokes," all of which also ended with big fake laughs. apparently they think a joke is just a question with an answer that is totally unrelated and is followed by a big fake laugh. i think the laugh is to indicate that they have just told you a joke... you know, in case you can't tell by how funny it is. or isn't.

and then it happened. nicholas told a real joke. correctly.

"knock! knock!"
"who's there?"
"orange."
"orange who?"

you know how it goes. he continued.

"knock! knock!"
"who's there?"
"orange."
"orange who?"

the little girl he had chosen as the victim for his joke was confused, and starting to lose interest. i was pulling for him, and hoping he would see he was losing her and just jump to the punchline. but he is five. he doesn't know how to read those social cues and respond yet. and whoever had taught him the joke had probably said to use "orange" three times. so he did.

"knock! knock!"
"who's there?"
"orange."
"orange WHO?"

"JUST TELL HER THE PUNCHLINE," i was thinking!! "QUICKLY BEFORE SHE RUINS YOUR PERFECTLY RECITED JOKE!!!" he continued.

"knock! knock!"
"who's there?"
"banana."

wait a minute. that's not right. banana doesn't make any sense.

oh shoot. i am telling it wrong...

AHAHAHAHAHA!

(note: this is a true story. i did not realize i had messed up the joke until the end of the blog. i thought about going back to correct it, so that it would be told the way it actually happened, but i decided my mistake was funnier than the story i was trying to tell, so i left it. nicholas, however, did tell the joke correctly. sadly, the little girl did not "get" it. maybe that's why five year olds don't waste any brain cells trying to remember jokes correctly...)

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

the waiting game...

so today . . . this is not going to be a funny blog--just warning you, so that you can go watch a sitcom if you need a good laugh today.

we are trying to buy a house. trying. we have looked at 19 houses and finally settled on the first house i saw. so we made an offer. and the owners made a counter offer. and we responded to their counter offer. and that is where the trouble began...

sadly, the people selling the house are getting divorced. sadly for them, and sadly for us. because, for them, coming to terms on the sale of this house is not just about selling a house--it's also about the end of a relationship. and sadly for us, because until we come to terms, we don't have a house.

we really like this house. it is spacious. it has had some pretty extensive updating--wood laminate floors, new windows, cherry kitchen cabinets, granite counter tops, and a huge covered area in the back yard. it has four bedrooms and three bathrooms, a living room and a family room. the location is good, and if they agree to our price, then it is also a good deal.

if they agree to our price...

because even though house prices are down, housing is still not what you could call "affordable" in southern california. the bank has agreed to loan us an adequate amount to purchase a home, but those funds are not unlimited. this house has been on the market for several months. they are anxious to sell it. i'm sure their realtor is anxious to sell it. we are anxious to buy it. we are their first serious offer. the wife has signed off on it, but the husband thinks they can get more money. and maybe they could, if they didn't need to sell it fairly quickly. but they do. they are out of resources. they are supporting separate households, as well as this house. they need to sell it.

and yet, the husband hangs on...

the wife has had enough. she wants to sell the house and be done with it. she is taking the husband to court to force him to agree to our offer. on friday, the realtors said if we could just wait a little bit, they thought it would all work out.

and so, we waited...

they went to court today, but the husband's attorney didn't show up. so they scheduled a second court appearance for next monday. in the mean time, the husband wants to send us another counter offer, but the wife won't sign. she doesn't want to play his games. she wants to sell the house and be done with it.

and so we wait some more...and hope that no one else makes a higher offer while we are waiting...

we said we were not going to fall in love with a house until the papers were signed. we said we could walk away if our offer wasn't accepted. we said when we found the right house, everything would work out.

and that was all true. at first...

but now we have been thinking about this house for a couple of weeks. as we were deciding if this was the house for us, i started mentally arranging my furniture in it, and choosing colors for the bedrooms, and thinking about what kind of plants i wanted to put in the backyard. i've driven past it after school and clocked how far it was to t.j. maxx (which, btw, is dangerously close...) and so now, it kind of feels like it is supposed to be our house. it feels like home.

but maybe it isn't...

maybe there is something we don't know about this house. maybe the plumbing is about to fall through the ceiling. or maybe the neighborhood is filled with obnoxious teenagers (i'm not saying all teenagers are obnoxious, but you know that some of them are. and what if they all live in this particular neighborhood. with their obnoxious parents. and their obnoxious cars. and their obnoxious pets... wait, i guess i'd better back off on the obnoxious pet part--we have two noisy dogs...) maybe when the big earthquake hits, the gigantic pine trees that the city so "graciously" planted in front of the house are going to fall over onto the house and destroy it. maybe there is a dead body buried under the deck...

i trust God, even when it comes to buying a house. i know He has a plan, i just don't always know what it is! but i trust Him. so i am trying to be patient and philosophical about it. i'm trying not to worry. i'm trying to pack up my emotions until monday. i'm trusting that if this is our house, He will protect it for us. i'm trusting that if this isn't our house, He will help me to let it go. i'm trusting that if someone else comes in with a higher offer, i can keep from second-guessing our decisions.

patience and trust. two virtues that are not natural to my personality.

yeah, i am not loving my life right now...

Monday, May 2, 2011

randomness

so today . . . has been quite a day...

9:30 a.m.
it started at school when we were doing calendar time. the kids were sitting on the rug, and we were talking about going from april to may. the cutout that said "april" had raindrops on it, and the cutout that said "may" had daisies on it. so i decided it was time to teach my students a joke, a real joke. you know, the kind where the punchline is actually related to the rest of it!

first we talked about the saying "april showers bring may flowers." and then i said, "so, if april showers bring may flowers, what do mayflowers bring?" i knew they would probably not guess the correct answer, but their responses were so serious! i guess they thought we were doing science, because their answers ranged from more flowers to sunshine to bees. i finally said, "ok, but this is going to be a joke. so the answer is going to be funny." they were clearly lost. (i was just glad no one said "poop," because they seem to find that hilarious!) so i finally just told them the answer. and they just looked at me blankly. then i explained why it was funny. they still didn't laugh. i said, "it's a joke!" but apparently when you are six, it is not...

however, apparently when you are six, a lot of other stuff is--like "if you mix pink and red you get orange." and then, just in case i didn't "get" it, "that's a joke!" yes, they may not have understood the joke i tried to teach them, but they understood the part where you clarify at the end by saying, "it's a joke!" i'll bet i heard that phrase 85 times today--and it ALWAYS followed some random, nonsensical group of sentences. always.

10:45 a.m.
later in the morning, i had a few free minutes, so i decided to check my email. of course, my computer would not connect to the internet... but never fear! my iphone4 was near!! so i hit the email button, and it promptly informed me that my username or password were incorrect...

... oh yeah... probably because yesterday when i was trying to log in to hotmail on my new computer (which doesn't know any of my passwords yet!) i was desperate to get my email, so i reset my password. which meant now i couldn't access it on either my old netbook or my phone, unless i knew the new password. which, of course, i didn't. because when i was resetting the password, i told the new computer to remember it, not realizing that now my other electronics would be locked out...

ok, no problem. i would just wait until i got home to check my email. i need to get used to using the new computer anyway. (for some reason when i get new electronic equipment, it takes me a while to actually USE it. i get so impatient waiting for it to get here, and then when it finally arrives, i don't want to use it, for fear of messing it up.)

11:45 a.m.
there were birthday cupcakes in the kitchen. i knew this, because it was nicholas's birthday, and his mom told me she had brought two trays of cupcakes (that's 24 for those of you who never buy cupcakes.) we usually have our birthday parties in the afternoon after naptime, but i was thinking about what i was going to have for lunch, and wondering if maybe i should have a salad since birthday cupcakes were on the agenda. but you never know what the birthday cupcakes are going to be like. sometimes parents buy white cupcakes with white frosting, thinking it won't be quite so bad for the kids. i think, at least chocolate cupcakes have cocoa in them. which comes from a bean. which makes it a vegetable. but clearly many people do not share my view...

i decided that while i was on my break, i should check out the cupcake situation. so i went into the kitchen to see if we were going to have delicious chocolate cupcakes or icky white ones, only to find out that we might not have any cupcakes at all...

...because there had been a communication mix up, and the birthday cupcakes had already been mostly eaten by the classmates of nicholas's younger sister! there were only nine cupcakes left, and we have 14-16 children in the afternoon! thankfully the remaining cupcakes were chocolate, but there weren't enough! as we sorted out the incident, it quickly became clear that we needed more cupcakes. so during lunch, ms. amy went to the store... and she brought back RED VELVET CUPCAKES!!

(can i just say, i was pretty sure the kids were going to be eating the chocolate cupcakes, because i was pretty sure i was going to be eating a red velvet one!)

5:45 p.m.
after dinner i went to walmart to "pick up a few things." you know how that goes. mostly i needed toilet paper and small milk bones, but walmart was out of small milk bones. we need small milk bones at our house, because our dogs have trained me that if i am leaving to go anywhere, they get a milk bone...

it started out as sort of comfort food when they were left home alone--whoever was the last one out of the house would give them each a milk bone. but it seemed as though i was almost always the last one out of the house (i'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact that i am almost always running late!) so usually i was the one handing out the treat. and now things have evolved... now, rollie and diandra can both be home, but if i head toward the garage door, i will find at least one pup standing there, wagging their tail, looking up at me with big bright eyes, just hoping for a treat.

i cannot resist. i'm sure that is why they do it!

and so, we go through a lot of milk bones. but today i had to settle for liver snaps. the dogs will probably be thrilled!

6:30 p.m.
i got this text: "are you ever coming home?" i got this text from diandra just as i was pulling into the driveway, so i didn't bother to respond. i had told her i wouldn't be coming straight home from work today, but she had forgotten. we talked for a few minutes and then i changed my clothes--into my flannel pajama pants...

my flannel pajama pants are a leftover from a christmas present 5 or 6 years ago. they are navy blue with dogs wearing santa hats all over them. and they are a men's size large. i wear them at home sometimes because they are soooo comfortable, but only my family gets the dubious "pleasure" of seeing them. they are perfect for an evening of sitting on the couch and working on computer stuff. which is what i was doing when diandra said she didn't feel so good, but she thought a soda might help...

well, that's just great, but we didn't have any soda, because i still am trying to drink less of it by not keeping it in the house! she thought maybe we could go to 7-11, but in case you didn't know it, 7-11 does not have drive thru window, and i had just put on my flannel pajama pants! i thought that maybe if i ignored her, she would forget about it. but she didn't.

"so, when are we going," Italicshe said.

"i don't want to go," i replied. " i don't want to put on pants." she just looked at me.

"how about this," i said, "you can go in, and i'll drive the getaway car."

"are you suggesting we rob the 7-11," she asked?

"no," i said, "i don't think i drive well enough--we would get caught."

we went to 7-11. i waited in the car while diandra went in. she came out and got back into the car, and i was going to show her how i could drive a getaway car (you know, just in case she ever needed me to,) but i was thwarted by traffic--i couldn't even get out of the parking lot!

i suddenly realized that i didn't feel all that great either. i said, "i have a headache. it's all the pressure of driving the getaway car."

diandra said, "you're going 30 miles an hour!!"

"hey!" i said, "i am not! i'm going 38!" and then my precious darling daughter, the one who i was driving around with $4.29 gas in my tank said, "you're the worst getaway car driver ever."

i thought maybe she was still fixated on my speed. "well," i said, "we could put the top down--then it would feel like we were going faster! and anyway, i can't be the worst getaway car driver ever, because i've never been caught!"

"NO ONE IS CHASING US!!!" she said. technically true, but still...

8:00 p.m.
when we got home, i finally got settled in with my computer. it was time to check my email. i went to hotmail... and it asked me for my password... the password i just changed yesterday... that i can't remember... (yeah, i guess i didn't tell the new computer to remember it either.) so i look at my options, and the first one offers to email me my password.

who writes these things!?!?! how am i going to get an email with my password in it, when i can't check my email, because i don't know my password!!! i am ranting about this to diandra, when she says, "don't you have another email address?"

oh. i didn't think of that...

but it doesn't matter anyway, because my other electronics don't know it, so i need to reset it anyway. i click the "reset password" button, answer the security question (which thankfully i CAN remember the answer to,) and proceed to try to think of yet another password...

and btw, if i can reset the password by answering the security question, why can't they just tell me the password if i answer the security question correctly?? what's the difference?!?!?

11:51 p.m.
my headache is worse. i still don't have a house (oh, you don't even want to know what is happening there--although, as i am sure i will eventually blog it, you will eventually find out...) it is going to be HOT tomorrow. and the next day. and i still have seven weeks of school left. and i still can't get into my email...

but the good news is, if any of you need a getaway car driver, i might be available. i might even put the top down...