It Just Keeps Getting Better

A picture from a year ago, hasn't she grown!!

As a sequel to my earlier post , the saga continues.

After trying to get the water pressure tank on the house, I couldn't get it done. I called my brother the next day and he helped me put it on. I happily go into the house to turn my water on and.....no water. I am totally bummed and over the whole thing by now. After three trips to Home Depot, we have replaced the switchy thing and still nothing. My brother calls about 5 different plumbers and nobody can seem to come out to help even though they are on 24 hour call. I guess the rule is, they are open 24 hours but don't expect any help until the next day about mid day.

I had gotten a phone call from Regan's daycare that she is running a high temperature and so she is not allowed to come back to school on Thursday. Great.

On Thursday morning, I have a sick child and my brother comes over in the morning to help me deal with plumbers. After spending an entire day messing with them, they determine it is my pump that isn't working. The pump that is located about 100 feet underground. Not something I feel that I can even begin to do on my own. Lucky for me, they will fix it for the amount of $1295.oo. Oh, and they were very pleased to tell me that they accept credit cards. Isn't that generous of them?!?! What do I do at that point? I have got to have running water in the house. After they make the diagnosis and shock me into a stroke with the price tag, they have my water running about two hours later. I am obviously in the wrong business, that amounts to $647.50 an hour. It must be nice. Not sure how I'm going to dig myself out of the debt hole I have crawled into in the past year.

I go inside to enjoy water taps that actually have water coming out of them and I get a phone call from my mortgage company. They had the great news that I didn't pay my mortgage last month. I nicely explain to them that I did pay my mortgage last month, I do it online through my bank. We get disconnected in the middle of the conversation and I use that time to go check online to prove to them they were wrong. I still can not believe what a moronic thing I did. I paid two bills online last month through my bank. A credit card bill and my mortgage. I did the most genius thing of accidently switching the amounts so that my mortgage company got paid $200 and my credit card company got my mortgage payment. Ughhhh! Now I owe two months worth of payment on my mortgage. Not quite sure how I am going to come up with the cash for that one. They also reiterated some news that I had gotten in a lovely letter a couple of weeks ago. That lovely letter told me that with rising taxes, my escrow account is low and if I don't want my mortgage payment to go up $500 a month, I can pay them upfront $1900.00 and then my mortgage payment is only going up by $100 a month.

I think I need to start playing the lottery.

Today, I am home again with my sick little one because she can't quite kick the horrible cough and high temperature that everyone seems to be getting. Did I ever mention I am a contract employee and if I don't work, I don't get paid?!?!? Well, Regan and I are enjoying watching America's Next Top Model and eating popcorn when the chair slips out from underneath her and she nosedives into the coffee table. Even now, when I think of the sound it made it still makes me sick to my stomach. Her nose gushes blood for a minute or two and slows down to an ooze that allows me time to call the doctor. They take a message and tell me the nurse will call me back. About 15 minutes later, Regan and I are in the bathroom and I am trying to clean her up when the phone rings. I had left the phone in the living room so I run out to answer the phone when that person hangs up. I am walking back to the bathroom when I hear more screaming. I run to find that Regan had slammed her fingers in the door.

It gets even better! After I get her loved up on so that she calms down, the phone rings again and it is our favorite nurse, Betsy. After getting a history and finding out what happened, she and I decide I'll watch her for a couple of hours and if she shows signs of decreased awareness, etc, I'll bring her in that afternoon. As I am talking on the phone with Betsy, Regan is rocking the cat in her little rocking chair. The cat decides she has had enough of that and she jumps out of the chair. This takes Regan by surprise and she lets go of the chair only to have the back of it go slamming into her face.

Oh, what a couple of weeks! I really could do without all the drama!!

Help!! I'm Sinking!

Do you ever have that horrible feeling that you are sinking under a pile of things that needs to get done, that your house and appliances are playing tricks on you and laughing behind your back, and you just keep going under and under and under?!?!?

I have really felt that way for the past two weeks. About two months ago I gave in and got a second job working at an outpatient therapy clinic. The kids have been cute, the parents sane, and it has been better than when I was practically paying the newspaper to get the pleasure of spending hours in the sweltering heat bagging and throwing papers. In the past two weeks, I had to get Donald the cat spayed. Then my refrigerator decided to defrost and flood my kitchen floor. Then my internet went down for several days. My car who just celebrated it's 6th birthday with 167,000 miles has decided that it is going to get tempermental and only start when it wants to. Nothing like a little rush of excitement wondering if you are going to be stranded somewhere until your car decides that it will indeed turn over. I have spent two weekends at continuing ed courses that have been less than stimulating and have eaten up my weekends. My refrigerator decided to start working again and then promptly stopped working a second time right after I had bought some groceries to put inside of it. The final straw was last night when in the middle of a load of laundry my water suddenly stopped. I thought it was my washer and after pulling it apart, disconnecting the hoses to clean the little filters, then trying to clean out the hose I went into the kitchen to wash my hands. Dork that I am, I never thought it was a well problem until I realized that NONE of the water in my house was flowing. At this point it is about 1 in the morning and I wander outside with a flashlight to find that my water pressure system had imploded on itself. Not a good sign. I have never realized how much I use water until it is gone! At about 2 AM, I jimmy rig the pressure pump so that at least I have a trickle of water coming into the house. I guess it could be worse and I could have been in the shower with a soapy head of hair when it decided to stop! Oh, and on top of it all.....Regan has decided that this past week has been the time to pull out of her bag of tricks the most amazing temper tantrums with full blown body contorsions, foot stomping, hand slapping and the most annoying (like fingernails on a chalkboard) squealing and shrieking. I jinxed myself years ago when I would see kids misbehaving and saying that when I had kids, they would never misbehave like that! Why is it that they always wait until we are in public and it is even better when it is in a nice quiet place like the library?!?! Needless to say, we have taken many a trip to the car to discuss her behavior. This is a phase, right?!?!? Please, pretty please, tell me this phase will pass......and pass quickly!! Tonight, I got to go shopping........at Home Depot to spend $130 on a pressure pump. Nobody can tell me I don't know how to have a good time! I am not going to attempt to install it in the dark with a two year old alone in the house so wish me luck that I have a successful shower. If you see me tomorrow and my hair looks a little soapy, you'll know I didn't have the patience to sit for hours under the drip of my shower trying to rinse my hair!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!!

Happy Chinese New Year!! We celebrated Chinese New Year by going to the library and listening to a Chinese New Year story and making an origami rat (the Year of the Rat) and a dragon craft. We met another woman who had a little girl from the Hunan Province. It is such a small world because several months ago we had run into each other in a Wendy's bathroom!

Last weekend, we had another "free" trip to Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios. It was a good time.....Konnor got to ride all of his favorite rides and I even got to ride The Hulk. Unfortunately, we tried the babyswap option for the first time and it broke Regan's heart not to ride the rollercoaster.......but then, she hates the Caro Suessal and so I told her the rollercoaster was probably not going to be better. She wasn't buying it...