My Own Personal Iron Man — November 3, 2009

David and I went shopping at Walmart over the weekend.  We try to go once every two weeks, but it still seems like we end up getting tons of stuff each time.  (We used to only go once a month.  oh.  Those were marathon trips!  Sometimes the entire cart would be so full that you’d either have to re-arrange it all to make it all fit, or else you’d just have to start carrying stuff.  I used to do those trips by myself too!  I felt crazy trying to maneuver that cart around with stuff just launching off of it.  We have gotten a lot more disciplined about not waiting so long, thankfully.)

Anyway, David loves to try to get all the groceries inside the house as fast as possible.  I usually go on and unlock the door, and then I am in charge of opening and closing the door quickly to avoid letting bugs inside. 

This time, I had the door standing wide open because I was standing in the doorway contemplating a little lizard that was on the outside door frame.  We were up close and personal and I was admiring his toes.  I kept hearing David rattling bags in the trunk and I knew he was taking a lot time to bring in all our stuff. 

I had turned to go back in when I heard, “Get the camera!!!!” and “UUUGGGHHHH!!!  ROOOARRRR!!!!” (hehehe)

I turned around and saw this:

Our entire shopping experience came inside in one trip!  heheheehhehe!!  That’s pretty nice!  I don’t know how he did that because we had all manner of heavy stuff too.  (I had to laugh at the lopsidedness of it all, but he didn’t want to squash the grapes.) 

See, this is why I like to go shopping with him!  It makes everything so easy!!!! 

 

Snuggie Update!

Brooke sent me this amazing link this week:  It’s a Snuggie pattern!  Oh!  That is so cool.  I could have a Snuggie with polar bears on it!  I would love that.  There’s even a button on these so you can close them and make them a little more fitted.  I am really lamenting my lack of sewing talent right now. 

Giraffes, Potatoes, and Old Planks — November 1, 2009

This past Wednesday we got to do one of my favorite things:  the Louisiana State Fair!  I think I enjoy going to the fair more than anything to do with the upcoming holiday season.  The Fair is like taking a personal vacation all to ourselves, and I think I like the food better than most Thanksgivings and Christmases, hehe.  Fair food for Thanksgiving!  Now that’s an idea whose time has come!

 We were very lucky to actually get sunshine!  The weather was perfect, and much better than the usual “doom and gloom” weather and rain we’ve had lately. 

 

Our first stop, as usual, was food.  We got to go to our usual “log cabin” stand (I think it’s named ‘Beef and Taters’) where they sell Tater Twisters.  YUM.  We got tons of melted cheese to go with it too.  (And sweet tea, of course!)  Neither of us had really eaten all day (I had only had an apple), so we were ready to chow down.

 ahhhh…..the potatoes that dreams are made of……

 We did a lot of walking around, but spent most of our time in the zoo.  Oh, my giraffes!  My favorites!  We got there at the perfect time too. The giraffe area is usually very crowded, but when we went it wasn’t crowded at all!  We got to have both giraffes to ourselves most of the time we were there!  We usually have to share, so that was lots of fun.  I could have fed them a zillion more carrots.    David even petted them in between their carrot snacks. 

(I think it looks like David and the giraffe are having a conversation here.)

 

We watched the pig races (which we do every year, but they are funny enough that we still enjoy it), we saw African Acrobats (amazing!!!!!) and some of a freestyle Motocross show (that was scary, but neat.)

 We did lots of walking around and sniffing of food.  Next year, I will get that huge strawberry shortcake!  It looked wonderful.  I am surprised we didn’t eat more!  We had already kind of set ourselves on going to Olive Garden after we left the fair though, so I guess we both were trying not to fill up too much.  (Olive Garden is a good antithesis to all the fair food! We’ve gone there after the fair more than once.  One year we went to Cheeburger Cheeburger afterwards, and although it was yummy, it was just a LOT of fried food for one day.) 

 We ended the day with a walk through the carnival section.  We don’t really ride anything, but I love walking through there just to see what all they have.  Yes, I will admit it - I have a darker reason for enjoying our walk through that area.  I love to see them working on the rides, hehhehe!  It just makes me cringe and laugh at the same time when things are being repaired right there in the middle of the fair. 

 Wednesday was a great example.  There was one ride we walked up to just as people were exiting.  As soon as the last person got off, two maintenance men rushed in!  One was doing something to what looked like one of the main hubs of the ride, and the other was working on what looked like wiring under one of the seating sections.  Everyone standing in line was just watching all this happen like it had no affect on them whatsoever!  hehe!  We got away from that one pretty fast so we could be far away from any flying loose parts when the ride started up again.

 We finished our walk by going through the KiddieLand.  hahah, poor kids.

 Look at this nice innocent little ride! 

 

 

 AND now….look at the base of the ride!

 

 Can’t you just hear the conversation? 

  ”Hey Frank, this thing ain’t stable, no matter what I do.”

 ”Here JimBob, just throw these old board scraps under there.  It’ll be just fine.” 

 

ooooh, what a neat Funhouse with a slide at the end!

 

AHHHHHH!!!!  

 We loved our day! I am already ready for our trip next year! 

Oh! Neat!! — October 28, 2009

I finally heard back from the Nielsen people!  I am excited!

They sent this huge envelope with “TV Viewing Diaries” in it.  We start our diary tomorrow.  There’s a grid for every hour of the day for the whole week starting this Thursday and ending next Thursday.  You have to enter information on what show you watched (and network) and the time you watched it.  It also has a slot for what time you watched something from your dvr.  (Thank goodness that was there — we never watch anything live anymore!)

There is also an essay section in the back of the book where you can make comments about tv in general, or shows you particularly like.  I ran out of room!  I had a lot more to say, but I was writing as small as possible and there still wasn’t enough space.  I only got to mention Ellen and “Glee.”  They need to send me an online form to fill out so I can ramble as long as I need to.

But, here’s the best part!  They sent more cash!  Remember, I got $2 in cash last time just for filling out the initial survey.  I got $30 this time.  This is just great.  I love getting paid for things I would be doing anyway. 

So, we will be spending the next week filling out our little tv diary.  I think they’re going to laugh at us.  “Why does she get up at 4 in the morning just to watch Ellen?”  (treadmill time.)  “My gosh, do they ever sleep?”   

I am wondering now if maybe next week is “Sweeps Week.”  There has to be some sense of timing behind all of this.

I Have Joined the Snuggie Cult! — October 24, 2009

(Tim, I apologize to you in advance….)

My Snuggie has taken over my life!  I am so in love with this thing.  Really, I had no idea it would be as useful as what it is.  hehehe!  CVS is selling them like crazy, so I am sure they are flying off the shelves everywhere else too.  It makes me smile because I spent all last year laughing my head off at the commercials, and then at some point, the Snuggie invaded my brain and it started sounding like a good idea…. 

I bought mine a few weeks ago at CVS.  Since then, I’ve been recommending them to everyone who stops to even look at the display.  One lady bought one last week for her Halloween costume!  Ha, I just love that.  She says she teaches here in Marshall and she’s going to wear that to school on Friday.  She says her students just crack up at even the idea!  I told her that she’s going to really get addicted to it.  She laughed like she didn’t believe me, but just wait.  I will ask her about it the next time I see her, and I know what her answer is going to be. 

Here’s how you know the level of the cult infiltration:  I even dreamed about my Snuggie last night!  I dreamed that I was getting ready to go to work and was just about the head out the door.  David was walking behind me to see me out.  I opened the door, and right there in the yard was a small white tiger and an alligator!  I was scared!  I let David see them and said, “How am I going to get to the car?!  One of them will get me!”  He responded that the tiger and the alligator were probably more interested in attacking each other than they were in attacking me, so not to worry. 

I got up the nerve and started out the door, determined to make a run for it.  The alligator saw me and started towards me.  I was scared!  David ran back into the house to get something to fight off the alligator.  He came out and I looked back to see that he had stuffed my Snuggie into the alligator’s mouth!  Now I was outraged:

“Why did you give the alligator MY Snuggie!” 

“I had to do something to get him away from you!” he yelled back. 

I got to the car and turned back to see the alligator chomping away on my Camel “Designer Series” Snuggie.  I could even see a sleeve hanging out from between its teeth. 

So, my Snuggie has saved my life!  Can you say the same about your favorite blanket? 

NPH Look-Alike Sighting at CVS! — October 21, 2009

There is a Neil Patrick Harris look-alike in Marshall.  This is so exciting! I was at CVS last night changing out the paper in the photo lab (and attempting not to tear up the machine.)  Shane was standing nearby, and all of a sudden I hear, “ATHENE!!Athene!!Athene!!!!!ATHENE!!!”  I looked up and he goes, “LOOK!  It’s Neil!!!!” 

 

The guy looked just like NPH!  He had the same shaped face, nearly exactly. It was amazing.  I think the world went silent there for a second as we both watched him walk out of view.  hehehe.  I turned to Shane and told him that he had to get a picture of the guy.  He didn’t think he could get a good picture without being completely obvious, but I told him that he had to try.  He stood there for a second longer, and then wandered off in the direction of our “Neil.” 

 

I went back to the register and started waiting on customers, but I kept my eyes up just in case NPH came back through.  I saw him on his way out!  He might have been somewhat shorter and his hair was kind of curly, but other than that, he was a perfect Neil. 

 

As Neil walked out the door, Shane came slinking around the corner and back into my view.  He had the most hilarious grin on his face that I just couldn’t help but to giggle, even in the face of the customer in front of me (who clearly had no idea what was going on.)  Alas, he didn’t get a picture.  Next time!!!!! 

 

 

I seem to have developed an odd problem as of late.  Two times in the past week, I’ve had to deal with lecherous old men!  ew!  This has happened at both jobs now, strangely enough. 

What really gets me is their strategy!  It’s always about money.  hehe!  Both of them wanted to go into full details about how they had this surplus of money and how financially stable they were.  That was weird.  I mean, at what point in life do you take stock of your situation and say, “hmmm….my looks could be fading, but you know what?  I’m financially viable!  Yes, that’s the angle I’m going to use with females from now on!!!” 

The problem is that both of these men are people I see fairly frequently. It’s going to be awkward in the future!

 

I was telling David about my mis-adventures.  His response, “Oh, I am sure it’s your bifocals.  They see them and go, ‘ooooh, that girl’s just my speed.’” 

I was laughing too much to even be insulted!  hehehe. 

 

Celebrating the Best of the Worst — October 12, 2009

I am really getting behind on posting stuff. 

 A couple of Fridays ago (the night before our small flood, in fact), David called me on his way home from Walmart. “Hey! Be ready to go when I get home!  I have to show you something hilarious!”

Oh, those are my favorite phone calls.  I love it when we find something funny or neat to show one another.  I found a place on the way to Henderson where they’re digging out coal/lignite.  It’s neato!  I passed by there one day on the loooong way to Lufkin, but we just haven’t had a chance to go see it together.  We need to hurry and go before it starts getting dark early again.  The piles of dirt are huge and it’s the closest thing to mountains we’ll ever see in this area.

 So this night, I was waiting for him right by the door.  I hopped in the car and he told me we were going to go see something in the Walmart parking lot.  We get there, and this is what we see:

 

 

 

Wow.  These people added an actual porch onto their RV.  It had shingles and everything!  They also had murals painted all around it, including these panda bears. It was pretty amazing, hahaha.  I had never seen anything like that before!  David took tons of pictures. I can’t believe the people inside didn’t come out to see what was going on (unless maybe they’re used to it, ha.) 

 We got home only to discover that the pictures didn’t turn out.  It was just too dark.  That was pretty disappointing.  We went back early Saturday morning, but the RV people were already gone. 

 We thought we had missed our chance to get the picture, but then we found greatness in the form of People of Walmart.  Our RV was on there!  Apparently our porch-building friends make a habit of camping out at Walmart stores all over the place.  (Not a huge surprise.)  We loved it AND that website.  David feels like he sees a lot of those people on a daily basis.  The website is not exactly family oriented, but it’s so hilarious that you can’t help but enjoy.

Cake Wrecks Update! — October 7, 2009

Jen from Cake Wrecks got everything posted about her Plano book signing!  It is in today’s posting on her blog.  “The Day the Tour Stood Still.” She went into a lot more detail about everything that’s been going on with her this week.  It’s been pretty crazy!

There are also a lot of great pictures on there from that day.  If you look closely at the first crowd shot, you can see all of us! We were in the second row.    There’s also a great picture of Brooke’s apron too. 

I love today’s post!  I am so glad for them that things have gotten better.  Go read it!

“But I Don’t Even LIKE Cake!!…” — October 4, 2009

This is going to be long and rambling…. 

Cake and I go way back.  I just feel the need to share this anecdote again before describing our wonderfully cake-themed weekend. 

Awhile back at the bank, one of our co-workers decided that everyone deserved to get a cake on her birthday.  Okay.  I can go along with that idea.  I have long harbored a moderately secret rage about buying bakery cakes because I just think they are ridiculously over-priced.  The 9X13-ish sheet cake (with mostly boring designs) at most bakeries costs upwards of $20.  I think that’s crazy.  You can buy a box of cake mix and some icing and yield the same amount of cake for like pocket change if you do it yourself.  So, each time a birthday rolled around, I had to hold in my grumbling about taking up the collection for the cake, etc. 

Well, this particular day when this particular idea was born was extremely crazy.  We were very busy, everything was complicated, and I wasn’t really in the mindset to handle anymore information.  The co-worker was completely pleased with her idea and just couldn’t wait to get rolling with it.  She was like, “Let’s each give $3 a month for the cake fund!!!!  Then we’ll always have cake money!!”

Last straw in my overloaded brain.

I was like, “WHAT!  Three dollars a month!  I DON’T EVEN LIKE CAKE…..that much…..” 

Of course, this is an out and out lie.  If you know me much at all, you know that cake is a 24/7 event for me.  I adore it.  I can’t even listen to someone singing “Happy Birthday” in a movie without getting my mouth all ready for the cake and the icing.  Yum!  Cake rocks my world.  My problem was that the only thing I could think about was having to pay a $36 a year ‘membership fee’ for the cake fund when I would only possibly get 7 or 8 pieces of cake a year.  hehehehe. 

Thanks to my big mouth, the cake fund project died that day.  I felt embarrassed at my outburst, but I was even more sad at the potential loss of cake.  It certainly wouldn’t appear on MY birthday now. 

So, with the understanding of my joy for cake (and, often, just food in general), there should be no surprise that one of my favorite blogs is Cake Wrecks.  The idea of posting pictures of “professional cakes gone horribly, hilariously wrong” just tickles me.  The blog’s creator, Jen, also has this perfect sense of humor about these cakes, so her commentary often makes the cakes just that much more interesting.

So, Brooke and I had been reading this blog for a while now, with the occasional email exchange, “Did you see Cake Wrecks today??”  or, “I can’t believe she referenced this on Cake Wrecks!!! Brilliant!” 

Well, I had gotten behind a bit on Jen’s blog a little while back.  Suddenly I got an email from Brooke, “Jen is coming to Plano for a book signing!   It’s on a Saturday! You have to come!”

“Yes!  Yes, I have to go!”  We could visit Brooke and Russell, enjoy Plano again, AND get to meet Jen and do the book signing.  That is a perfect world right there.  We had several months to plan it all out, which was great because it is such an act of Congress to align our schedules correctly.  We got it all together, and the day finally arrived for us to take off.

Friday morning at the bank was a great start to a cake-y weekend.  Without our cake fund at work, birthdays are weirdly sporadic celebratory event.  Some people get nothing.  Some people get homemade-from-scratch cakes.  Some people get cookies.  Some people get chips.  It’s very random.  (and it’s my fault, heehee.) One of my co-workers had a birthday coming up over the weekend, so another person decided to make a cake for her.  Then, one of the managers in the lobby (who didn’t know about the first cake) decided to make TWO cakes for her, both different flavors.  Suddenly on Friday morning all three cakes converge at the drive up.  My life was seeming to be nearly perfect.  How does it work out I get to eat cake to kickoff my weekend of celebrating cake!  Well, the manager decided that there was no need for three cakes, so one went back to the lobby.  I got one slab of cake in the morning (mandarin orange cake), and another slab of cake in the afternoon (red velvet.)  It was the greatest day at work so far, haha!

After I got off from work, we took off for Plano!  We need to do more short trips like that!  It was fun.  We ate at Black-Eyed Pea on the way there.    (I have to throw that in because I love that place and I have no idea why we don’t have one close by.)

Once we got to Brooke’s house (with super easy directions that we will use from now on), we stayed up forever talking and catching up.  She had a spare IKEA catalog for me, yay!, which I certainly need for our upcoming furniture search.  I immediately went through a little bit of it and landed on a tv stand that I really liked.  The TV stand didn’t get any kind of water damage, of course, since it wasn’t anywhere near the same room with the water, but during all the moving of furniture for the re-carpeting it kind of took a beating.  The poor thing is actually pretty old.  It’s moved around a lot with me — back and forth between Marshall and Texas City at least a few times when I would change dorms, it lived in Webster for a while, back to TC, and then back to Marshall.  It’s well-traveled and it’s just getting rickety.  The carpet episode kind of pushed it too far and our tv is just heavy anyway.  When I found the stand in the IKEA catalog that I liked, we decided we would try to go by there on Sat if we had time.  (I cannot fathom a life where you can just run over to IKEA as casually as if you were going to Walmart for milk.  Jealousy begins here.)

So, Saturday morning, we got up and went to Brooklyn’s Pizzeria for lunch (it was good!!!  I loved my eggplant parmigiana sandwich) and then on to Legacy Books for the signing.  We got there quite early because we knew it would be very crowded.  We were smart!  There weren’t but a few people there when we got there, but the small number of chairs they had very quickly were filled.  We had a great view, unlike everyone trying to crowd in at the back. 

This is Brooke and me holding our soon-to-be signed books before everything got started. 

The book signing was amazing!  I was scared that maybe I had built myself up too much, but it was just as great as I expected.  Jen was hilarious.  She was just as sweet and quick-witted in real life as she is on her blog.  She did a funny Q&A session, and the whole audience was really into it.  It was fun to get to hear her responses because it was like hearing someone read her blog aloud.  I loved it!  That could have gone on forever!!

Jen thinking of a witty answer. 

Once that ended, they did a quick judging of a “recreate a classic cake wreck on a cupcake” contest.  Some of the entries were just amazing, but hard to explain if you haven’t read the blog.  I’ll put a few on here and link to the stories.  They’re all worth the read. 

“Oh Mama!”  (This one got first prize, as evidenced by her newly acquired apron-prize.)

The Naked Mohawk-Baby Carrot Jockeys  This cake became so popular that it’s in all her logos for the blog now.

The Flash Drive Cake (David’s personal favorite). 

They also served us cake!  It was very good.  It was way too crowded to actually see the cake from where we were standing, so David held the camera up, took a picture, and hoped for the best.  We were in line forever for it, and there for a while it looked like the cake-t0-people ratio was off, hehe, but there actually was plenty to go around.

When it came time for us to get our books signed, we were basically the last in line.  (They had everyone organized in groups, but we were glad to be last because we got extra time!)  Brooke had made this amazing apron for Jen. It was SO cool.  I was very impressed and Jen was amazed and so surprised.  It was really fun to get to meet her!

Brooke with Jen and her new apron.

Our signed books!!

Group picture!  Brooke, Russell, Jen, David, and me.   

We were so excited when we left.  It was great!!

Before we left Plano, Brooke and Russell took us back to IKEA.  We ate dinner there. (I LOVE stores that have restaurants inside. Our K-Mart in Texas City had a cafe and I thought it was so cool to eat and shop in the same place.  IKEA food is excellent, too.  I would love to eat there often.)  Then we got our tv stand to take home with us!  I can’t wait to see it completed.  It’s going to be beautiful! 

Yay!  It was a fast trip, but it was also quite relaxing.    I can’t wait for another opportunity to head that direction!

PS – I know this last pic is fuzzy, but I loved it, so I’m posting it anyway. 

We Can Breathe Again!! — September 28, 2009

Oh, so much is happening!

I took myself for a short furniture shopping expedition in Marshall this past week.  I went by myself since David was at work, but goodness, I will not choose to do that again!  My idea of good quality shopping is to be able to go into a store, have every single salesperson ignore my presence unless I approach THEM, concentrate on what I’m doing, and then sneak out quietly when I’m finished.  You just can’t do that with furniture shopping!  You get attacked before you even reach the door by commission-based salespeople who just want to chat you to death. 

Of course, my first problem could possibly be that I started in Marshall.  I really think that David and I mostly bypassed Marshall when we were doing our furniture shopping originally.  I can see why!  Several of the stores I visited were scary!!  Wait, most of the stores I visited were scary!  Some had clearly not changed their looks since they opened way back when, and one store was so completely crowded up that you couldn’t even see the furniture.  It was like the headboard, footboard, and dresser were just smushed up together along the next headboard, footboard, and dresser  — it was just stacked up — not even put together.  There was one tiny pathway that went the length of the store and nothing was arranged where you could actually see it.  You couldn’t even touch most of the stuff because it was too far away.  (And the salesguy was creeping me out, especially when I realized that he’d have to get out of my way on that tiny pathway if I had any hope of getting out of there!)

But I must share my most memorable experience, and that was at Clark’s Furniture downtown.  This store was super old.  They sell a little bit of everything, and as I walked in, I was greeted by a nice salesguy.  (He was the only person all day who actually seemed nice, and not the “slimy-nice” feeling everyone else was generating.)  He started taking me to the bedroom furniture section, and I realized the entire store was on different levels.  You were going up or down ramps or steps to move from section to section.  He showed me one really pretty bedroom suite that I liked, and then he said, “We have more downstairs.”  I probably looked confused, but sure enough, there was a steep flight of stairs just beyond where we were standing.  A basement!  Whoa!  (And whoa to the total lack of ADA compliance in this entire building setup.)

I followed him down the steps which led to a closed door.  He opened the door and started turning on the lights down there.  (Creepy)  The first thing I saw as I got into the basement was a huge rat trap right there by the stairs.  EW!!!  You know that thing is NOT there just for fun.  *shiver*  The basement was as uneven as the rest of the building.  It was like being in a mine!  It was damp with low ceilings, and most of the air circulation came from fans that were about as old as the building.  I can’t believe that is their largest showroom for their bedroom furniture, but they had a lot of it down there.  The guy turned the lights back out as we headed back up the stairs. 

I had to take David back to Clark’s.  He could not miss that particular adventure!  In reality, I do like one bedroom suite he showed us.  (Upstairs and safely away from huge rat traps.)  I made us go back downstairs though, hehehe.  I just wanted David to see the craziness that made up the only good furniture stop we made all day!!!!!!!

I think we need to start venturing to Longview.

We have our new carpet now!  Oh, I am so completely glad that is behind us!  We got the new carpet on Saturday.  David and two of our landlord’s relatives came on Friday afternoon to move furniture and to rip up the old carpet.  Every single piece of stuff we owned was stacked up in the kitchen.  It was solidly stacked from floor to ceiling and it was crazy looking.  We clearly couldn’t stay there on Friday night with everything like that.  I was at work when all that was going on, but luckily I have a smart husband who had the foresight to collect some clothes and such for me before all our drawers became inaccessible and we couldn’t find anything.  We came by here after I got off at 10 that night so I could see everything.  My gosh, it was sad!!  Everything was in this huge pile, our rooms were just messy concrete floors and it was very sad.  We both spend so much time cleaning and straightening our little place, and seeing it messy and forlorn was pretty depressing. 

I spent the entire day Saturday at work (both places) and that’s when they came to put in the new carpet and move furniture back in place.  David worked so hard.  I couldn’t believe all he accomplished!  Not only did he get practically everything back in place, he also cleaned everything up!  He vacuumed every possible surface to help the dust situation, he took our large items (like our comforters) to the laundromat to wash them, he bleached what he could……it was amazing.  I came home to a nearly back-to-normal situation!  I am lucky! 

I am still adjusting to this new carpet!  Our old carpet was a very light cream color — nearly white — and our new stuff is almost exactly the color of Hershey’s chocolate.  It’s still a surprise when I come in and see it, hehe.  I am starting to really like it though.  Maybe now we can stop investing so heavily in Resolve carpet cleaner.  Yay!  Plus, now all the carpet in the place matches.  Before this, everything was the same color, but the bedrooms had carpet of a much cheaper material than what was in the living room.

We were able to keep all our old furniture, at least for now.  After my shopping expedition last week, we agreed that if we could keep our stuff temporarily, we would, until we had time to really do things correctly so we could get something that we’d be happy with.  I am thankful for that!  Now we can actually enjoy shopping instead of just trying to hurry up. 

So, yay.  We are moving forward once again!  We are so happy to have less stress!  Last week about wore us out. 

We Are Drowning! — September 24, 2009

Saturday morning….about 5:00 am….

I was sleeping quite peacefully when I was suddenly awakened to hear David talking loudly.  I could tell he was on the phone, but I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.  He came into the bedroom and says, “Get up…get up…get up…our neighbor’s apartment is flooding and it is coming in here through the walls.”

argghhh…… I get out of bed, and as soon as I put my feet on the carpeted floor, water starts soaking up my socks.  arggghhh, gross. 

David walked over to the people next door, and he comes back to say that water is just pouring out the door of their apartment.  Apparently the lady over there wasn’t home Friday evening, and at some point her water heater valve broke off and water just started pouring out.  Her entire place was flooded when she arrived home. 

They finally got the water turned off, so the water quit coming in, but both our bedrooms are along our adjacent wall to her house, so water soaked up the carpet for about 5 feet in each room.  (It never came into the bathroom, oddly enough, even though  it was on the same wall.)  It is squishy all along the walls, and then is just damp and gross as you move away from the wall.  The humidity levels are amazing.  (My hair……..!!)

So, we decided to just leave everything intact in the rooms since who knows how long the water had been coming in before we were aware of it.  All the furniture sitting along the wall had already been soaking up water, so no point in moving it now.  The landlord immediately decided to replace all the carpet in both our units, and they went ahead and took all hers up since it was completely soaked through.  They left ours since it wasn’t as bad, but we’re supposed to get our new carpet installed tomorrow.  Oh, tomorrow.  It’s going to be so bad.

So, luckily for us, we have renter’s insurance.  Everyone should have renter’s insurance!  It is cheap and one instance like this makes it so worth it, especially since nothing about this was our fault.  David called and talked to them and they said we should just go ahead and plan to throw everything away and start over.  We are going to take pictures as everything gets moved away from the walls so we can assess the damage and see where we are, exactly.  If it’s very bad, we’ll just have to live off the floor in these two rooms until we get new stuff because there’s nothing useful about putting soggy furniture back on new carpet. 

Actually, I’ve been very in denial about our potential loss of furniture.  I was hoping maybe we could somehow escape the absolute and “udder choas” that is certainly coming our way with this event.  My gosh.  We have so much stuff.  I was hoping maybe we could just keep what we had and it wouldn’t be too bad.  Well…..  Last night just before bed, I was looking at our nightstand and realized that it is already pulling apart by itself.  We haven’t even moved it yet.  So, I think it’s all doomed. 

So, starting tomorrow, we are going to be involved in a fate worse than moving!  At least with moving, you have plenty of time to plan ahead and make arrangements, and then once you get there, at least you have furniture with you to set up.  We will never find anything again.  I live a very organized life, and now it’s going to be scattered everywhere possible!  I am planning to spend as much of today as possible putting important things in easy-to-get-to places just in case.  Plus, our work schedules are out of control this weekend, so we won’t really have time to restore any order to our lives until who knows when!  David and I just keep sitting on the couch discussing everything, and every discussion ends in a huge ”ARGGGHHH!!!” and “WHYYYYY!!!!!!!”

Okay.  Let’s look at the positives:

1. Brand new carpet!  Yay!!!  That’s cool.

2. Brand new furniture.  That’s going to be fun once we get it.  We’re thinking about going a completely different direction with the office stuff this time. Maybe!

3.  I had a project on my eventual “to do” list that involved moving a bunch of furniture around in the bedroom so I could get behind everything and vacuum.  Well, I don’t have that worry anymore! 

Oh well.  We must remain calm and do the best we can.

In other news, Shane and I made a trip to Longview last night to do the walking trail there.  It was fun!  This is the same trail that David and I tried out this summer for the first time.  The trail is actually 6 miles long, but it is in a straight line instead of any type of loop, so you have to plan ahead as to where you will turn back since you have to walk back all the way….no cheating!  David and I went one day when it was very hot, but we still made it to the 1.5 mile marker before turning back, so 3 miles in the middle of a summer day is pretty good.

Shane and I weren’t sure how far we were willing to walk, but we figured we could at least do the 3 mile round trip.  It turned out that we had the perfect day to go.  It had been overcast all day and the temp was only slightly cool.  It sprinkled rain just a little bit, but it wasn’t really that humid.  (And nothing compared to the humidity of the house over the last few days, hehehe.) 

We were going at a pretty good pace, but we were still able to chat with each other, so we hit the 1.5 mile point before we even knew it.  We agreed to keep going to the next marker (they were marked at each 1/4 mile)….and then we passed the next one…and then the next one….and all of a sudden, we were at the end!  We couldn’t believe it!  We had a moment of rejoicing and then turned around to start back, since we now had three more miles to cover to get back to the car.  hehehe.

Those three miles went by just as quickly.  We never get to talk as much as we want to at CVS since there are always customers needing stuff, and since we’re actually expected to WORK when we’re there, for some silly reason.   The only small problem was that it started getting dark on us on the way back, and the trail is really not lit at night.  It was okay until the last about half mile when the trees were covering the path and we really couldn’t see that well. 

We were rounding the last curve when Shane suddenly jumped and kind of made this weird noise.  At the same moment, I felt something brush by my shoe.  My thought was, “Oh, please let that have been a stick!!”  He was still saying something, so I was like, “WHAT?  What!  What was it!!! Just tell me!!” 

“A frog!!!!  That was a frog!!”

Me:  “A FROG touched my foot!  It almost got on me!” 

I went into full on bug dance mode, complete with jumping.  He was having a similar meltdown, so I didn’t even feel foolish.  Then he looked over and saw another frog, and that was it.  We took off running at full speed.  hehehhehe. 

We will definitely have to go back and do that again.  Six miles!  That’s pretty impressive.  We were quite proud.  Next time, we will plan ahead of the darkness so the frogs of the world do not attack.