Leaky Toilet

Ok. Here's the deal. Two mornings in a row, there is a puddle of water outside the bathroom door. We automatically assume that someone spilled something right there but in the exact same spot? I eye the dog. Could she possibly be that clever that she has figured out a way to get out of her kennel, pee on the floor, and get back into the kennel, and LOCK IT behind her? (until the locking behind her part, I was believing it, but she chews underwear, so I think not.). I turn suspiciously to my husband. (EASY NOW! EEWWW! GROSS!). He put a new "thingy" on the faucet outside. Could he have done something that would cause a pipe in the wall to bubble up from the floor? While more believable than the dog, I still hesitate to accuse him. He put the thing on with out any tools, so is it possible to do harm?
The floor the the bathroom is not wet. Or is it? I move a cupboard and sure enough, there is a trail of water, flowing down the floor from under the toilet, to puddle under the carpet in the hall. We have a leak. At the very least, a sweaty toilet. So my hero, steps into gear, maneuvers an emergency water receptacle, (bucket) under the worst of the leak, throws down towels, gets out the fans, and starts drying the area. It is 10:35 p.m. I say that the leak can be dealt with tomorrow, tell the kids to go to bed, and because the wall to the boys room and the bathroom, back up to each other, I check the carpet in there room. Yeah, its wet too. I tell the boy that when they get home from school, they will have to pull the carpet back, and dry that out. My husband is in full on Handy Man mode, so he says, not to worry, he will do it in the morning after the kids go to school.
The next morning I go into the boys room and am assaulted by the smell of cat pee. Once you smell it, you know it. We got rid of the cats because they pee'd on the carpet in the living room (Too fat to get over the dutchdoor to the litter box, I guess), and even though they have been gone for months, we are now reminded of them again. I guess they got the last laugh, or meow as it were. My husband says the smell is that of mildew.
"No, that's cat pee."
"No Mildew. See?" He holds up a green sock as proof. The proof is in the fact that the socks original color was white. (Ok, dingy white! So! I don't use all Tempa CHEER!).

Here's the problem. Has my house smelled like this, and I was just used to it? Is this the reason that my Mom moved out?

My God, we are pigs. I was amazed by the amount of clothes that was under the boys bed. I have sent them in there countless times to get all that stuff out from there, and I thought that they had, as I do enough laundry to cloth a small nation, say Luxembourg. How could this stuff still be in there? I admit, I avoid going into the boys room at all cost. I send in my daughter, my husband, who ever I can, because if you were to see this room, you would call child protective on me so fast, I wouldn't have time to hide!

We call it the drawing room, as the boys have drawn on the walls.....A lot. Times three.

There are no curtains on the windows. Just a lonely bent curtain rod, that just hangs there, a reminder of days gone by. We gave up and just painted the windows for privacy. That is after we had to reinforce them with contact paper as I replaced 3 windows already.

The dressers are tied to the wall. With clothes line.

We had peg board on the end of the bed to keep my youngest off the top bunk and jumping into a pile of bedding on the floor, as he spun the ceiling fan while he soared through the air. The peg board came down we he got in touch with his Monkey side, and figured out how to get to the top bunk by bouncing from the bottom bunk, up and over there rail. ( I see a future gold medal in the Olympics...).

The border of cute little bears going on a picnic have no faces, and various other body parts missing.

Tell me again why I have three of them?

Anyway, my husband is going to fix the toilet this weekend. I have been busy checking the balance on my credit card so that I can pay someone to come over and get the triple weekend rate to fix the toilet after my husband realizes that owning channel locks and a snake, does not make you a plumber.

Pray for us.

Why I work

You know, as I was sitting at work last night at 8:30, eating pizza, I realized that I was very near to explaining to a co-worker the reasons I work. As I do not want to tarnish my image (which isn't a very good one), I shut up, left work and went home and looked at myself hard in the mirror. I know the surface reason is very easy. I need the money. But why? Why do I need to work to get more money? Because I have a lot of bills, including 2 credit cards, a line of credit, and a home equity loan, 2 car payments and a furniture store card. Why do I owe so much on these? Well, because I spend money. (The cars are essential, sort of, I guess we could take the bus, but for lugging kids and groceries, you can't beat it!) The home equity loan was to pay off the credit card bills, and it did. But I ran them up again. So the whole heart of my problem is the credit card bills. I work to pay off credit card debt.
So lets look at my credit card debt. Why do I owe so much? It starts out small, we all know it. "I'll just buy this now, and pay the balance off on the next statement." That's what we tell ourselves. But I find that I "buy" things all the time! Retail therapy. I will buy this to cheer me up. Why do I need to be cheered up? Because I'm missing something. What am I missing? That is really at the heart of this. What am I missing that I feel that I have to buy thing to replace it? Not food, I get plenty of that! (whole nother blog!). Sleep? I don't get enough of that, but as I haven't bought a new bed in 15 years, its probably not at the core of my problem. I used to think it was because I felt that my husband was ignoring me, and that if I bought these things to make me appear more attractive, he would pay more attention to me. Well, maybe that is the reason, but it didn't work. My husband works 2 jobs as well and when he doesn't work, he sleeps. So no matter how attractive I try to be, I'm not meeting my goal. To be honest, I don't think it matters to me anymore whether I am attracting him or not. When we do talk we are at that stage of the mundane. When we go out, we talk about the kids, home repairs, briefly about work, and then we just look at each other. He couldn't tell you one thing that I am interested in, or couldn't I tell you anything about him. We are comfortable being acquaintances.

Maybe that is the problem. My identity is wrapped up in who I am to other people, not who I am. I am subconsciously trying to reassert who I am by buying things, rather than being who I need to be. Wow. Absorb that. That's kind of deep for me this early in the morning.

Or it could just be that I like to spend money.

Would that really be so bad?

Packing for Florida

Hi. We’re back. I have a few stories about our trip but the first one I want to share is how Angus helped us by packing his and his brother back packs. You know, help out where he can, to lighten our load. This is what he pack:
Angus's Backpack
7 pairs of Shorts
Sweatpants
Turtleneck shirt
3 short sleeve shirts
2 1/2 pairs of socks
3 pairs of underwear
pajama's
Art pad
markers
Book, "Captain Underpants"
A plush Star
slippers
Chapstick
Stuart Little action figure
swimming trunks
toothbrush

Douglas’s Backpack (Angus packed it)
2 pair of jeans
Toothbrush
3 long sleeve shirts
5 pairs of shorts
Swimming trunks
Highlighter (1?)
No socks, underwear, or pj’s

We did repack them, but good job! He remembered the toothbrushes and the highlighter!