Half power

If I'd written about this yesterday, y'all would've thought I was kidding around, and I wish I were. But yesterday half the electrical wiring in our house decided to die. The fourth bedroom, Ike's room, and almost all of the living room is without power. I think it had something to do with the power outage + power surge that happened really early Sunday morning. Then I was plugging my computer setup back in later Sunday and heard some crackling. Then nothing in that room (the fourth bedroom) would turn on. And none of the circuit breakers were tripped either, which seems odd to me, since they're supposed to protect from surges, right? So anyway, we've got to get an electrician in here sometime. We've wanted to rewire this place pretty much since we first decided to buy it, but it's one of those things you want to choose to do, not need to do because half your wiring kicks the bucket.

Pest-free pants

I'm not exactly sure how, but a spot or two of cat piss got on a pair of my jeans. It wasn't that bad, so I figured I'd just Febreze them and toss 'em in the wash. A few days later, Ike and I were reorganizing the living room and investigating the spot on our new couch that had gotten cat piss on it. Over the past few days, I'd put some baking soda + water paste on the couch a few times and vacuumed it up, and the smell was pretty much gone.

Ike: "It's pretty good. I think it might just need to air out. You know, when you put the baking soda water on there, it's still wet and maybe some time left open would finish it off."
Marth: "Yeah, I think that's a good idea. But can I Febreze it? That should dry pretty quickly and might help the residual smell."
Ike: "Sure, I think that'd be fine."

I go grab the bottle of Febreze from the bathroom. Brandishing the bottle, I say to Ike...

Marth: "We really don't have much of this left."
Ike: "That's not Febreze."
Marth: "What?"
Ike: "That's soapy garlic water I use on my plants as a pest repellant."

*pause*

Ike: "Well, those jeans of yours probably don't have any spider mites on them."

Following this conversation, he relabeled the bottle. Now I need to find the actual Febreze.

Headaches

Rats
Sometimes I think the things in the attic might be larger than rats. I hear them moving around sometimes and they're louder (heavier) than I expect rats to sound. Other times they make rat-like noises and I'm reassured that our traps will catch the head of something instead of just the arm of something. We went up in the attic on Friday and our traps were empty. Ike moved them so they'd be against walls; perhaps we will be successful next time we check.

Cats
We've come to expect certain behaviors from Ceri. She is a very shy cat and is severely affected by separation anxiety or something when we go on vacations. So when we came home from traveling a week ago, we weren't surprised that she was freaking out. No, what surprised us was her insistence on hiding behind the stove whenever we left the house or went to sleep. Lucky for us, the stove doesn't have rigid gas pipes attached to it, so we can slide it out from the wall. It's still not fun to move a stove, though. We put a big piece of cardboard between the stove and the wall behind it, but we had to take it off when we bake things, and last night we forgot to replace it. She was back there again this morning, ugh. We've had to move it at least four times since coming back. If she gets back there again, I might just leave her and see what happens.

Drips
The CatGenie was dripping before we left; gotta see if that's still happening. It's had a bunch of other issues since then, so I forgot about the drip. The hall bathroom toilet tank has a leak, and the shower in that bathroom does, too. We know what's causing the shower one, though. The hot water knob is stripped, so it's hard/impossible to shut off completely. We have some new knobs for the hot water and for the bath/shower toggle. That knob hasn't worked properly in over a month, and it'll be nice to be able to use the bath function of the tub (even though I haven't taken a bath since I was was...what, 18?). I guess it'd just be useful for foot-soaking or something. Unrelated to leaks: Ike replaced the shower head, and the new one is huge and rain-like. I really like it.

Return to Sender

Today we got seven pieces of mail for seven people, none of whom live here. I suspect two of the addressees are the same person, because how many Lizas could have lived here before us, really? These people also have some obsession with fashion and fancy things. I have never received so many perfume sample cards in my life.

Also, there's a jury summons in that stack of mail, so I hope that gets to the right recipient in time. Eep.

Now with modern conveniences!

For now I'm classifying October weather here as comfortably bizarre. After previous chilly week, I thought we'd fully switched into Winter Ahead mode, but it seems I was wrong. This week has been positively delightful and bordering on (gasp) too warm. It's still 60°F and it's the middle of the night! So that's been nice.

What's been nicer? Clean, fresh from the dryer clothes. I'm not saying I was wearing dirty clothes. I'm just saying I was wearing dirty shirts. And sometimes dirty pants. But that's as far as it went. I swear.

Anyway! We have a washer and dryer and they both work well. The dryer works so well that it will dry your clothes forever or until your house loses power! We haven't touched the "more dry" setting because the "dry" setting is bloody hot enough as it is. The washer works just fine, but the piping for it is almost certainly where the Crawlspace Leak originated, seeing how the floor directly beneath the piping is discolored and the piping itself is in desperate need of some PVC cement. But it goes in a neat loop-di-loop, so it wins in cuteness.

So until Ike fixes the piping, he's got the water dumping into a trash can (a very nice trash can!) and then he's dumping it in the yard. The trash can has ambitions of becoming a rain barrel one day soon. And I think we can weave the hosing through the laundry wall and out to the backyard so the trash can won't be sitting between the washer and dryer like it is now.

The going price of a used large appliance is between $35 and $40. Not bad at all.

The fridge is in the kitchen now. I got to power lift it onto the cart in the kitchen, because even though my upper body strength pales in comparison to what it was five years ago, my quads still have it in them. Plus I was already on the right side of the fridge to lift, and Ike had a hell of a time keeping the cart steady on the other side. I really don't know which task was harder. And this doesn't make much sense without a schematic. So here:

I'm the one on the right with the nice legs.

I will say that having a fridge in the garage is a great incentive not to eat things from it. I bet it would be a weight loss supplement. Or you could move your whole kitchen into the garage! But then a chair would appear in the garage and you'd just end up there, slightly less comfortable, but eating as normal.

Can you tell it's late?

But wait there's more! Pictures! Since I know you like pictures. Here is one of the sheds on the side of the house. One of them looks like kid play house, but it's nice. Double pane windows (right? I think it has those), electricity, and a lockable door. The other one is directly to the right of the wooden one in the picture; if you look closely you can see the corrugated metal. It's much more of a shack-type shed. It's got an old, deteriorating wooden floor and it used to hold boxes of xylene products. *blink*

And here's one of the sunset, which I hardly notice since most of the windows on the west side of the house are high and/or small. But I caught a glimpse of it tonight while working, and I swear the clouds were a much more vibrant pink. The image is unedited (aside from resizing and cropping), so perhaps I didn't use the correct camera setting to capture the lovely colors. That electrical tower buzzes at night like a gigantic bug zapper. But you only hear it if you're outside, so it's not bad.

Goodnight!

All in

The asbestos guy made it seem like the ceilings would be incredibly ugly after the acoustic popcorn coating was removed, but in reality they're just flat and boring. Each room has a few scratches and inconsistencies, but it's definitely not cringe-worthy. I'm so glad we didn't drop more money on having them redone. I think we can refinish them ourselves (would that be with plaster? not sure of the materials needed yet).

All of our belongings are here. We moved in over a long, grueling weekend. My back has mostly recovered, but I still need to catch up on sleep. Since the asbestos removal involved all the ducts being taken out, we couldn't turn on the heat even if we wanted to (and since it's 44°F right now, I want to). Taking a shower at night has made the cold evenings much more bearable for me (especially considering my circulation issues). I'm all toasty before sleeping now, and I sleep more deeply.

The cats have settled in well. They love all the extra space and the windows. It's so much quieter here, too, and I think they appreciate that as much as I do.

This place doesn't really look like a home yet on the inside, but it feels like one.