Join Me in Snarkville

Did you know that rain was falling from the sky in Snarkville?  Oh yes, it is.  Seems that winter has finally hit and the TV stations are a twitter, what with all the sky falling and badness.  But this isn’t about the rain falling from the sky — this is about Frankenhouse.

You see, Frankenhouse yet again has proven why this is the house to love/hate.  It would seem that unknown to those of us who live here and oh, most of the normal people in the entire world, that our garage is not intended to be the nice dry space for the storage of random crap and at least one car.  Oh know.  Our garage is an integral  part of the drainage system of water from the backyard to the front.  Yes, who would have known.

I know now as I packed 7 plastic totes from wet cardboard boxes.  I know now as I bought a wet/dry vac (which were shockingly less money than I’d expected).  I know now that even my sandbags aren’t enough to stop (or slow) the flow of water THROUGH the garage.

Total damage is a full recycling bin of cardboard; a few random things that would have been discarded in the purge of ‘08 when we got to the garage; and a roll of brand new Christmas paper.

So, since I can’t see water without a twitch in my eye, I thought I’d leave you with a list of the other random events:

1. We had a parent teacher conference this week, nothing earth shattering came from it — other than my son seems not to be into cutting much and won’t write his name like he does for me at home.  Go figure.
2. We lost internet on Thursday night (our DSL modem went out) and while it is major since we run a business off that connection and I wouldn’t have wanted to be down for the night.  Prince calls me and tells me that we have “a MAJOR EMERGENCY” that demands my attention right now.  So, I offered my one and only solution — ‘go and buy a new modem and fix the dang thing.’  I am at my core a problem solver.
3. I had great plans for what the target of ‘the purge’ would be this weekend.  Never in my plan did it involve being parts of the garage late on Friday night.  However, in my moving things into plastic, I found a box that should have been sent to my kitchen when we moved in, because it contained recipes that I’ve been looking TWO years for.  I have since gone through that box and another one — put those items away and purged some other books in the process.
4. When asking a small boy child to entertain himself for a few minutes while Mommy and Daddy ‘access the damage’ (which is total code for grumping in each other’s general direction), he will wander into the office, grab a pair of scissors, and proceed to cut up things on Daddy’s desk.  (In case you are wondering, this did nothing to improve Daddy’s mood. And so much for that not liking to cut thing, huh?)
5.   Speaking of purging, anyone know of a good place to sell off DVDs and maybe VHS tapes?  I have a collection we are reducing to nearly half of its former self and I’m thinking even at a buck or two a disk, I’d be able to go out to dinner or something.  Thoughts?
6. For my knitters, who I know will be wondering, I finish my grandmother’s dish cloth.  I have learned more too.  First, I’m a MUCH tighter knitter than she was.  Her entirely done cloth is nearly double the one I made.  In my defense, mine does scrub a bit better and is a good size.  We’ve been using them constantly since they came off the needles and I almost feel that I should be sorry for thinking knitting dishcloths was silly.  However, I’m back to a new sweater and thus feeling all superior again.
7. Yesterday was a Duke/Mama day.  These are special and exhausting days.  Yesterday alone, we finger painted, we cut paper, we baked, we watched a movie, and we played in our room.  Oh, and we didn’t bother to get out of PJs until Daddy came home and declared that we were going to do the greatest thing EVER — family trip to Target.

I know, it is an exciting life.  I must go now and watch for more water run through my garage.