Sometimes, you just have to grin and bear it

Our wonderful neighbor came out and snaked the washing machine drain for us. He did hit something, pushed most of it through, pulled a little out. He must have snaked it 10 times or so. But it seems to be working. Once he left, I finished washing the load that was sitting in the washing machine. Luckily, it was diapers, so all the extra rinses didn't really hurt them at all. I think I did find the unfortunate cause of the problem though. See, we've been lazy. And lazy plus an inquisitive one-year-old is not a good combination. In Claire's bedroom, we have two diaper pails- the open top one for cloth (since we use it more and the stink would pile up otherwise), and the usually closed and bagged one for disposables. This week, we have been lazy and haven't put a bag in for the disposables, so we have just left the top off. At some point, one of the disposable diapers ended up in the cloth diaper pail. It could have been any of us- my pregnant brain, Alann being distracted by Claire trying to roll off the table (which she seems to do more with him, or at least he gives her a stern talking to about it more), or Claire pulled it out of the right pail and put it in the other. My money is on the little one. She is enthralled with the pail and always tries to get the lid off. I don't know why. It stinks something fierce no matter what I try. (And I've tried it- baking soda, vinegar, both, cleaners. Nothing takes it away. I am just resigned to the fact that it is because we only need to empty it once a week.) So my guess is she saw there was no lid, ran over, grabbed a diaper, and then one of us caught her but didn't realize she put it back in the wrong place, or she did it when we weren't in the room and was just rearranging. She likes to rearrange things.
On top of all that, the really gross part was I think the disposable diaper in the washer was a poopy one. That, or we also didn't rinse one of her diapers thoroughly. Because there were chunks. For the most part, it all breaks up and goes away. (We usually rinse the soil into the toilet before putting them in the pail. Anything that is left the washer takes care of.) But every now and then, I find recognizable pieces of food. And that is the absolute worst thing about cloth diapers. Everything else I can deal with. But having to clean pieces of food out of the washer or the supposedly clean diapers really grosses me out. Now it can gross you out too. Or you can be thankful that you are just throwing human waste straight into the earth, since you probably don't shake out the soil into the toilet like you are supposed to. No judgment from me- I don't do it either usually.
So hopefully, the washer is resolved. Dan is going to come snake the rest of our slow-running drains sometime soon as well. That will be nice. Then I can just buy him some dinner or something instead of paying someone on the clock a ridiculous amount of money to do it. He did say that the pressure regulating valve that the plumber sold us is a good idea, so I feel a little better about that.

That silly girl, and stupid washing machines

Claire today was being REALLY weird about eating. I understand, she is cutting teeth. It makes it hard to eat. But she is just being silly. For breakfast, she would only eat if she could use the fork. I don't care if she uses the fork or not, but I am afraid she is going to poke herself with it. I need to get some baby forks I guess. She ended up eating a bunch of eggs and toast and even potato, as long as it was stuck on the fork. Then for lunch, she didn't want to sit in her high chair. At all. Even when I tried to feed her with the fork she didn't want it. She wanted to sit on Daddy's lap. So we got out her booster seat and an extra chair, and she was totally happy sitting in her booster seat like a "big people". She didn't even care about the fork. We had leftover spaghetti noodles turned into chinese-type fried noodles. It was actually pretty good. Claire just ate straight out of her bowl, so happy to be one of us. Then for dinner, she sat at the table with us again, and wouldn't eat unless she had a fork. But then she ate a good amount of food anyway, so I was happy. I don't mind if she sits at the table with us, but we need to move the little cart out of the way and make room to push her high chair in at the end of the table. Having three of us along one side doesn't really work out that well.

Now for the washing machine. It's being bad again. In 2008 (I looked it up on my blog), we had issues with the washer leaking. Those issues turned out to be mostly the supply valves. Well, now the water is backing up and leaking on the floor again. This has happened before and been diagnosed as 1) a drain problem, and 2) a bad clutch on the machine. The supplies were replaced, drain was snaked and the clutch replaced. It hasn't acted up again since then, even with our nearly one load a day habit. Our neighbor is coming out tomorrow to snake it for us again. Hopefully, that will fix it, at least until we sell. I am a little concerned because I used some Draino on it about a month ago when it did it the first time, and it seemed to work again. When we had a plumber out in November, he suggested we have the pipes augered before they clogged, because we have slow drains. He suggested that if we do that, it should help. I just really don't want to spend the money to have it done. I don't think it is covered by our home warranty. In fact, I am pretty certain it isn't. So it would be totally out of pocket. And really, what's another 8 months than it is someone else's problem, right? (That's an awful attitude and I'm really trying not to have it.) I don't even know how much it would cost. But I am getting tired of the washer backing up. I had three loads of laundry scheduled for today. I got exactly none done. And since the laundry room is torn up, I haven't felt exactly motivated to clean the rest of the house. I guess that is what I will be doing tomorrow. If I can keep my hands off my new phone long enough anyway. =) My phone is pretty awesome. So far, I am happy with it. I spent most of the evening playing with it. Then I turned it off because I was starting to feel a little cross-eyed. AND, the best part is, it's a touchscreen, and I was able to set a pattern lock on it, so that baby can't unlock it!

Women are strange creatures

I know this, even though I am a woman. Last night, Alann had to go to a friend's house to work on a project for school. He told me it might be late, and I didn't really want to be out that late or stuck there if I got tired and wanted to go to bed. (Yes, it's just around the corner and I could walk, but it was cold and I don't like walking our neighborhood alone in the dark.) So I cleaned and read and went to bed around 11. I don't know when he came home exactly, but I laid there awake until I heard him come in. Then as soon as I knew he was there, I fell asleep.
I always used to wonder why my mom wouldn't just go to bed when I was out and about. Even when I was 18, graduated from high school and about to leave for college (and keeping very late hours), she wouldn't go to bed until I came home. I guess now I understand. I should have just gone with Alann and been social. Oh well. I got some dishes done anyway.
As for the water epic. We have isolated the source of the river in the laundry room and it is not related to the lake in the kitchen. The connection at the back of the machine was dripping. A lot. I couldn't get it to turn any tighter, so I just shut off the valve and that made it stop. For now. I am waiting for the next leak to spring. This washer has been nothing but trouble since we got it. I blame it for all of our problems. The kitchen lake had dried up for a few days, and I was rather optimistic, but this morning, after running the dishwasher last night and having the water on for a few hours, it is definitely wet again. At least I have a plan. When we redid the kitchen, we had a few options. We could tear out all of the flooring that met up with the kitchen, put in the new cabinetry and then lay the flooring again. (It's click and lock laminate, no glue.) That would have been a whole lot of work. Or we could pull up the floor between the old cabinetry pieces, and just lay new flooring to fill all the space. This is what we did, and I wish now we had done it the harder way. Because we are going to have to cut out the flooring that is ruined beyond hope, instead of just pulling it up and putting more down. At least we can start somewhere relatively easy. There is flooring under the stove where we can pull it up, but once we get that up, it is going to be difficult. We will probably have to cut the floor at a 45 degree angle so that we have some way of locking the new pieces in, instead of just butting it up to the old pieces. Plus we are probably going to have to buy at least $100 worth of new floor, maybe more. At least I have a Costco membership this time, so I don't have to borrow someone else's. I was just hoping this would all go away and the flooring would be fine. Ah well, the things you learn at the starter home hopefully improve your future homes. Now I know. No matter what, don't lay flooring before the cabinets go in, or the evil washing machine will destroy it.

I feel like Eeyore today.

The laundry room saga continues. Actually, it has turned into an epic. Or a really BAD set of horror films, like Jason 1-57, where the bad guy comes back to life for every movie and you think, "wait, didn’t he die last time?" Or like the House series (which I love) where he has now “died” 3 times, and it looks like he will be dying again in the upcoming episodes.

Here is my last recap “When we left for Christmas, we noticed a small river in the laundry room. We figured it was too big a load that overflowed. Then we came back, and after a while, noticed the little river again. Then we realized that it was the washer backing up. We had the pipe snaked, and the problem seemed fixed. This week (April 4th), we had a RIVER in our laundry room. We pulled the washer out last night, and took the fixtures off. The hot water fixture was very very crusty and rusty. We cleaned it and put it back on. So far, that seems to be the problem.”
We noticed that even when it was turned off, the hot water spigot leaked. So last week, we replaced both spigots. That was the end of the problem. Or so we thought.
Yesterday morning, as I was getting water for the dogs, I noticed something odd. The floorboards in front of the sink were kind of bowing up. I made a mental note to tell Alann and went to work, promptly forgetting about it. I talked to him at about 5pm last night. He told me that he noticed the bowing floorboards and oh yeah, there was water coming up out of them. I don’t even know where to go from here. It just makes me so depressed that every time we think we have fixed the stupid thing, something else goes wrong. We don’t have the time to fix it right now, so for the next few days, we are just turning on the water when we need it. Lame, huh? It’s very limiting knowing that you don’t have water unless you go into the bedroom and turn it on. It makes me think about some of the things I might do, but will hold off until I have to turn the water on to get ready for bed.
Alann says that we can pull down the wall in the laundry room and see if the problem is there, and if not, then we can try to get access to the pipes from the office. We wanted to tear down the nasty paneling in there anyway right? If that fails, which I am 99% sure it will (because I vaguely remember seeing the backing to the fireplace when we were installing the new drywall), then we have to tear down our nice new cabinets or backsplash in order to fix the blasted thing. Why couldn’t this problem have presented itself in the 11 months that we lived without a backsplash? When all we would have had to do was tear out the drywall, which could have been easily replaced? At least we still have tile left in case we need to redo the backsplash.
And of course, we are still dancing around all of the furniture from the bedroom, which makes the house oh so pleasant. I don’t even want to be there right now. It is packed full and hard to navigate, there is crap everywhere and I am constantly stepping on it. I got my last dresser put together last night, then I just dumped everything into it, so I can’t even find anything. My current list of priorities is: sell old furniture, fix (expletive expletive expletive) pipes, fix whatever is broken in the process of fixing the pipes (because I know it will happen), clean house, rearrange drawers, oh and did I mention that I am speaking in church on Sunday? Yeah, that needs to get done too. Plus I want to get my garden sprinkler/ drip system set up. And we want to redo the front yard this year, which means soon before it gets hot. Ugh. And every time I go to Provo for work the “check engine” light comes on for a few days. I am 99% sure that it is just the altitude change, but I want to be sure that it isn’t overheating or something.
Maybe we will just move next year after Alann graduates after all. That will solve most of the problems. I am sure everything will work out, but in case you can’t tell, I am having a pity party for myself today.
Did you know it might snow here today? Yesterday, it was 80. Today, snow. What’s wrong with the world?