Three...that's the magic number

Last night Ella was in the bath. When I was letting the water out, Robert was downstairs and he told me to stop because there was water coming out of the light fixture in the kitchen.

I did some research this morning, and figured that we were going to be in for a few thousand dollars...cutting up the kitchen ceiling and having to do major pipe work.

I emailed all the local peeps on my facebook to find a plumber. Turns out my mom knew a 24 hour plumber. I called. The guy showed up here within TEN minutes. He went upstairs and I showed him all the stuff I suspected it may be. He said, "Nah, it's coming from that center bathroom." He went in and said there was some sort of runoff coming from the toilet. There are cracks in the grout between the toilet and the tub, and water was collecting there and then started leaking through.

He had the parts in his truck.

Grand total?

$250 plus tax.

I'm so relieved. I have just started really keeping the house neat and clean. I was sinking into a deep funk and having a cluttered messy house was only making it worse. I was really upset that now my kitchen, which is the central point in my house, was going to be ripped up and dusty and possibly moldy.

The plumber told me to keep a fan on and keep the windows open and that it's probably going to leak for another day or two and that I shouldn't get upset, but it was just because a lot of water has accumulated between floors.

We had already tentatively hired a contractor to patch some stuff and paint the kitchen ceiling, so the damage there will be taken care of with the regular job he is supposed to do.

When we bought our house, it was completely landscaped. It was gorgeous. The backyard was non-functional, but it was super pretty and brilliantly planned so that there was *something* blooming at all times. Once the kids got a bit bigger, we decided to take out just about all of the backyard landscaping and put in plain old grass since we have very little property. The backyard is still totally boring, but the kids have a safe place to run around, which was way more important.

The front lawn has 3 huge blue spruces, that I think I'll take out at some point too because they're getting really tremendous and are close to interfering with the wires that lead to the house. Over the years we've lived here, some of the things that had been planted died, so I replaced them. There was a small patch in the front that had these tall grasses that served as a local cat litterbox, so I had them pulled out last year and we've had a really pretty patch of dirt since then. This year I decided to put pretty flowers in it. I also always plant flowers in the less populated areas of the front yard.




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