I'm Not A Plumber

Ok, today started off well enough. Got to bed at around 4:30 AM last night and got up with Quinn just after 8. Yay! Three and a half hours sleep. Wheee. What was I doing to till that time? Worked on the blog till just before one, then from one to just after four I was doing the work I tried to do earlier in the day. Made a lot of progress and I can see pretty animations on the screen now, so from that aspect, it's all good. From the sleeping perspective, not so much though.

Ginger got up at just after nine with Catherine, although I don't think Catherine was actually asleep for more than like 6 hours throughout the night. Remember that thing I said about hearing about that decision to let them nap. Heard about it already. And then, on top of that, she was ticked off at me. Why? Because, get this, she had a dream that back in high school I had said something that embarrassed her in front of her friends. I didn't even know her in high school, yet here she is ticked at me for this imaginary situation, that never happened, that I didn't even have any control over since it was her dream (although one can argue it's my inconsiderate nature that prompted the dream).

Today was a playdate, and we had Karen come over with Rueben and Jacob in addition to Rob and Gretchen dropping off Autumn and Tyler. So it was 3 adults versus six kids. Zone defense was a must. Actually, except for Quinn constantly wanting to play with things like the race track and his video games that were too advanced for some of the kids, everything went fine. There was one minor mutilation, but it was all in the family as Jacob accidently smacked Rueben on the head with a Wiggle's guitar.

Karen left with Rueben and Jacob just before one. Rob and Gretchen came and picked up Autumn and Tyler a little after two and stuck around for about an hour. After everyone left, it was nap time and they probably went to sleep around 4:30 or so (and I tried to take one too, since at this point I was wasted). Quinn was up at six. And Catherine got up not too long after. After some dinner, we took a ride in the car to go see Christmas lights. We drove over to some of the rich neighborhoods since they have more expendable cash to drop on things such as lights.

Before we left though, Ginger noticed that the paint in the laundry room above the door to the garage was bulging out. Looking at it I felt myself saying, "Oh crap, that can't be good." Well, remember a couple of nights ago when we replaced faucets? Uh huh, that's right. The leak wasn't in anything we replaced (that only makes me feel marginally better about missing it), but rather it was in the shutoff valve. So before we messed with anything, everything was apparently fine, but by turning off the water, it must have broken a seal slightly or something to allow for a small stream of water to start escaping. The reason we didn't see it was because it so slight and it wasn't 'dripping', but rather running down the pipe (and into the ceiling above the laundry room apparently, for four days). So on our way to see lights, I stopped by Home Depot and picked up a replacement flexible pipe. So far so good. But just to be safe, I checked Ginger's faucet also, and it also has a small leak (but this one is a drip, and even less than the other one, so I don't believe it was responsible for any of the damage. At this point though, Home Depot is closed, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to be able to get the replacement part for that. Starting to look more and more like I should have just paid someone to do this (this is vaguely reminiscent of replacing the screens on the gazebo).

Borrowed jumper cables from Rob for my car and as I suspected, it's not a battery issue. At least I don't think it is, even with the cables, it seems like the car is getting less and less power each time it tries to turn over. Guess I'll be calling a mechanic and tow truck tomorrow (not something I'm looking forward to).