Random Chaos

The kids are off to school. Husband is off to work. I’m finished with my breakfast, drinking my coffee, and planning my day. I hope it smoothes out a bit. It’s not been a BAD day (well, morning, it’s only 10-ish) but it’s been a bit too interesting for the first day of the week after a holiday weekend.

The kids were tired this morning. Too much staying up late this weekend. Couldn’t help it. AFN was running a marathon of the first six Harry Potter movies, two per night, which ended at 10pm. We didn’t let the kids stay up for the sixth movie last night, but their schedules were off and getting up this morning was not as easy as usual. Still, they got up and going well. I even remembered to tell them to put their shoes on before going in their bathroom in case the pipes had leaked more. Brian also practiced his book talk (oral book report) after breakfast with me.

O yea… first work order of the week... Repair busted water pipe under the kids’ sink. It looks like the sealant was simply old, died, and turned to dust. Possibly hastened by the warmth of the radiators we only recently turned on. Should be an easy fix. While placing towels under the sink, which she did before she even came to tell us about the mess… she’s so responsible!… Honor found a huge hunk of glass. Looks like it came from one of the glass blocks that fill the outside wall. No idea how it could have broken as the spot it came from is 12ft up in the air, behind the wall a bit (Hard to explain, but it isn’t anything that we could have hit). I’ll point it out to the facilities guys, but I doubt there’s anything to do about it. This place is so run down. The building is old and crappy. Ugly paint, ugly tiles, etc. Cracking glass blocks are no surprise. I wouldn’t want to move. Not at all. I like living here as it’s very ‘livable’ in so many ways and I like the layout better than most of the modern apartments I’ve been in locally. BUT, some days, I really don’t like looking too closely at things. If it were ours, I’d say we were 10 years past due for a serious facelift.

Anyway, the second work order of the week is the radiators. We had the heat turned on last week and have since discovered that three of the radiators will not turn on/off. In my personal experience, and this house is no exception, there are only two settings for radiators. On or Off. ON equals either “Just right” or “Too hot”. OFF equals “Just right” or “Too cold”. There is a real need to be able to turn the radiators off or on if the “just right” temperature is not happening. Believe me, I’ve tried adjusting the knobs for a setting somewhere between too hot and too cold but it doesn’t exist. It’s actually a pretty good system. I like radiators (we have them near our towel racks…  mmm! warm towels!) and I like the warm pipes that feed them as they run through the floors and make the marble tiles warm, but we do need the on/off function to actually work! Right now, we have two radiators stuck on ‘OFF’ and one (in the kitchen near the oven!) stuck ‘ON’.

What else? After putting the kids on the bus this morning, the bawab called me over and pointed to the truck. We had a flat tire. It had been needing air too often, but today, it was flat. I got Brad, and we went out to work on it, but our bawab (he is awesome!) and the guard took over and changed the tire for us. It’s nice to be looked after so well. We’ll have to get the tire repaired later today. We’re probably due for a couple of new ones anyway.

The flat tire may have been a good thing this morning anyway. As Brad came in, finished getting ready, and was getting ready to leave the house (only slightly delayed) there was a loud screeching noise and a crash. Brad saw the accident on his way out. It was only a block up, on the street that parallels ours. Problem is, that road also parallels the main busy road one more block up. Morons pull into our neighborhood and race down that road trying to cut around traffic. That intersection is one you have to inch forward into to make sure nobody is speeding through… if you don’t know to pull forward carefully, you’ll get t-boned, which is obviously what happened this morning. I’m glad Brad wasn’t in the area when it happened. I foresee large speed bumps in the near future.

After Brad left, the rest of my morning progressed in a fairly normal manner. Except for the cat jumping in the shower with me. Pumpkin lost track of his fear of water when he was overwhelmed with curiosity over the gurgle-y noises the drain was making. He was actually under the spray, almost to the drain, when he remembered that he does NOT like getting wet and leapt out. I was thankful to survive the incident without being climbed. I love that these cats love and trust me enough to run and jump into my arms when they need or want to…. but when I’m nekkid in the shower is not the time I want to be catching a fully armed (clawed) wet, panicked cat! I’m picky that way.

That’s enough randomness for now. I think I shall refill my coffee and spend the next hour or so doing some nice, calm, safe, online shopping.