1) Two days ago, I decided to start working out again. My legs are jellofied again. I am not approved to work out chest yet, but I can work out my lower body. So I did 3 minutes (about 50) squats and 4 minutes of knee tucks on the floor. My legs have not forgiven me yet. They be hurting. Sitting down, getting up. They be hurting. My ass hurts too.
2) Boobie Party is next weekend! It snuck on up on me. Do I have to get rid of all the weeds around the pool now? Ugh. I’m not sure if I’m gonna do it after work one evening or just say fuck it.
3) I finally bought some clothes that fit my new boobs! I got a shirt from Lane Bryant that’s their “Fit and Flare” — holy shit. It looks so good, I ordered two more (different styles, same cut). I also got a dress I can wear braless. Never could have worn that before! Now if Torrid would just ship those capris I ordered last week…
My sister posted a video on Facebook of these little guys bobbing around her pool. She has eight – her own little flock. I immediately wanted some for my own pool so she told me she got them on Amazon. I looked them up and saw that they’re lights too! I couldn’t hit the “buy now” button fast enough!
First of all, they’re adorable. Their blank stare just seems to follow you. They bob around like they’re dancing together. Any breeze sees them turn their heads and race in a new direction. Sometimes they seem to follow you around the pool. And then when it’s too dark to swim, they light up and the fun continues.
They take on an anthropomorphic personality. We had a party and they were a huge hit. Everyone loved them. We found ourselves wondering who they liked the best. Which one is the fastest? And is the loner always the same flamingo or does it change? My friends even added accessories to them so we could see if the loner was always the same flamingo – maybe that one’s heavier or defective. The one we put the sunglasses on was the ladies man. The one with the dress ribbon around its neck seemed to be the most solitary. By the end of the party it was decided that they must all have names and the girls needed eyelashes.
This isn’t exclusive to us. My sisters want to give theirs identifiers so they can bet on which one will win the race across the pool. These little guys just take on personalities.
My first idea was different colored ribbons making bowties around their necks. However, it occurred to me that I have a box full of leis for parties so I got those out. I made mini leis for the guys and used some of the extra petals to make flower corsages for the girls. And yes, they got eyelashes thanks to a sharpie.
They’re freaking adorable. You absolutely need a flock of your own for your own pool. I cant walk past a window without checking on them day or night.
Our air conditioner was down most of this past week. It was 86 degrees (fahrenheit) upstairs. Eighty-six degrees, yall. It was crazy hot in here. It started Friday.
Friday, our neighbor texted me that our air conditioner was freaky loud. Well, what am I supposed to do about that? I agree, it’s louder than normal but I don’t know what to do about it. So I ignore it. Then Saturday, we realize both the upstairs and the downstairs are about 5 degrees warmer than they should be. Well, fuck. So I haul my fat ass up into the ceiling to check on the attic unit. Do we know the weight restrictions on those flimsy pull down stairs? No, we do not. Do we like heights? No, we do not. Do we have any desire to ascend into the insanely hot upper reaches of the house? No, we do not. Will Mr C go up there instead? No, he will not. Mr C is not remotely handy.
So into the attic we climb. The unit is frozen. Fuck. So we shut both floors off completely. We spent that first night in the Master. After that, I moved to moms room with the windows open and a box fan set in the window blowing on the bed. At least we’re not so far into summer that the nights are hot too. From then on, we just lived with all the back and side windows open. We don’t have window screens on the front of the house, so we couldn’t open those (according the Mr C). That sucks because the Master and Mr C’s office are on the front of the house. On night two, Mr C joined me in the cooler room.
So the weekend of AC breakdown was a holiday weekend. I called our home builder and asked for a repair man referral. He sent me the info of the guy who installed our system. I called him up on Sunday. He lives about an hour and 20 minutes away. He says he’d be happy to come out and look, but he’d have to charge his holiday rate of $175 an hour as opposed to the normal $150 an hour. He’d also have to start charging when he leaves his shop and stop when he gets back. So he encourages us to find someone more local to save money. Nice guy.
So I find a referral for a handy man on Next Door. He can come look at it on Monday for a $100. Great. He ghosts us. I message him and call him and get nothing. Then, at Six in the evening I get a message that he can come look. Hell, I’m desperate so, awesome. Come on. He climbs into the attic and the unit is still frozen as fuck. It’s a damn iceberg in hell. He can’t do anything until it thaws out so he says he’ll come back Wednesday. He’s a handy man so I had him put the screen back on the bird window (another source of cool evening air!) and fix a door in the entry way. So it wasn’t for nothing.
Wednesday rolls around and he returns. Thankfully, the units have thawed. He goes to the outside unit and puts in a pound of freon. Then he starts it back up. It still sounds like shit but it’s blowing cool air. He informs us that we need a new compressor. It’s not supposed to sound like that. He chats for a while. Compressors are expensive as fuck. They’re the most expensive part of the unit. He informs us it might be cheaper to get a whole new unit. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. He recommends running they system because “there’s not much more damage we can do.” He says he’ll just take $350 instead of the quoted $500 since he didn’t fix it completely. That’s nice of him.
Well, I tell him to get us prices and Mr C and I decide we need a second opinion. If we’re gonna drop thousands of dollars on this repair, we can afford to have the installer come out and give it a look over.
So the next day I grab the warranty papers. Oh great it has a five year warranty! But it’s six god damned years old. God dammit. So I call our insurance agent to see if any of this is covered. Nope, we didn’t buy an extended home warranty. Fuck. So I call the original installer back and he’s happy to come out. In fact, he’s working two jobs on this side of town that morning (by now it’s Thursday) so he wants to stop by ASAP. But I’m back at work full time and Mr C is working in the office because it’s hot as balls at our place. So I explain to my new boss (I started the new job last week) that my AC is broken and it’s 90 degrees. I need to meet the repair guy at home. After he gets done, I’ll be sweaty as fuck so can I pleeeeeeeaaaaaassssse work the afternoon from home? They let me do that. AWESOME.
OK so first, give me a break here, I don’t know much about HVAC systems. So I explain the situation to the installer. He says none of what I’m saying makes any kind of sense. He thinks the guy was talking about the coils and not the compressor. But I’m sure he was talking about the compressor, I have Mr C to back me up on that. We researched prices. He asks which units are freezing up. I tell him the attic and the outside. He says which unit in the attic. I say there’s only one. He insists there’s two because we have two systems. The attic aint that big, so I know there’s only one. Everyone — us, the builder, and the installer — realize we need the installer to come see what the fuck is up.
So the installer comes out. He looks things over. I need to know things. First, I wanna know why the downstairs and the attic unit are connected on the same system. He explains that they are the same system. I’m lost, we have a downstairs system and an upstairs system. He says yes. The owner on the phone thought we had two SPLIT systems, hence two units downstairs and two in the attic. We actually have one split system and one all-in-one unit. The unit the handyman said was the downstairs system is just the hot air condenser for the upstairs unit in the attic. One system. Ok, that makes a lot of sense now on why they’re both frozen. But you said we have TWO systems. Where’s the other? It’s that giant ass other box outside. I had just assumed that was the heater. He informs me that both systems are heat and cooling combined. The one upstairs is a split system. That’s the unit the guy put freon in. Then there’s a whole other system over here in this box that is the downstairs. Handy man never did ANYTHING to that box/system. He just ignored it.
Handyman didn’t know Jack shit and took my $450 bucks! God dammit! Most expensive door fix ever.
So Installer has nifty looking gauges and tools and starts to work. First, Mr C and I have always been terrible about replacing our air filters. Which is doubly bad because I buy the good ones that filter more shit out. Thats great, but means they should be changed even more often. We don’t do that. I fess this up to the installer so he has the full picture. Also, our coils have never been cleaned. So they were filthy. We didn’t know that AC units needed to be cleaned so OK. Now we know. Apparently people usually do it every spring. They have the guy come out and check the freon and clean the coils. He said they say every year but we could get away with every two. Awesome, now we know. So dirty filters and dirty coils. Thats it? Well no, both systems need another pound of freon each.
Fucking handyman didn’t even put in enough freon. FUCKER.
Ok, so filters, coils, freon… The fans busted. Thats why it’s so loud. We need a new fan and motor. He needs to get the parts but that will take a few hours. So he tops off the downstairs unit and it’s running great. Sweet! I can work downstairs in the AC!
So he leaves for lunch and returns a few hours later with parts for the other system. Which I now know is a two part system. He informs us the motor had some busted ball bearings. Not a good reason why — we’re just lucky like that. Handy man had found some “goop” in the fan and thought that might have been why. I show him the goop and ask about that. He says no, that’s just the material that was covering part of the compressor and it’s pretty common to see that fall off. Fucking handy man making me look like a giant dumbass. We’re just unlucky on a bad part that’s out of warranty. Nice.
So we had filthy filters that hadn’t been changed for a lot of months, filthy coils that hadn’t been cleaned in 6 years, low freon, and a busted fan. No wonder both systems went down. But they’re fixed now and we’ve learned some lessons:
Change your air filters on time.
Yearly or every other year, you should have the AC people come clean your unit and top off the freon.
Always use the people the builder refers me to. Even if those people tell you you should find someone more local. Always trust the builder. Builder is good people and only works with good people.
If someone is honest enough to tell you that they’re too expensive and you could find someone cheaper — HIRE THE HONEST PERSON. Good people are hard to find. Someone who’s honest about being too expensive is honest enough to fix your shit cause they know what the fuck they’re doing.
The pool is open! And it’s the PERFECT temperature: 82 degrees. But I can’t get in yet! I need to wait at least a week after the drain removal. Damn it.
I can’t even sit and enjoy it because the weeds around the pool stress me out. I can’t weed-eat because I’ve got drainage building up that i might have to have aspirated. So I can’t be “too active.”
BLAH! I still haven’t decided what to do about work.
1) So as you know, my precious cat Jack Jack is deaf. However, for 16 years, he’s “found” me by screaming for me. He wakes up and screams, I call out to him, he comes. So now he wakes up and screams, but gets nothing. So he just walks around screaming and caterwauling. This drives Mr C insane. But he did the sweetest thing.
I was laying down trying to get a nap when Jack started wailing and wailing and wailing. Mr C picked him up (he hardly ever touches the cat) and carried him into the bedroom where I was. Well, Jack didn’t see me immediately so he just screamed at Mr C till he finally walked over to me and Jack saw me waving at him. So Jack runs over for pets and Mr C goes back to his peace and quiet. So sweet of him to help my Jack Jack out.
2) Does your internal rage ever just jump immediately to full speed and you’re like “woooooah.” Like you didn’t even realize you were pissy and all the sudden you’re about to snap? That happened to me at Taco Mama. I was meeting up with friends for lunch. I was waiting in line. It’s important to know that at Taco Mama, the table numbers are just sharpied on triangles of wood. So he gets number 99. Now go away. Then he goes “haha, is it 99 or 66?”
Motherfucker, it won’t even stand up like that.
3) This job decision is really stressing me out. A lot more than it should. There’s so many pros and cons on both sides. I thought I had decided for sure — take the new position. But then I keep thinking of all the reasons not to. I’m not at peace about this.
Went to Walmart to pick up my pool salt. They’re the cheapest, don’t judge me. Took Mr C to do the heavy lifting but turns out with the car pickup service, they would have done it for me. Nice. It’s my first time using the pickup service. I usually avoid Walmart like the plague. They’re shit to their workers and it’s insanely crowded with way too many people. I tell you what though, having someone just bring eight 40lb bags of salt out to my car for me was nice. Had I known it was that simple. I’d have gotten more than eight bags!
While waiting on my own salt, I saw another man pushing a buggy to his car with about five big bags of salt himself. Yep, it’s that time of year. Then, while in the Arby’s drive thru (hey, they HAVE the meats), the truck in front of us had a pool vacuum on a bike rack and their pool cleaning pole hanging out of the back. Yep, tis the season.
I’m not sure when exactly my guy is coming to remove my pool cover. I’m not overly concerned as I still have a surgical drain in so it’s not like I can get in. Last weekend he came by and dumped in a bunch of chemicals and turned the pump on to circulate. The cover is still on though. I have to pay him to install and remove the cover for me. That thing is like 200lbs. So not sure when he plans on doing it. Maybe next weekend?
I’ve got the salt ready! It’s reading a nippy 72 degrees. When the cover comes off it should heat up faster. Gonna be rocking my new boobs this pool season!
A few years ago (maybe 3?) Jack had an abscessed wound. It had to be left open to heal from the inside out. Because of this, Mr C didn’t want him in the bedroom leaving puss and such where ever he sat. Well, I’m not gonna leave my precious hanging, so I spent a month sleeping on the couch with him so he wouldn’t be alone at night. He’s my special, I’m not gonna leave him – especially when he was in pain.
These past two and a half weeks, I’ve been sleeping in a recliner in the living room. And this wonderful bastard has spent almost all of these nights and days sleeping in my lap in the recliner.
Sure he takes breaks when he wants to go sit in a sun ray and heat up in the afternoon. But come night time, he’s back in my lap. He doesn’t usually sleep with Mr C and I at night in the bedroom. But while I’ve been down here recovering, he’s been with me almost every single night. He’s a damn lava rock of heat, but I don’t care. I love him.
I adore this fucking cat. Thanks for taking care of me, Jack.
I got new garden tools! As a near-40-year-old, spiffy gardening tools bring me great joy. Tis the season to spring clean the flower beds! Especially since I’m having surgery next week. Shits gotta get done before then. I called out the lawn guy for an estimate on cleaning up the branches in the yard and cleaning the leaves and branches from the pool area. He tried to up-sell me on letting him take care of my flower beds. He said trimming and mulch could really spiff them up. Well, I usually take care of that myself. I just hadn’t got around to it yet. Plus I don’t like my azaleas over-trimmed. They’re supposed to look natural, not square. And don’t dare trim my spireas! They’re not yet full grown. So last weekend I got my ass out there and weeded and put down and ungodly amount of Preen (supposed to keep weeds out). And I ordered myself some new goodies.
First, a hedge trimmer. Last year I didn’t trim my hedges. It was a year of mourning. In the years before that, my mom would just bring up my sisters hedge trimmer for me to borrow that once a year you need one. Well, moms gone. So I bought my own hedge trimmer.
Click the picture for the link. Why this one? Well because all of my garden tools are 40 volt Black and Decker. This means all of my $100 batteries fit all of my equipment. Do I need three batteries to get through trimming my hedges? Nope. But I sure do need at least two batteries when I’m doing a lot of weed-eating. Keeping everything from the same line of products means a lot of cross versatility.
I was so excited to use my new hedge trimmer that I trimmed hedges on my lunch break Wednesday. Ah, the perks of working from home. I wish I had a before picture. It’s just so satisfying how nice and clean everything looks with just a bit of a trim. My Japonicas needed a hair cut badly. The azaleas got just a tad bit of a trim to even them out and keep them below the window line. I particularly like a hedge trimmer because it makes me feel so powerful. I shall cut ALL THE THINGS. But not my arm off — like a chainsaw. Chainsaws are terrifying. Hedge trimmers are satisfying without being terrifying.
Don’t make fun of my garden wagon! I need this thing. I hate my freaking wheel barrow — it always wants to tip over. And every year it needs new air in the tire. So I finally got a garden wagon. With solid rubber tires that won’t ever need air. And it’s huge — holds more than the wheel barrow. Holds 220lbs too! And it folds up! Fuck yeah it does! No disassembly required, just folds up. What?
God willin’ and the creek don’t rise, I’m gonna use it Sunday to pick up all those branches I trimmed and haul them off. Then I’ll use it to drag bags of mulch over to where I need them. Then Mr C can load it with 8 bags of fertilizer I bought and walk the property line and fertilize my arbor trees. Then this summer, I can use it to haul all those 40lb bags of salt and pool chemicals out to the pool. Or a load of chairs for a party.
Mr C fears confrontation. I’m not sure if he fears it, or it’s just too awkward from him — but he doesn’t confront. He has me to confront. I do not fear confrontation. I enjoy it. I take pride in it as a skill. Therefore, whenever Mr C wants to know whats going on, or pwn someone who’s trying to rip us off, he just calls on me. Cause, fuck it, I’m in.
So Friday, Mr C calls out (we’re working from home) that someone’s taking pictures of our house. “What do you mean taking pictures of our house?”
“They’ve parked in the driveway and are walking around taking pictures of our house.”
“You want me to see why?”
“I thought you’d be interested.”
“Do I have time to change out of my PJ pants?”
I’m very possessive of our property. I don’t know if it’s because I like having property or what. I just don’t like people on my property without my permission. Maybe I just like that it’s mine. Maybe I’m the old man yelling “get off my lawn!” Maybe you look shady as fuck even if you weren’t taking photos of my house.
It was gutter people. They were making an estimate on cleaning our gutters. They cool. I got their card. (Gutter Pro sent them — but Gutter Pro works like a pimp pimpin out gutter cleaning whores. I’m serious. You just sign up and say “I’ll clean gutters” and they start sending you addresses. It’s terrible. Mostly they send people ill equipped to do a large two story and we get turned down — if they show at all. I never said they were good pimps.) So Mr owner of “Chainz” (I told you these people looked sketch as all hell) was taking photos to justify a higher price for the job.
The roof was too slick for them to finish today but I asked Mr Chainz’s handyman if he could fix our coat closet doors too. Cause dude, I need a handyman. He’s gonna give me an estimate when he comes back for the gutters.
Anyway, I hate that if there’s ever a bump in the night, I’m gonna be the one investigating. I always wanted to date the protective type. The guys who were at least as big as me. I’ve got 100lbs on Mr C. Dammit cute nerds.
First, Backstory: I live on an acre of land on a main road. Back in the 20’s — the 1920s, not these shithole ones — a neighborhood was planned. There would be a neighborhood with 10 large houses fronting the road at the entry. These 10 plots of land were mapped and sold. The neighborhood never came to be. Eventually the road access was even merged into Ricky’s plot. So there were just 6 of us in a row with lovely houses and forest for miles behind us and in front of us.
Well, where we live is quickly expanding so they decided to buy that land behind us and put in a neighborhood. Of course we’re not a part of it — fuck your HOA. But their backyards back right up to ours. We lost all that beautiful forest and privacy. Now our backyard backs up to someone else’s backyard. C’est la vie. Now you’re caught up.
Today, I search for their neighborhood on Facebook. They had a Facebook page! I immediately applied to join and explained the situation. They let me in and I commented on posts and got likes and it was nice. I then made an introductory post explaining the history of how they used to be neighborhood ABC like us, but now they’re neighborhood XYZ and welcome to the area! I got a bunch of likes and some comments. I texted my fellow neighbors that they should join too! How neighborly!
Then comments were turned off on my post. Weird. Then they made the group unsearchable on Facebook. That’s not gonna help your neighbors find you. Then a few hours later, I look and I’ve been booted. BOOTED.
What the fucking fuck? Motherfuckers. I’m hurt. Like irrationally hurt. I thought we had a neighborly thing going and they don’t want me in their neighborhood? Motherfuckers, I was here first. YOU TOOK MY TREES YOU SONS OF BITCHES.
So now I’m like, irrationally hurt. I’m depressed about it. (Granted, everything makes me depressed because I’m always on the cusp of collapse into the darkness — but still). I’m hurt.
Fuck you and your whole neighborhood. Fall in a sinkhole, you bitches!
Am I allowed to hold one admins actions against a whole neighborhood?
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UPDATE: The Next Day
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This was in my mailbox today!
For REAL. What the hell kind of response is this to someone joining your facebook group? It’s trespassing! And technically a felony because they messed with my mail box. Was this some weird midnight black op to put it in there unseen? Who does this? What the fucking fuck? What kind of response is this to a hello from your neighbor? THIS IS INSANE.
