It just fell out.  The kids had gone to bed, and we weren’t even in the kitchen.

It just fell out.

Curious.

As much as I love this house, all the little quirks showing their faces is getting just a tad bit irritating.

Now it’s our refrigerator.

When we moved in we noticed that it didn’t really keep things cold.  The ice was only partially frozen, and the milk didn’t taste as cold as I thought it should be.  Plus, the outside of the fridge was really hot in a few places.  That just didn’t sit right with me.

Ryan lowered the temp and we called the landlord.  Actually, we called the emergency line because I was afraid our food would spoil, but that was when the emergency line wasn’t calling the emergency guy – like five days ago.  When we finally got in touch with the landlord Wednesday about the carpet, we told her about the fridge and how it was only a working a little.  She said to turn the temperature back up to normal and it should work fine, that they’ve delt with this issue before.  We tried it and everything is nice and cold now, but the outside of the fridge is still uncomfortably hot.  And our meat and veggies are rotting. 

I don’t think it’s working consistently.  And the outside of the fridge is still really, really hot on the upper half and top.

How do we not be those crazy tenants who complain about everything, but still be firm enough to get things repaired in a timely manner?  We had to throw $8 worth of ground beef in the trash today! 

$8!

It could be worse, I suppose.  Having a sporadically working fridge isn’t the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination.  But this is my blog.  My place to say what I want.  And what I want to say is “I want a fridge that stays cold, please!”

There. 

And, for the record, I really do love this house.

Um…
…as I was finishing this post our kitchen sink fell out.  Literally.  It just fell out.
No, I’m not kidding.

I don’t think that’s supposed to happen.

I think I’ve mentioned that our water tastes like soap here.  My husband and kids say it tastes like pool water.  Whichever, it just isn’t good.   None of us are really too keen on drinking it so this past week we’ve been researching water dispensers (our modern kitchen sink faucet won’t support a filter attachment).  We looked on Craigslist, and eBay, and found out that the one that suits our desire to use glass jugs instead of plastic (bottom loading, strong enough to hold the weight) is $170! And we haven’t been able to find it at a used price anywhere.

Since $170 isn’t a dollar number we consider petty cash, we decided that this water cooler was something we’d have to save for.  We just unpacked our house and, as usual, the process uncovered a number of things we wanted to get rid of, so we began the process of listing stuff on Craigslist.  That was less than a week ago and today we were able to go get our water dispenser at Lowes.  Which, by the way if your interested, has the Primo bottom loading  water dispenser at $40 less than anywhere else we looked.

We’re using my husbands 5 gallon glass carboys, the ones from his beer brewing set up, for water right now, filling them up at Publix for just $1.50 per 5 gallon bottle.  The filtered water tastes so much better than the stuff streaming from our tap, and it comes out ice cold. 

Oh, and bonus!  The living room and dining room carpets were professionally cleaned today at no cost to us; and while we were out getting our water dispenser Ryan and I found a little Hot Dog eatery called The Hot Dog Spot.  Talk about good food!

The house smells better.  The water tastes better.  And we ate some really good food.

I’d say it’s been a good day.

…from moving, upacking, sick kids, cardboard allergies, and a mild return of morning sickness…

…the  washing machine hose (from the washer that came with the house) removed itself from the machine while it was running.

While we were grocery shopping.

My awesome daughter saw the flood after a gazillion gallons of water spilled onto the laundry room floor, the kitchen, dining room, and living room. Oh, and the garage too.  Her quick thinking led her to:

1. Shut off the water.
2. Yell for the boys to grab towels (every towel in the house was not even close to enough).
3. Take a picture (which didn’t show much or I’d have put it on here).
4. Text us at Walmart to tell us we might want to come home.
5. Start sucking up as much water as she could with the carpet shampooer.

After the text Ryan called home to see what was up.  Watching his reaction to what was being said on the phone made my heart drop and nausea started to set in.  I stood there, not knowing what was being said to him but seeing his face become very, very serious and hearing him say very sternly, “we’re coming right home, we’ll be there in a minute!” (note to Husbands everywhere: Never, and I mean NEVER, do this to the mother of your children!)  I knew something horrible had happened.  Like one of the little boys was unconcious, or had lost a limb or something.
After relieving my nerves with the news of the flood Ryan did go home, leaving me at Walmart with a basket full of groceries. It worked out perfectly.  30 minutes later, just as I was putting the last item from our list in the basket, he came back to get me.  Although cleanup efforts were still in full force when we got home, I had the benefit of missing all the in-the-moment pandemonium.

That was two days ago. We have found that the emergency number to the landlord only rings a guy who isn’t much interested in being our emergency person, and the rental office has been closed.  We could only leave a message.

The carpet is still wet.  All our furniture is pulled out in the middle of the room where the carpet didn’t get hit.  And our landlord still hasn’t called us back.

I couldn’t stand the smell (think old, wet, full baby diaper) and the huge black stains coming to the surface. The smell was getting worse by the hour and the black stains were growing very fast, so I shampooed the affected carpet last night with laundry detergent and oxygen cleaner, even though I’m not sure I was supposed to in this situation. 
But the smell. 
The water that came out was BLACK and smelled like sewer!  Which bothers me because it was clean water that flooded the house, and the landlord made a big deal about the carpets being clean and stink free when we move out at the end of our lease.

I cleaned till the water was clear, the majority of the stains were gone, and the smell was that of freshly cleaned laundry instead wet diaper.

And, as always, there are always reasons to be thankful.

-Nobody drowned.
-The kids were home.  We had almost taken all the kids with us to Walmart, which would have left nobody here to stop the flooding and begin cleanup.  
-The teenager is quick on her feet.  She knew exactly what to do.
-It wasn’t my washer that made the mess.  I do not want responsibility for this.
-I found out how nasty the carpets are. We’re going to push for a carpet cleaning now…

Or something because even though I’m no germaphobe, I just can’t feel right about having my kids play around on carpet that is hiding that much gross.

Always an adventure around here.

Always.

And yes, for those of you who read mama squirrel’s flood story last week, I know.
We’re like kindred spirits.

…have been a whirlwind.

Just as my morning sickness subsided it was time to prepare the house for the movers.  Since the movers do all the packing this isn’t a huge deal but it does take a little time and organizational effort on my part. 

Ryan winged, which was awesome, but I was so stinkin’ tired, getting regular headaches, and just feeling overall yicky. Our BFTKC friends were able to come down with their 1 week old baby and that was awesome too.  ‘Cept their 1 year old got pretty ill and they ended up at their hotel for most of the visit.  It was sad not to be able to spend much time with them, especially since they will be living across the country from us in a few months. 

The movers arrived just as my two youngest got sick with high fevers, our house was packed in a day, and the movers drove off with our goods the next afternoon.  We had dinner with different friends over the next few days, and a dear family of 12 had us over for breakfast on Monday morning with some other friends before we drove out.  I had been feeling and acting grumpy about moving, being tired, and all the stuff that goes into preparing for a military transfer; but the food was so good and the company so gracious.  I slipped out of my funk without even realizing it.  20 kids in one house.  It was so cool!

Our trip found us with a blown trailer tire, an hour on the side of the interstate, but a smooth drive other than that.  We drove straight to our new dwelling, a nice house we signed a lease on the week before.  We really like the house.  Really like the house.
Except…

There is a giant mural on the wall.  A giant mural with headless statues.  A giant mural with naked, headless statues.

We covered it up with some large Craigslist book cases that we purchased from an older woman who was turning her house into a castle, complete with dragons and swords.  She was more than a little strange, but so childlike – I applaud her.

Some of the mural still shows but not the naked statue half.  Whenever I see the wall I have this overwhelming urge to declutter that area of the room.  But there isn’t any clutter over there, just an obnoxious mural that we aren’t allowed to paint over.  I’ll have to take a picture.

So, we’re here, completely unpacked, and feeling settled.  Ryan is wrestling with the kids, who are giggling.  Kait is reading a book, and I’m blogging.  Little boys are everywhere in this small neighborhood and my sons have made a large number of friends.  Everything feels so normal. 
But I miss my very good friends.  I miss my church.  I miss our homeschooling group. I miss water that doesn’t taste like soap and have white floaties in it.

And I miss not having a giant mural on the wall.

But the opossums and cats sharing our backyard shed are making things a little interesting.

So, I found this way awesome app for my way cool Droid phone that turns it into a modem for my computer.  Right now I actually have internet on my laptop, but it hasn’t been hooked up in my house yet.

I think this is very cool and I wish I’d found out about it before we moved.  It would have been fun to be able to get online during our trip – especially when our trailer tire completely blew in the middle of nowhere on the interstate.  I have to say that it’s good to have road side assistance with our insurance.  It still took an hour for the tire guy to bring us a new one, but nobody hollered out “I gotta go potty!” so it wasn’t too bad.

With my new app I’ve been keeping busy matching coupons to grocery store deals in my new area.  It’s like learning the whole thing all over again – I don’t know each store’s couponing quirks.  Plus, I don’t have my printer available yet so it’s kind of frustrating knowing that Mac-N-Cheese is just $.39 a box this week but I can’t print out the coupon that makes it such a good deal.

Patience.

We made it to our new house. I managed to have the entire thing unpacked in just 24 hours and with just a little more work this place is going start feeling like a home.

The trip was interesting and I’ll write more about that later. Right now I’m having to blog using my droid because our internet won’t be hook up for another day. I’m actually speaking this blog post because it’s easier than typing it out with my thumbs, but that means that the droid sometimes get my words wrong and that’s a little bit of a pain. So I’ll write more tomorrow after our internet gets hooked up.