Is This Normal?
The chaos that is the KerbersArchive for basement
Our daredevil
Well, Emma did it again…we have another facial contusion to add to the list. Last night the kids were downstairs by themselves when we heard loud crying. I ran down and Emma was standing behind the couch crying hard. She ran over to me and I was thrilled that there wasn’t any blood. Shew. But there was a big red blotch near her eye and a scrape and bump on her forhead. I asked her, “Emma, did you fall off the back of the couch?”
“Yes,” she sobbed.
“Now do you understand why Mommy tells you not to climb on the couch?” I asked.
“Whyyyyyyy”, she cried harder. *Sigh* The little girl just doesn’t understand that her daredevil ways lead to injuries. Thankfully, this time, it just looked like she’d just have a shiner and a bump on the head. Yes, I said looked that way. That was last night. Today, however, when I picked them up at Danielle’s, she came running up to me with a big, fat, split lip. Danielle said, “Well, Emma took a little spill. She was trying to climb on the couch.” *Sigh*
I know it could be worse. She’s very lucky that she hasn’t hurt herself too seriously. Knock wood, because I don’t think the message is sinking in.
If it’s not one thing, it’s another
No truer words can be spoken when you own a house. Yesterday morning our garbage disposal stopped working. So today Dave dove in trying to figure out why. Approximately $125 and several hours later, we have a functioning disposal again. But there were some struggles getting there. At one point, Dave was worried that we would have to rewire the whole thing, which would be a really tough job considering it’s over the finished part of the basement. But luckily it was just the switch that was bad, so he was able to rewire that and it was working again.
Thank goodness Dave knows how to do so many home improvement things. I would have really hated to pay someone to do that job. I know he gets tired of constantly having new projects pop up, but we’re so lucky that he can do them himself. Just add that to the many great things about Daddy!! 
My day off
Today we had off for a “board holiday”. I can’t believe that our district actually gets away with that, since everybody knows that we’re really off because it’s Good Friday. Separation of church and state, right? I feel badly for anyone who is not a Christian. After all, we don’t take any of their holy days off. But whatever…I’ll take a day off.
This truly was a day off, too, because I took the kids to daycare like any other Friday. But I didn’t waste the day at all. After dropping them off, I hit Wally to get groceries. It was pouring when I came out, which sucked, but it was nice coming home to an empty house to unload everything. Isn’t it funny how the little things are so exciting when you have little ones around? Anyway, after putting everything away, I hit the basement for a day full of painting. The doors and door frames to the bathroom, the storage area, and the bathroom closet were all still plain wood or primed surface and yes, it had been almost a year since we put them in. So obviously it was a job way past due.
While I love painting, I forgot how tedious so much brush work is. Ugh, the doors are all six panel and the frames of course have three different sections, so there wasn’t much I could do with the roller. But it was a really nice day. I’m almost done…two of the doors need a second coat of rolling, but that shouldn’t take too long. It’s another step to getting a completely finished basement. Someday it will happen…I just know it!
Little pig, little pig
Tonight the kids had so much fun playing blocks with Daddy. They were building a wall of blocks between the wall and the
pillar in the basement. Emma could even be gentle enough to get the blocks up on the top level! Almost instantly, Ben decided that this was the house of brick from the story of the three little pigs. As they were building, he was telling us all about how he’d be the pig and Daddy would be the Big Bad Wolf. As soon as the wall got close to completion, Ben ran around to the other side to get ready to play his role.
The problem was Daddy didn’t exactly take the direction correctly.
I was cracking up as Dave knocked on the door, but then didn’t say, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in!” It threw Ben for a l
oop, to say the least. He was kind of sputtering a little bit, in way that was like he just didn’t know what to say first! Then Emma just started knocking blocks in, which really got him shook. Eventually, he calmed down, everyone just knocked all the blocks down, and all was well.
It was so much simple family fun, it is making me smile while I type.
We have the power–the sequel
Yesterday, we got a backup generator for the house. It’s this huge unit out by the air conditioner that will kick on whenever out power is out for just a short time. The desire for this started very soon after our basement flooded. Even though that instance had nothing to do with the power, I think it sufficiently freaked Dave out enough to start worrying about the sump having no power. And, to be honest, after I spent an hour bailing water out of the sump pump hole while the power was off one night, it didn’t take much to convince me, either. It won’t power our entire house, but when the electricity is off, we should be able to stay comfortable and (hopefully) dry.
When our neighbors got theirs put in this fall, they were so anxious for the power to go out. Now I kind of know how they felt. It will be interesting to see how much we use the thing. It’s one of those Catch-22 situations…you want to use it, but yet you don’t because that means that there is no power. I guess a little peace of mind is a wonderful thing.
Fun in the dark
Hey, get your mind out of the gutter…this probably isn’t going to be about what you think it is!
Last night, our power went out about 7:45 p.m. Conveniently, it was pouring outside, and had been most of the afternoon and evening. Dave nervously went to check the sump pump, and sure enough, water was trickling in and the tank was filling up. So he raced out to the farm to get the generator, and I started bailing out the water. On my hands & knees. In the dark. Trying to hold a flashlight and carry bucketful after bucketful over to the drain. It was very fun. I kept up with it just fine for about 45 minutes until he got back. After having the generator on for only a few minutes, the power came back on. I think that both of us had frightening visions of water pouring into our basement again after getting the carpet replaced from last time just 10 days ago!
Thank goodness that didn’t happen.
