Today...

[v-girl]

Today (since we didn't have rubbing alcohol) I used vodka to get a set in ink stain out of my baby's pajamas. Who knew?

We keep a spray bottle of vodka in the seamstress room during performances. The costumes that can't be washed are sprayed before going back into storage.

[Liisi]

Today, I'm finally halfway to 100 posts...

[SuzySunshine]

Today we are having our concrete patio poured, I'm hoping the bring in a real cement truck, Robert would be SO excited!

Today I am a new aunt, again, and now have 3 nieces and a nephew which I'm pretty sure is all my parents are going to get!

Today I was not prepared to have the "how do mommies have babies" talk with A due to said baby.

Today I need to at least finish packing the kids and figure out what I'm forgetting.

[Thirteen]

Today, DS and I are working in our garden at church, and our front garden at home (another ivy removal project).
Today, DH has 3 very important meetings, all in different places, and will not be home until late. Please keep him in your prayers/mojo thoughts.
Today, I will probably make a Lowe's run because the front bushes on our property seems to be the "Mosquito Loveshack."
Today, I am looking at manpowered lawn mowers by Fiskars. So cool!

[poky]

Today, we FINALLY found a landscaper, after calling or emailing about 4 that just never got back to us. Our landlord made the contact. Bonus: 100% A reviews on Angie's list; the only reason I didn't call him earlier is because the Angie's list listing didn't say he did snow removal also..but he does! We're all signed up, and our yard should look good by the weekend, even! YAY!

[corn poffi]

Today I found out I have to move...again. My rent skyrocketed. Too bad this city is a renter's nightmare. It'll be my twelfth move in 10 years. Who's jealous?

[diggitydot]

Today I found out I have to move...again. My rent skyrocketed. Too bad this city is a renter's nightmare. It'll be my twelfth move in 10 years. Who's jealous?

You deserve a fucking medal. Moving blows.

[HouseofWool]

Today I found out I have to move...again. My rent skyrocketed. Too bad this city is a renter's nightmare. It'll be my twelfth move in 10 years. Who's jealous?

Are you looking in the city or where the hospital is located. The neighborhood around 68th and North is fantastic, very involved community with a fair number of restaurants, plus your commute to work is under 5 minutes by car or a 15 minute bike ride. I have a friend who is a realtor who may have some rental contacts.

[corn poffi]

Are you looking in the city or where the hospital is located. The neighborhood around 68th and North is fantastic, very involved community with a fair number of restaurants, plus your commute to work is under 5 minutes by car or a 15 minute bike ride. I have a friend who is a realtor who may have some rental contacts.

I really don't love the burbs, but at this point, I'm kinda desperate since my lease is up end of Sept. There a couple places in the city that aren't total dives. Unfortunately, most of the nice one-bedroom places here are ungodly expensive or low-income. Because that is a great way to attract the young professionals this city is so desperate for. Anyway, rant over. I'd love any contacts you have!

[Liisi]

I have to confess this whole horrible story, because at least here I'm anonymous.

Today, I screwed up. We've been renting this lovely house for about 3/4 of a year now, and it has a really nice sun porch. It's a 6'x20' area with windows all along three sides, and the fourth side connects to/runs the length of the living room and downstairs hallway. It has an unfinished concrete floor. When we first moved in last winter, we mostly just used the porch for storing a few items until we could figure out what to do with them...and then the stuff started accumulating - boxes to go to recycling, bags of clothes to go to Goodwill, an old desk taken apart in multiple pieces that needed to go to the dump, etc. Upset with ourselves because it was starting to look junky, we vowed to fix up the porch to make it a summer hang out. We were thinking some kind of environmentally-friendly floor covering like bamboo mats or low-VOC paint or eco-friendly carpeting, then a table and chairs, screens in the windows...nothing fancy. Well, it turned out that all of that stuff was more difficult and time-consuming than we had imagined. We didn't know how to paint it ourselves, and called painters so late in the season that they were already booked, and eco-friendly carpeting for 6'x20', as it turns out, would cost close to $500, and the screens our landlord gave us wouldn't fit in the windows, etc., etc., so gradually our efforts dwindled....then stopped...and the porch stayed in its unkempt, ugly state, and about 19 spiders and their webs and babies took up residence. We stopped lamenting, "Are we EVER going to get the porch finished?", and just started pretending like the porch didn't exist.

Until today. Yesterday, I found a deal on some very nice (IMO - don't know about SO's thoughts yet!) throw rugs, and thought that I could AT LEAST clean the porch and turn a PORTION of it into an end-of-summer hang out by putting down these rugs. And SO and I could at least sit out there with a freakin glass of lemonade ONE TIME before the summer's over. So as soon as she left for work this morning, I went out to the sun porch all determined. I started by totally clearing it out, hauling the pieces of the desk, the bags, the screens, etc., out onto the sunny lawn "for now." This took a while. Then I dealt with the cobwebs and spiders - at first I made the effort to move each mother spider and her egg sacs outside to the bushes, in tact. But there were sooo many spiders and webs that eventually I just tackled them with the broom. Then I swept the concrete floor, and sprayed all of the windows with window cleaner. Then... my brilliant, horrible idea was that the most efficient way to clean the whole porch - you know, ceiling, windows, windowsills, and floor - would be to spray it with the powerful sprayer attachment on the garden hose. How convenient, the garden hose is right outside of the porch, and because the porch has a door on either hand, I can just spray in one side and the water will go out the other! This will be so much easier and faster than using rags and a bucket and scrubbing everything in the sun porch by hand! Proud of myself, I turned on the hose and started spraying. Wow, the water sure was stronger than I expected. And then I realized, oh @#$*^, I can't spray water in here willy-nilly, because there are two electrical outlets on the wall. And oh $#)@*#!, the water I sprayed on the ceiling is now dripping onto my head, and oh #&*)^@, the floor isn't level and the water is not cascading out the door on the other side, it's making puddles all over the floor, which, oh #&)$@#&), are dripping into the crack between the floor of the porch and the HOUSE. The crack that I didn't even notice was there. I hastily turned the hose off, and freaked out - was that water dripping into the living room? The basement? Why wasn't it going out the door like it was supposed to? In my panic, I ran up to the bathroom and grabbed every single towel from our closet, then ran back down to the porch and flung the towels all over the floor to quickly mop up as much of the water as I could. I spent the next half hour using all of our nice bath towels, wash cloths, and hand towels to wipe the walls, the windowsills (what was I thinking, soaking the paint??), and wiping the ceiling with a towel-wrapped broom. The Beagle, sensing my panic, howled and barked and whined at me from the kitchen.

I came back in the house, dirty and sweaty and exhausted, put all of the disgustingly filthy towels into the washing machine and hoped for the best, then found an email from my landlord: "Just wanted to let you know I'm sending someone over to mow the lawn today!" Oh, you mean the lawn that now has the entire contents of the porch on it?? UUGGGHHHHH.

My big stupid plan was to have the porch all set up by this evening, with the rugs, the table and chairs, a nice candle or twinkly lights, etc., to surprise my SO. I'd have dinner already made and on the table, and she'd be so amazed, and we'd sit out there and enjoy the summer breeze as the sun went down. Now, I'll be lucky if the darn thing ever dries out and if none of that water got in the basement. And I'm probably going to have to buy new towels to replace the ten or so that I probably just ruined. And this disaster of a project has derailed my day so much I might not even have time to make dinner at all. Thai delivery, here we come...

[scrub-jay]

Rent a shop vac that can handle water.

[diggitydot]

It's seriously OK, I promise. It's summer and it will all dry out in a couple days. You took on a gigantic project. More power to you because I'm still in my jammies, drinking coffee, and watching the news and in NO WAY considering anything more daunting than a trip to the grocery store this afternoon.

Just mop up what you can, let it dry, and go about what you'd already planned. It will be completely fine. And I'm sure your LL would be OK rescheduling the lawn dude if you tell him/her that you have the yard covered with boxes that you're dunning out. It's better than paying lawn dude twice because he can't mow the whole yard and will have to return later, anyway.

[HouseofWool]

I would sweep the water out the door and call it a two-for, clearing water out and scrubbing the floor at the same time!

BTW - it totally sounds like something I would do. *sigh*

[niener]

LOL, Liisi I'm only laughing because that sounds exactly like something I would do as well! Hopefully the summer heat will help dry that up quickly.

[L.Jane]

yup. I can totally see myself doing exactly that. Yum Thai...