Zest

I’m loving life.

I wish summer would hurry up and BE SUMMER and I wish I had a working dryer, but other than that, I’m loving life.


The house is great. I can overlook the little annoying things, like the fact that the cupboard under the kitchen sink smells like you might think the space under the house would smell, because there is, in fact, a small space around a pipe that isn’t sealed so the air under the house comes into the cupboard.

Or the fact that the last guy who rented the place decided that he would be super helpful and replace all the pipes under the sinks, even though there was NOTHING wrong with the old ones, and the ones he used are these piece of crap plastic, bendy things and they all leak and we have to keep buckets under two sinks to catch the drips.

Or the fact that we have birds living in the space above the front porch and in a crevice by the back door. (And apparently nesting season isn’t over yet because they won’t leave so we can close off the areas.)

But these things are little and while they DO matter (I mean, we’ll need to fix the sinks), they don’t REALLY matter in the grand scheme of things. I don’t mind emptying a little bucket of water every few days. Because I’m loving spending every evening with my boys and I’m loving my pets and I’m loving the BIGness of the house and all the space we have to move around and play.


The dryer is another story.

When I moved in I had a washer and dryer. We got them hooked up and I ran a load through the washer. It stopped halfway through the cycle, full of water and soap and towels, and nothing that I did would make it finish the cycle. I ended up having to wring the towels out, put them in a bin and take them somewhere else to re-wash them and dry them.

The dryer didn’t work either. It would run fine, and it would get hot, but it wouldn’t dry the clothes.

So I bought a new set. I spent $175 on a pair that somebody on craigslist couldn’t take with them to their next apartment because they didn’t have washer/dryer hookups. It’s a great set – white, clean, big, working. The washing machine works GREAT. It’s quiet and it gets my clothes clean.

But the dryer? Not so much.

Turns out it’s not the dryer’s fault.

After much trial and error we had come to the conclusion that something in the exhaust pipe under the house must have disconnected. We took a leaf blower and stuck it down the vent but no air actually came out on the side of the house. It’s only about 12 feet away so something must have come undone for the air to not reach the outside. And now, because moisture has been sitting in the dryer duct for several days, everything is damp and smells like mildew. YUM.

Today, the husband of a friend of mine came over to crawl under the house and put in a new exhaust line.


He couldn't fit under the beams in the crawl space so he commissioned his skinny little brother to come over and crawl down there. After a few minutes of persuading and insisting that there were no mice under the house (which I'm not actually convinced of), he crawled down there, drug a section of flex-hose over to where it needed to be so we could reach it from above, and made twenty bucks.


(Now, mind you, this is after about two hours of peering and thinking and sticking our arms down holes to take pictures with the camera and more thinking...)


Of course right after this skinny little brother leaves, we discover that this section of pipe he has brought over to where it needs to be, is literally unraveling as we pull it through the hole in the floor. Who knows how long it's been down there. It's a piece of crap. We have to run a whole new pipe line down there but this little brother is the only one skinny enough to do it.

Tomorrow morning they'll be back. We're hoping to persuade him to crawl under there one more time and feed this GOOD QUALITY pipe to where it needs to be, so we can actually have a standard dryer exhaust line. There is one other added problem which is that the part of the current line that vents out of the house is fed through a piece of wood that is nailed in place under the house. So somehow we have to knock that down, but hopefully a kid on the other side of it with a hammer can get that done.

Oy.

We’ve fallen into a great routine, the boys and I. Jordan loves the house and loves spending lots of time there. I love being around to pack his lunch every day and kiss Steve hello when he gets home from work. And Jordan is simply loving summer camp and I love that he comes running at the end of every day, happy about everything he’s gotten to do.

I love walking down the hallway of the house to hear Jordan playing imaginatively in his room. Last night this happened and I stood outside his door, smiling and listening. I heard him say something about an experiment and teaching right from wrong. A second later the door opened and he saw me standing there and gave me a shy smile. He had his library book bag slug across his chest and the kitten under one arm. I asked him, “Teaching her right from wrong, huh?”


“Yep” he replied, and marched off to put her in the Kitty Jail. Later in the evening he wrote her a report card. She got an F in manners because she peed on the carpet (which she has never done before).


This kitten is so funny - she really doesn't like to be held but she will let Jordan tote her all over the house in things like book bags. Go figure.

I will definitely try to get a “Jordan-isms” post up soon because the kid is just cracking me up these days. Like the other night, when he asked me what was for dinner.

“Taco salad.”

“Oh,” he replied. “I’m not much of a taco salad kind of guy.”

But in the meantime, here are a couple of recent pictures I've snapped! I'm trying to get a bit more into photography this summer and I have a couple more fun ones to post soon.

(The downtown Albany bridge just before a downpour and just after the most vibrant rainbow I have ever seen.)

(Picking cherries at Dorothy's.)

(Petra's trip to work with me where she met all of my desk buddies.)