"What did you do this weekend?" "Oh, just repaired my Jacuzzi."

Also known as Adventures in Toilet Repair part II.

Leah woke up. I packed my thingy in my purse and we headed out to our nearest home improvement center. We got there and quickly found the toilet repair section. Taped to the wall was "Your Handy Toilet Repair Guide!" Oh, how nice. I looked at the diagram for my thingy. It is known as a fill valve, or ********. This word has been edited in order to keep this blog family friendly. I was shocked and uncomfortable. I grabbed my high-performance ******* and a couple of brass nuts for my toilet lid and headed for a section of the store where everything wasn't named by testosterone-laden plumbers. I enjoyed a pleasant half-hour browsing and buying plants. I figured it didn't matter how much I spent there, Dave wouldn't notice anyway. Just kidding honey. Tangent: It has been brought to my attention (by Dave) that sometimes Dave gets teased and/or embarrassing stories get shared on this blog by yours truly. I am sorry. To anyone who cares, please know that we are the perfect couple who never argue or disagree in any way, that Dave is a perfectly attentive husband whose only fault is being a little too awesome, and that I am the perfect wife and mother who is always...yeah, yeah, whatever. Toughen up Dave. I love you but I think guys do funny things sometimes. As do girls. You should blog about it.
I warned you it was a tangent. We got back from the store with our goods. Leah returned to her efforts to kill trees and ingest germy treasures from the dark corners of the bathroom floor, and I opened my new thingy. First thing I discovered- the thingy is supposed to leak water from everywhere. Hmm, I guess I misdiagnosed the problem. The shrieking can't have been normal though. The front of the package proclaimed "Easy! Installs in minutes!" In .006 font the fine print read "If you are a licensed plumber who's been installing these for 10 years" I missed the fine print. My first clue was the instructions. A legal sized page covered in tiny print with smudgy illustrations (Put RC into AD unless you have a blah blah blah, see illustration 18.3) Deep breath. Half an hour later it was successfully installed! I went outside to do some gardening. What a day!

Adventures in Toilet Repair

What can I say…my life is a thrill a minute. When we bought this house a couple years ago, one of the first things we changed was the toilet in the master bathroom. The old toilet was icky and tiny and what can we say, we like to potty in style. WE bought a Jacuzzi-yes, Jacuzzi makes toilets- and were perfectly happy. Sadly, the honeymoon ended (not for the toilet, it still gets mooned frequently) and recently our toilet has been screeching likes a drowning cat every time the tank fills up with water after we flush. When this problem began, I opened the tank and after ascertaining that it was not actually a drowning cat, discovered the problem. That thingy that comes up from where the water comes in was gushing water out of many places instead of just the tube it was supposed to gush water out of. I hope you understand my highly technical description of the problem. If it’s too technical for you, I can try and dumb it down a little. Obviously the thingy needed replaced. I reported the problem to Dave. Fast forward several weeks. Ellie now has the difficult choice- the screaming toilet or the one that clogs if you use more than two squares. She’s been choosing the clogger. The screaming is becoming a part of our lives. First thing in the morning, last thing at night, the music of our lives.
This morning as I did my business after an invigorating walk, I decided to fix the problem. After all, what was I waiting for? Dave does plenty around the house when he’s home but fixing things has always been my department. Plus, I love doing it. Leah decided to help me. She was behind me in the bathroom, trying to decide if she wanted to help with the toilet paper or the nasty dusty plunger. I gave her the toilet paper and pretended not to notice as she methodically unrolled, shredded, and sampled various sections of the tp for freshness. As I turned off the water and unhooked the thingy, I carried on a mental conversation. “Ok, the water’s off..oops, now it’s off…righty tighty, lefty loosy…Dave will be so happy I fixed this….I wonder if he’ll notice I fixed it?....It took him two months to notice I cut my hair… I wonder how long it will take him to notice…I hope somebody at Lowes can help me find the right thingy to replace this thingy or he’ll notice sooner that he wants too…ok, here it comes…drat, I should have had a towel under there…
The adventure will continue when Leah gets up from her nap. Don’t worry, I shall blog about it in great detail. You know you can’t wait! BTW, it’s true about Dave not noticing my haircut for two months. He brings the manly art of not noticing to a whole new level. A week ago I spent all day cleaning out the garage, buying two shelving units, and installing a variety of hooks and organizers on the wall to hold our tools and junk. It was a lot of hot and dusty work, but I thought Dave would be so pleased that I did it while he was at work so he didn’t have to do it with me on the weekend. He came inside that evening after parking in the garage. “Hi Honey!” “Hi babe! Soo…did you notice my surprise?” “Ummm…(looking around) what surprise? Oooh, cookies!“ “You seriously didn’t notice!?” “What? Hey, did you get a haircut? It looks nice!” “You didn’t notice the garage!? I spent all day on that!” “Ummmm…..”

Mini-Vacation!

WE just got back from a fun mini-vacation to Austin. Dave and I have driven through Austin several times but never "visited" so we decided for my birthday this year that we should go. We had (mostly) a great trip! We drove down Thursday night and stayed in a nice hotel in a city just north of Austin called Round Rock. It was not fun to be all together in the hotel room (that would be the "mostly" part of the great trip). Leah wouldn't sleep since she could see us, Ellie couldn't sleep with Leah fussing, Dave and I couldn't sleep because of the two of them, and probably nobody around us could sleep either. Oh well, that's travel with kids. We got up Friday morning and headed over to Round Rock Donuts for some Texas-sized deliciousness!


The donuts were so good- like Krispy Kreme but with more character. Mmmmmmm....donuts...... When we got back to the hotel, we all went for a swim. That hotel had the nicest pool ever! The water was so warm that it was like swimming in a giant bathtub. I hate being cold and wet so I was very happy and of course the kids had a great time playing and splashing around. After the pool, we loaded up and drove down to Town Lake in the heart of Austin. We spent some time wandering on the paths and bridges around Town Lake, and in the spirit of keeping Austin weird, we met a lady taking her pony, Einstein, for a walk. I had to get a picture!

We went and had lunch at Shady Grove, then back to the park for some paddle boating! On the river we saw ducks, turtles, beautiful white herons, etc., but the highlight of that little adventure according to Ellie was when we got stuck. Ellie wanted to trade seats with me so I recommended going close to shore so if we tipped, we would be in shallow water. Unfortunately, we got stuck on a rock and it took all of Super Daddy's efforts to un-snag us and get us back in open water. After the boating I wanted to go to the Zilker Botanical Gardens. At first I wasn't very impressed but then we discovered the oriental garden.



It was a beautiful place, and Ellie loved the many steps, bridges, ponds, waterfalls, hidden passages, and stepping stones. This fun-filled day ended with a drive out to Driftwood to experience the amazing BBQ at the Salt Lick. The ribs and brisket there are something else!

After another sleepless night, we were more or less ready for another day of adventure on Saturday. We were greeted by a thunderstorm dumping rain on us as we left the hotel, but that blew over quickly and left us with a chilly, windy day. We were pretty glad we had done our outdoor stuff on Friday! We started our day with a tour of the Texas State capitol building.




Texas history is fascinating and the capitol building is beautiful. Just FYI, that star in the picture at the top of the dome is 8 feet from point to point. The Capitol building was really interesting for Dave and I but the girls were bored, so we left after the tour and took the girls to the Children's Museum. Ellie loved the exhibits there, and spent hours playing with golf balls, building things, and exploring the many exhibits there. By the afternoon, we were all pretty beat. We were happy to get back home and sleep in our own separate rooms and in our own beds that night! We were glad we went though-Austin was definitely worth visiting and definitely a place I would visit again!