On a lighter note?

Yep.  You gotta take your smiles where you can get them.  Today we phoned Allstate and got all set up for the adjuster to come and see our flood zone at the Other House.  The plumber called hours earlier than we expected so we unexpectedly ended up spending most of the day down there.  I have a Scan Gauge installed in Red and on the drive down The Tramp managed to hit 30mpg!  Cool.  Red isn't supposed to be able to do that.  It's a small thing really, but when you need a smile it's a great thing!  :-)

Strangely enough, the plumber didn't really find anything wrong with the offending toilet.  We aren't sure what to think about that and will need to be talking to American Home Shield and Allstate about it again.  Allstate did arrange for Servpro to come in and start remediation.  It was funny seeing them pull up in the bright green van I've only seen on the rather awful TV commercials.  We were impressed by the professionals who got out of the van however.  Lots of forms to fill out and sign before they got down to business, and what a job they did.  (Note to selves: the next time we have a flood we will call the insurance company before we spend hours trying to clean it up ourselves!)

The powder room is on the other side of that wall.  Their moisture meter indicated the concrete under the living room floor was quite wet so some of the vinyl plank was first to go.

The baseboard was pulled from that wall and there was already white mold growing on the wet boards.  Yick!

In The Tramp's old study, the green carpet was ripped up and when that baseboard was removed the corner closest to the powder room was sprouting black fuzzy mold.  Gross!

In my old sewing room (also green carpet ripped up) there was green mold on the wainscoting.  Ugh!

When the wainscoting was ripped off (this is the same corner) we could see the wet on the drywall.  Gack!

The vinyl in the powder room itself was soaked underneath.  Ewwww.

Then they cut the walls up about two feet to expose the wet sills.  Bless his heart, The Tramp did a little dance amongst the wreckage to cheer me up.  :-)

At this point we left the Servpro men to it.  They still needed to install the blowers and dehumidifiers.  I'm told it will take about four days to dry and they will monitor it every day.  Can you imagine if we hadn't decided to call the insurance company and just "let it dry?"  OMG.  Live and learn.

I did actually sew for an hour or so this evening.  Hard because my back hurt.  Moan, moan.  ;-)  Only about six of the 36 blocks are put together but I don't feel badly since there are already so many hours into fabric prep, cutting, and piecing the parts of the danged blocks.  I'm looking forward to being with my quilting bee ladies tomorrow morning and after a quick look in at the Other House I can come home and concentrate on some power sewing.  :-)

Threes???

HA!  I thought things came in threes.  Don't you believe it.  As of this moment we are up to FIVE.

(Actually six if I count the loss of a very special person, but he is way too special to be included in all our car and property nonsense.)

The recent string of minor and major crises continued on Friday morning when Paul, our realtor, called.  The realtor calling should be a good thing, no?  Not this time.  He had just received a call from someone who had been peering in the windows of our Other House.  This person called to say it looked like there was water on the floor.  Oh.  Noooooo.  Paul hopped in his car and drove down to check things out.  I soon received his call reporting water on the powder room floor and soaked carpets.  He turned off water sources and switched off the well pump to give us time to get down there later in the day.  Let me say right now we are HUGELY GRATEFUL for this thoughtful stranger who took the time to call in.

Oh.  Ewwww.  Look at that floor!  (This part of the house is on a concrete slab.)  All we can think is that when we checked on the house last Sunday, which included running water and flushing toilets to keep things from going stagnant, something went wrong with this toilet and it's been silently overflowing.  All.  Week.  Long.

The plumber is coming on Monday and I'm sure will tell us the either bad, or very bad reason we have a toilet bowl full of red mud.

Every inch of green carpet in both adjoining rooms was/is completely soaked.

And you can see the layer of red clay mud on the surface of the carpet.

Our footprints as we walked around.  And oh how bad it smells!

The really dark looking wet part is against the bathroom wall.  But the rest of the carpet is just as wet and went squishy, squishy, squishy, squishy when we walked on it.  SO gross.

Our own carpet machine wasn't up to the job so The Tramp sent me out to rent a big one while he did his best with ours.  Even with the commercial machine, the tank filled up in one or two passes over the carpet.  The Tramp figures we sucked over 100 gallons out of the two rooms.

While he continued with that, I tackled the bathroom floor.  This was after the first mop up.  We left things to dry overnight Friday and on Saturday sucked a whole lot more water out of the carpets.  The bathroom floor had stayed dry so I gave it a thorough cleaning.  I know the plumber will most likely make a mess but I just couldn't leave it.  The baseboards are new, done when the house was repaired and painted for sale.  Now they are swollen and wonky.  Sigh.

The silver lining to the weekend was absolutely fabulous weather.  So fabulous in fact, everything is growing again and we planned to go back to the house on Sunday to mow the lawns and do some general puttering around.  Regular every day relaxing chores.  I mean, short of a tornado or such, what else could happen?

Yep.  You betcha.  Saturday evening, just as we sat our weary carpet-sucking bones down at our desks I received an excited email from the next door neighbors who keep an eye out on the empty house for us....as far as the outside is concerned.  Apparently there was a car accident at the intersection across from our houses and one of the cars ended up in our front yard.  The car spun across the yard and into those holly trees at the corner.

The for sale sign is toast!

There were bits of car and sign all over the place.

We are told the driver was injured.  :-(  I'm so glad the car missed that big white rock (as well as the house!) or it could have been even worse.

The ruts aren't too bad either and the big hollies are ok.  I'm hoping they helped the car come to a cushioned landing!

I had wanted to bring that big white rock up to our new house, but the last time we tried to budge it we couldn't and I gave up the idea.  Today The Tramp decided to try again.  It moved!  Oh no.  Then he wanted to put it in the car.  NO! NO!  No more crises.  I can't take it!  We mustn't hurt ourselves being stupid about a rock!

Well looky.  Someone was overruled.  There it is in the back of Red.  (Not looking so very large as it's partially hidden by the folded tarp.)  I asked The Tramp how heavy he thought it was and he guessed about 250lbs.  Then he lifted me up and assured me it's much heavier than me.  LOL  Isn't he a sweetie?

Now all the rocks I wanted to "rescue" from the other house are here.  The big one will stay right there by the driveway looking picturesque.  I'm not "helping" move it again!  :-)

Good news from last week (there had to be some) includes the bluebirds starting their nest....

the dogs continue to be our devoted companions....

and a memory quilt went out the door.  Yay!  The sister quilt is in progress and if I ever get to stay home will be finished soon.

So how was your weekend?

Gasp!

No sewing today!  Today was the day I got back to the unfinished hallway painting project.  With many fingers and toes crossed I may actually get the whole job done this weekend.  Wouldn't that be nice!

I'm being supremely lazy this evening and not bothering to reorder my photos.  And does it matter to anyone else but OCD me?  Nope!  So these pictures are from the last three days or so.  The feeders are still busy and I'm still watching them.  I read with interest about this winter's "superflight."  I found that article a little confusing so a bit more browsing and I thought this article explained it pretty well.  Either way, that's why we have masses of pine siskins at the feeders this year.  All day.  Every day.

This cardinal seems to be saying, "is there anything left for me?"

I finally went out yesterday and bought some more suet cakes.  The woodpeckers, warblers and nuthatches were back in a flash!

Spring is springing.  I read an article yesterday that says "meteorological spring" starts today in our area.   The trees certainly think so.

I seldom get a chance to snap a photo of a chickadee, they come and go so fast.

I've been putting out a few dried mealworms with the seed which the bluebirds appreciate.  Unfortunately the mockingbirds appreciate them too and today they decided to hog guard the feeders all day.  Sigh.

Wednesday morning Maisy and I went for a walk.  On our way home I spotted the great blue heron behaving oddly.  (click on the photos for a closer look)  Yes indeed, it has a fish.  Not surprising, since that's what it comes here for.  :-)

Turns out this was a large fish.  I took Maisy inside and retrieved the camera.

Apparently a very large fish.  The heron kept trying to figure out how to swallow it.  It climbed out of the pond....

and back in.  Dunked the fish over and over and tried again.

Carried it to another spot and went through the process several more times.

While this was going on a red-shouldered hawk was screaming overhead.  I whipped up the camera and snapped away not knowing what I would get.  And look!  The image stabilization in this camera is pretty awesome.  Full zoom and no tripod.  Cool!

 Meanwhile the poor heron kept on struggling.  Striding slowly in and out, back and forth.

It flew across the pond and tried another spot.  I don't know the final outcome.  I decided not to spend the whole morning standing there.  Hmmmmm.  I think I need a nice garden bench at the bottom of the yard.  :-)

The Tramp met up with a Craigslist seller yesterday morning outside his office, and came home with a Ryobi chop saw.  He's thrilled because it's a battery one.  Not my sort of thrill, but he supports my machine habit so I support his.  ;-)

I've been working on Monogram Mondays by Jenny at Elefantz.  It's a small sampler so I figured I could keep up.  Uh huh.  So being four weeks behind, yesterday evening I put on the TV and got on with it.  After one false start with brown thread for the lettering, I picked it out and did the flowers and leaves first to see what color would "speak" to me.

I'm not really over the moon with my choice but I'm going to stick with the gold.  Nothing else in my boxes of threads seemed to be right either.

Today was a Feederwatch day and I spent a sunny hour with the dogs in the living room in front of the big window.  They were panting in the sun but I guess enjoying it too much to move.  Me, I was procrastinating.  Who wants to get on their knees and paint woodwork on such a beautiful day?

I moved Ngaire's bed into the living room to give me painting room in the hallway and Maisy quickly took it over.

Not even the click of the camera made her twitch.  (How does she lay like that?)

Now if only I could sleep so well......