Because seriously, I think I only have like one sweater that’s decent and fits.  And….IT’S 26 DEGREES OUT THERE!!!

Even my jeans are too thin to wear in this weather.  Now I must go and try to dig up some old warm give-away type pullovers from when I worked for a company in Utah years ago.  And also, I must brave the cold so I can go and get some peppermint schnapps for my hot chocolate.

Brrrrr!!!!!

P.S.  There are reasons why we decided to settle in Texas after the Air Force, and weather like this was NOT on the list, dammit!

I have to say I kind of agree with that guy who said we are a nation of whiners.  And we have a good life here near Dallas…but still….

WTF?!  110 friggin’ degrees?!  Isn’t that a LITTLE excessive?  Yeah…um….the A/C is at full blast 24/7 (it is, after all, still 100 here and it’s 9:15 P.M.) and the house is at a relatively comfortable 78.

So really, I don’t have anything to whine about considering that a 20 degree differential between outside and inside is pretty reasonable.

So…am I frustrated that I can’t even bitch that I am sitting in a “comfortable” 78 degree house while it is 100 degrees outside?  Hell, yes!

But I will not complain, I will not complain, I will not complain, I will not complain.

Because The Spouse went into the 125 degree attic yesterday and hooked up our new attic fan and mowed the lawn during a pollution alert today in 106 degree heat.

So I will paste a smile on my face, drink some wine (which makes me sweat but what’s the difference at this point) and try not to complain because there’s really nothing anyone can do.

I’m sure all my relatives up north are laughing at this.  But I will be the one laughing in September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May, and (probably) June.

Damn, it’s hot!

So…what’s the temperature where you are?  If it’s double digits, I am VERY jealous.  And also, if it is double digits, you suck.

1.  Unattended hellions kids screaming and yelling in the street in front of my house who (on purpose) walk slowly and ride behind cars as drivers attempt to back out of their driveways.

2.  People that stand WAY too close to me in line.

3.  Yard workers that park their trucks near places of business and stare at people as they walk in and out.

4.  Screaming kids in restaurants (for God’s sake, people…..show a little class and take them outside until they stop).

5.  Bush-bashers.  Sure, they think it makes them feel better to do this but it is not helpful.  I did the same when Clinton did all the things he did…it still didn’t change things or make me feel better.

6.  People that lie.  Or at least…people that lie and are stupid enough to get caught.

7.  Pharmacies that don’t fill prescriptions, and then refuse to call me and tell why (today it was “we’re out of that medication”).

8.  High gas prices (I think we can all agree with this one).

9.  Politicians that refuse to allow new refineries and/or drilling for the sole purpose of political gain.

10. Bridges to nowhere.

11. Teachers that would rather have kids fill out countless worksheets  and wait for questions vs. teaching a new concept in-depth.

12. People that speed, tailgate, swerve, and talk on a cell phone…all at the same time.

13.  Parents that don’t buckle their kids in because it’s just easier to avoid the fight.

14.  People that drive WAY too slow – they are every bit as dangerous as people that drive way too fast.

15.  People that don’t wait their turn at stop signs.

16.  Kids on bikes that completely disregard stop signs.

17.  PTA meetings.  I’d rather skip the social extravaganza and get the slides later.

18.  The lack of common courtesy I’ve seen more and more lately.

19.  Kids that absolutely refuse to do anything unless there’s something in it for them.

20.  Well…..lazy ungrateful kids in general, when we get right down to it.

21.  Pollen.

22.  Mold.

23.  Pet dander.

24.  In case you didn’t notice the trend…allergies.

25.  Weather over 85 degrees.

26.  Humidity.

27.  People that sneeze and cough and refuse to turn their heads and cover their mouths and noses.

28.  People that don’t wash their hands – with soap – after using the bathroom.

29.  People that get up from a meal and don’t take their own plate to the sink (this does not happen in our house).

30.  Cats that bang on my bedroom door and whine when they are hungry or lonely (okay…our cat but really any cat that would do this).

31.  Laundry.

32.  Cleaning.

33.  Nosy neighbors.

34.  Donation seekers at retail stores – outside and at the register.

35.  Hallmark holidays.

36.  Rain.

37.  Tom Cruise.

38. Katie Couric.

39.  OPRAH (yes, I said it).

40.  Reverend Wright (as could we all).

41.  Flight delays.

42.  Big trucks on the highway (I can’t see around them and it makes me nervous).

43.  Coconut in any form – including alcohol.  Yuck.

44.  Sushi.

45.  Hours-long coverage of a storm that has already passed.

46.  Our neighbor’s missing fence (privacy, please).

47.  Neglectful parents.

48.  Lazy parents.

49.  Abusive parents.

50.  TELEVISION COMMERCIALS!!!!! Hey, it’s really crappy outside. Yes, I could do without commercials during the election coverage.

I think that’s about it…at least off the top of my head.  Anyone else?  Care to add to things you could do without (except me whining, of course).

Me (on a message on the spouse’s cell phone while he was in the pre-flight brief):  “Well, the garbage disposal is broken so hopefully you’ll call before you leave for Chile.”

The Spouse (on a quick call before push back):  “So, the disposer’s broken?”

Me:  “Yes, I push the light switch and it does nothing.”

The Spouse:  “There’s a red button underneath it – you’ll have to use the flashlight to find it.”

Me (grumbling while fumbling for the flashlight and the button):  “Okay, I pushed it.  Nothing happened.”

The Spouse:  “Well, is it plugged in?”

Me:  “……..Oh.  I guess I knocked it loose when I was getting the ammonia.”

The Spouse:  “So, you called so I could tell you to plug the disposer in?”

Me:  “……Sorry.”

Note to self:  Before you call the spouse at work, check to see if everything’s plugged in first.

Dammit.   I hope he still brings me wine.

1. People that refuse to use turn signals at a four-way intersection.

2. People that go when it’s not their turn at a four-way stop.

3. People that make u-turns when it is clearly marked that this is not allowed.

4. People that turn left when there is a sign saying no left turn.

5. People that cut in line at the school drop-off – yes, I know they are SO much more important than me.

6. People that insist on using the 10 items or less express lane at the store when they know they have more than 15 items in their cart.

7. People that stand WAY too close to me in line…I need my space! Hate close standers. Hate ‘em.

8. I’ve said this before, but people that wait until their total is on the screen, and then either dig through their wallet for exact change, or stand there and write out a whole check AND balance their check book before handing the check over. SO annoying.

9. People that talk REALLY loud on their cell phones in public (restaurants and movie theaters are the worst).

10. People that drive while talking on their cell phone, completely disregarding the color of street lights and refusing to stay in their own lane.

11. Moms who don’t buckle their kids in because it’s “too much trouble”.

12. Okay, most everything everyone else does annoys me. I freely admit it.

Can you tell it’s the first day of school and I had to be up like super early and had errands to run? I’m gonna go have a drink I think. It’s gotta be five o’clock somewhere in the world….

P.S. I hope The Boy is having a better day at school than I am at home.

Continuing my desire for services, the latest project is to get the sprinkler system in our yard completely re-done (along with various other stone edging and flagstone pathway and drain type yard work).

They started on Monday morning (before we even got up, actually). By 10:00 a.m. they had cut through our Verizon FIOS line. Guess what? That meant no Internets, no T.V., and no phone!! Yup, we were SO screwed. The company that marked the spot was like two feet off. and Verizon has so much business and there is so much construction going on in yards this summer, it took them almost two days to get to us. By 5:00 or so today we had everything back on.

What is so damn hard about testing where the line is and marking the right spot? A couple years ago, Comcast was putting in its hi-speed junk on our street – box just happens to be right around where all our utilities are. They cut through our water line to the house; then when they were repairing said water line they cut the GAS line to the house!! I don’t know what’s worse…the poor marking or the poor repair work once the marking has been found to be wrong!

I really wanna know what the hell is so hard about marking a spot in the RIGHT place, and then doing your work around it.

I guess I should be thankful it was only two entire business days and three calls later…and can I just say how ANNOYING is the Verizon FIOS customer service line? I HATE that f*(&^%$ computer!!!!!! Still like FIOS stuff, but I HATE their customer service set-up.

I wonder if utility companies EVER mark the right spot…always seems to be the wrong spot. At least around here…..

On the upside, the sprinkler system is in, and the landscaping will be done by next Tuesday!

Well…hello, hi…..here I am, your friendly neighborhood broken water heater drain spout fixer. I wasn’t a drain spout fixer before, but I am now.

It’s really quite easy to become a broken water heater drain spout fixer. You really only need a few things in your favor:

1. You have to be cheap. I HATE paying plumbers or any type of service people to fix stuff in the house. They’re too expensive and I always feel like I’m getting ripped off (even if I’m not).

2. You have to be impatient. I don’t have the time to wait for some yucky old sweaty dude that smells like smoke with his butt crack hanging out his pants to find the time to drive out to my house and fix the damn water heater.

3. You have to be smart and marry a guy that knows a little bit about how to fix a lot of things. He taught me that if it’s already broken I can’t break it any worse, so why not give it a try?

Okay, so now we know that I’m cheap, impatient, and smart (at least about who I married).

Cut to this morning around 11:00 a.m. Picture me (well you don’t have a picture of me but picture some girl) all sweaty after doing intervals on the stairs at they gym. Pulling into my garage…to find….water pouring out the bottom of my water heater.

Yes, our water heater is in our garage. Don’t ask. I’d rather not get into the logic of where our builder put things in the house.

Anyway….water leaking out of the water heater….Tommy on a trip to Buenos Aires….and….I’m pretty freaked out.

So, I moved into military spouse mode. This is the mode where I realize I’m going to have to fix it myself because I don’t have family in town and my husband is in another country. So…I moved into action.

Into the car I jumped, wallet in hand. Off to The Home Depot. Because there are guys there. Guys that are supposed to know what the hell they’re doing – or at least more than I do.

There was only one guy around the plumbing area…and did I mention that THERE WAS WATER POURING OUT OF THE BOTTOM OF MY WATER HEATER AND THE WATER WAS STILL ON? So clearly I was in a hurry and less patient than my usual impatient self. So I ask this guy that’s very overweight, pasty white and with glasses and soft hands (basically a guy that doesn’t look like he’s ever actually fixed anything at all himself….ever) how to fix the problem.

The guy takes me to the water heater section and smartly hands me a replacement drain valve. He tells me I need to take the half of the drain valve which is still attached to the heater (other half has mysteriously screwed itself off the end and is nowhere to be found – yes I do have certain neighbors that might have “borrowed” it for themselves…we won’t go there), drain all the water out, and then put some Teflon tape on the end of the replacement spout and twist it in.

I told him there were no threads in the pvc spout. He didn’t listen. More about that later.

On the way home I had to call Argentina for an assist from Tommy to find out how to turn the water off and where the pipe wrench was. Yeah, Tommy, for answering your phone and telling me where stuff was.

Cut to two and a half hours and one trip to McDonald’s later, and the water has finally drained completely.

I dutifully dry out the end of the spout, wind Teflon tape around the replacement drain spout…and….THE DAMN THING DOESN’T FIT!!! I told the guy, but no….he didn’t listen. I should have known not to trust a Home Depot guy that looked like he had never actually worked on anything himself a day in his life.

Off I went back to Home Depot with my wrong part….and this time I took the half of my original drain spout valve that’s still in tact with me. And….YEAH!!!! I find a guy who looks like he’s older than dirt and been in the sun his whole life. He has tattoos all over his forearms and rough, working man’s hands. I tell him what my problem is. He takes me over to the PVC area, pulls a spout with a red valve on one side of it out of a bin, and screws it onto my drain spout half. He tells me to put those two parts together first, and then put the whole thing on my water heater together with Teflon tape.

10 minutes later…my broken water heater drain spout was fixed!! An hour later, I finally got my shower.

And now….I am a trained and certified broken water heater drain spout fixer.

That is all.

If you’re going to turn the volume on your pool speakers up so high that your neighbors can’t carry on a conversation in their yards without yelling….YOU OUGHT TO GET BETTER TASTE IN MUSIC!!!!!

Seriously……Nichelback and all other forms of loud, scratchy, screaming, yelling bad music? That’s your idea of “good”?

You have managed to ruin the only sunny afternoon we’ve had in the past month.

Thanks a lot, jerks.

** UPDATE** It started raining again. There’s thunder and lighting and everything. Ha, ha!!! That’ll teach em!

Okay, so we got the new tile in. And of course when service people lay new floors, they don’t care much about putting marks in your trim around the floor. Or your doors as they move stuff in and out.

So after they left I decided it would be a good idea to “touch up” the trim and doors and really make the place look nice. After all, we still had not tweaked the trim after we had the place painted so it was well past time for some clean-up.

I decided to volunteer for the task because really…how hard could it be?

Yeah, right. Ladies, a word of advice…do not EVER, under ANY circumstances volunteer to do any type of touch-up anything in the house.

The first night, I was at it for 5 1/2 hours. With the artisan brush on the top and near the grout and the angled brush in the middle. Of the trim. All the way around the walls of the main parts of our house on the first floor. And our house is not that small. And the tile hurts. Your knees. And your back. And your elbows. And your feet. And your shoulders. And your hips. As you slide your little paint can on its newspaper around the floor to protect the new (and older tile) from the dreaded paint.

When I was finished, I realized that although I thought I had been smart and found the correct paint to match the trim and door in the bathroom….I was wrong. There were little white spots all over the place (which Tommy hesitantly pointed out). So I had to paint ALL the trim and the door in that bathroom (took me an extra 45 minutes). Doors suck.

The next day I decided to go ahead and fix up the parts under the cabinets in the kitchen that we never took care of when we got our tile put in that area more than seven years ago. I think that tile’s even harder than the new tile. Three hours later, I could barely move. Then I decided that while I was all messy I’d go ahead and paint the garage door leading into the house. That took another 45 minutes (did I not just say that doors suck?).

Once I got out of the shower and got (a very late) dinner cooked (pumpkin and Italian sausage pasta with wild mushrooms which was very yummy….I know it sounds kinda weird but it was yum)……I noticed little white spots all over the inside of the garage door. And then I went to the bathroom and noticed the bottom half of the door in there needed to be painted again (hey, I was tired and I got lazy..so sue me).

I told Tommy the news of the doors today and showed him where the spots were. And he took pity on me. He will be finishing the “touch up” painting job from hell that I started on Tuesday. I’m not sure if it was that he was sick of listening to me whine and complain talk about how hard it was and how sore I was, or that he wanted the job to be done right. I don’t care. He is finishing it. I’m sure it will look lovely.

I, on the other hand, am taking a trip to the nail salon in a couple of hours. Oh yes, it will be a long appointment. And I will be lectured on using my nails to get paint off the tile and grout.

But I don’t care. I guess it was worth it. The place looks lovely. However…next time I thing I will either just ignore the black marks and scraped paint or hire more services to take care of it for me!

Like when you have other people lay tile…..did you know you have to get up at an ungodly hour to let them in to work?

People!!! Seriously!!!! Isn’t 8:30 a.m. a little early to be running the jackhammer to take out the old tile in the entry?

And…..how the hell long does it take to lay the tile? We’re not doing any special pattern or anything. Geez. We’re on day three now.

But…in keeping with my desire for lots of services…..in all fairness they did have to move all the furniture in the front of the house and the toilet and sink and washer and dryer. And they will have to put all that back, along with re-attaching and fixing the base boards.

I know, I know. 8:30 isn’t that early to be up. Well…it isn’t if you’re used to getting up that early. We’ve been taking turns letting the guys in and The Boy has been sleeping in as usual since it’s summer.

Oh, and the tile? It looks fabulous! As usual, Tommy picked a really good color and it looks like we planned it to match what we have (which we didn’t…he just picked what he liked and I agreed). He says we should just pick what we like and it will all come together in the end. Although I hate to admit it, he’s actually right about that.

To summarize….like services…hate to get up to let them in….but in the end it’s all worth it.

Maybe pictures of tile later after they leave…maybe not.