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In Which I Am Very Frazzled
I'm going to be traveling in October, and thus I've started waking up earlier in the morning, trying to get myself on East Coast time (and closer to European time). The waking up earlier can leave me a little tired, but it pays out when I'm actually able to sleep on the earlier schedule when I'm back East. However, what really frazzles me is the lost of time in the evening, and everything gets pressed closer together, and I don't have the time to do everything that I want to do.
On the bright side, my usual pattern while cycling earlier is to go out for a one-hour hike above Clark Kerr first thing in the morning. This wakes me up in the early hours, and also helps me expend energy so I'm more likely to sleep at night. And I get a nice, physical intro to the day, and I interact with some people (and their dogs) even before I work.
The weather's been particularly nice. I usually shed my jacked before I get to the hills. And today we got bright blue and clear skies too. The Golden Gate Bridge was about as crystal clear as it ever gets
Anywho, short evenings aren't the only reason I'm frazzled. Lots of stuff going on too.
With help from a Facebook friend, I found a general contractor to take a fourth try at our downstairs tub, and K. actually got him out here last Saturday. He is pretty confident that the problem is that the proper, legally required waterproofing wasn't put in behind the tile walls. I had pictures of the tub under construction, and he said, yeah, it looks like they just put greenboard behind the tiles, which is how you did this sort of thing thirty years ago.
I can totally believe it given the problems we had with the initial bathroom guy, and I'd about come to the conclusion that all of the tile needed to be ripped out and new stuff installed. Which is what he wants to do. He can't do the work until December, but his estimate is about $1500 + materials, maybe $2000 total, which sounds reasonable at this point. (Though not reasonable in the scope of things where we had this bathroom renovated exactly five years ago!)
In the meantime, he offered to put up some plastic on the walls to make the shower usable again. Since the upstairs shower is much less nice this seemed reasonable ... but we didn't realize quite what he intended. So we've got hard plastic walls up now in the downstairs tub, in front of the tiles, which will definitely do the job, but is a bit wasteful for something only intended to last a few months. So it goes.
Meanwhile, our neighbor suggested a gardener for us. I'm always leery of that type of ongoing cost going into our budget, but we came to the conclusion this year that we wanted to start having our front yard look like something other than a prairie wasteland, so that we'll have good Google Maps pictures years before we sell, and so that we'll really have it on the path to looking regularly nice by the time we sell.
So K. had been scheduling with him, and he finally made it out on Wednesday, very late, and only after K. gave him block-by-block instructions because he ended up at the wrong place twice before getting here. He seemed nice and very conscientious and responsive to our desire to have the yard thoroughly deweeded, then something planted when it's all dead. The deweeding is supposed to start on Monday, and then it'll be three months before we're clear of weeds, and then he'll do some planting as winter edges toward spring, maybe in February. He thinks that succulents will grow best, and I'm totally OK with that if they look good and aren't cactus.
Meanwhile, Lucy has been having bathroom problems very intermittently for a while, so when I was concerned with that last weekend, K. suggested that we should bring her in, so I wasn't worried about her on my trip(s). So we did, and it was suggested we up her wet food from once a week to every day, which is a big pain, but we're trying it out.
It had also been years since we'd taken Lucy into the vet, and the vet suggested a senior screen. It was expensive, but we agreed. It came back with her being in very good health, other than her level of dehydration that we were seeing. In fact they said our little ten-year-old cat's kidneys looked more like a two-year-old cat's. Given we lost both of our older cats to kidney disease, we were extremely relieved to hear that.
What else? What else? K hasn't been doing entirely well lately, which certainly contributes to household stress. I've been very busy during my work-week trying too simultaneously juggle too many tasks and also do things necessary to prep for our trip. I had an extremely productive work week last week, but that sort of thing comes at a cost.
And today I finished up "Book One" in what I intend as a trilogy in my Burning Wheel Clockwork Campaign. Perfect timing, as I managed it just before my trip, but that's a topic I'd like to dedicate an entry to later.
Tomorrow: Sister Act. (Meanwhile, pedophile-apologist and Neo-nazi-supporter Milo Y. marches on Sproul Plaza, probably resulting in helicopter riots.)
On the bright side, my usual pattern while cycling earlier is to go out for a one-hour hike above Clark Kerr first thing in the morning. This wakes me up in the early hours, and also helps me expend energy so I'm more likely to sleep at night. And I get a nice, physical intro to the day, and I interact with some people (and their dogs) even before I work.
The weather's been particularly nice. I usually shed my jacked before I get to the hills. And today we got bright blue and clear skies too. The Golden Gate Bridge was about as crystal clear as it ever gets
Anywho, short evenings aren't the only reason I'm frazzled. Lots of stuff going on too.
With help from a Facebook friend, I found a general contractor to take a fourth try at our downstairs tub, and K. actually got him out here last Saturday. He is pretty confident that the problem is that the proper, legally required waterproofing wasn't put in behind the tile walls. I had pictures of the tub under construction, and he said, yeah, it looks like they just put greenboard behind the tiles, which is how you did this sort of thing thirty years ago.
I can totally believe it given the problems we had with the initial bathroom guy, and I'd about come to the conclusion that all of the tile needed to be ripped out and new stuff installed. Which is what he wants to do. He can't do the work until December, but his estimate is about $1500 + materials, maybe $2000 total, which sounds reasonable at this point. (Though not reasonable in the scope of things where we had this bathroom renovated exactly five years ago!)
In the meantime, he offered to put up some plastic on the walls to make the shower usable again. Since the upstairs shower is much less nice this seemed reasonable ... but we didn't realize quite what he intended. So we've got hard plastic walls up now in the downstairs tub, in front of the tiles, which will definitely do the job, but is a bit wasteful for something only intended to last a few months. So it goes.
Meanwhile, our neighbor suggested a gardener for us. I'm always leery of that type of ongoing cost going into our budget, but we came to the conclusion this year that we wanted to start having our front yard look like something other than a prairie wasteland, so that we'll have good Google Maps pictures years before we sell, and so that we'll really have it on the path to looking regularly nice by the time we sell.
So K. had been scheduling with him, and he finally made it out on Wednesday, very late, and only after K. gave him block-by-block instructions because he ended up at the wrong place twice before getting here. He seemed nice and very conscientious and responsive to our desire to have the yard thoroughly deweeded, then something planted when it's all dead. The deweeding is supposed to start on Monday, and then it'll be three months before we're clear of weeds, and then he'll do some planting as winter edges toward spring, maybe in February. He thinks that succulents will grow best, and I'm totally OK with that if they look good and aren't cactus.
Meanwhile, Lucy has been having bathroom problems very intermittently for a while, so when I was concerned with that last weekend, K. suggested that we should bring her in, so I wasn't worried about her on my trip(s). So we did, and it was suggested we up her wet food from once a week to every day, which is a big pain, but we're trying it out.
It had also been years since we'd taken Lucy into the vet, and the vet suggested a senior screen. It was expensive, but we agreed. It came back with her being in very good health, other than her level of dehydration that we were seeing. In fact they said our little ten-year-old cat's kidneys looked more like a two-year-old cat's. Given we lost both of our older cats to kidney disease, we were extremely relieved to hear that.
What else? What else? K hasn't been doing entirely well lately, which certainly contributes to household stress. I've been very busy during my work-week trying too simultaneously juggle too many tasks and also do things necessary to prep for our trip. I had an extremely productive work week last week, but that sort of thing comes at a cost.
And today I finished up "Book One" in what I intend as a trilogy in my Burning Wheel Clockwork Campaign. Perfect timing, as I managed it just before my trip, but that's a topic I'd like to dedicate an entry to later.
Tomorrow: Sister Act. (Meanwhile, pedophile-apologist and Neo-nazi-supporter Milo Y. marches on Sproul Plaza, probably resulting in helicopter riots.)