If it kills me

So, imagine you have to fix a plumbing leak under your bed, for 5 hours. Yes, that was my Sunday/Monday. Here's the story.

Sunday, Cheri asks me for help in moving the cable connection in the spare bedroom. No problem, just jump under the home, disconnect the cable and move it to the new hole. I don't mind getting under houses and our is a relatively nice crawlspace. So, I crawl over to the bedroom and on the way over I notice water running down the wall between the kitchen and the laundry room, under the house mind you. Things that make you go Hmmm. Well, the cable gets reconnected and I turn to investigate the leak. I find that the leak is actually on the other side of the wall in the crawlspace under the laundry room. A little relief that its not running down the wall from the 2nd floor, which would have been yucky.

Let me interject here that the crawlspace under the laundry room is much smaller than the one under the main house. When this house was built in 1938 the laundry room was a room you stepped down into from the kitchen. At some point during the renovations the floor in this room was raised to be level with the kitchen floor. The space under this room is like crawling under a bed. Tiny.

I am not tiny.

To enter the space under the laundry room I have to exhale to get my chest in and then inhale to get my hips in. Sound like fun? Oh, also, in order to get to the pipe that was leaking, I had to go in on my back.

I make it over to the leak and because of the size of this space, I can only use my right hand to take the pipes apart. The left hand is useless in this drill. I determine that the best course of action is to take out the bad part and go to the Home Depot and get new parts. Nice idea. Home Depot had the right parts, wrong sizes. This will come back to bite us later. So, I get the parts I can work with, reducers and all. Go back to the house determined to make this work. Did I mention you have to slide on your back and only use your right hand in this drill?

I get back under and go to work. OK, looks good, lets turn the water back on. Cheri is in charge of the water turning off and on. So she goes out and turns it on. Please turn it off. Please. Hmmm, that didn't work. Lets try again, redo this, reconnect that. Still leaks. Hmmmm. After a couple more tries, the leaks are gone, calgon take me away.

I go up to shower all the crawlspace off me and about 5 minutes into the shower, the water completely shuts off! Oh no you didn't! I run downstairs and Cheri again runs out and turns the water off. Great. I go back and put on my dirty clothes again and take a gander under the house. Oh good. 40 gallons of hot water is now under the home. Yes, you know what's coming.

Back I go into the crawlspace. Snorkel and mask optional. You know that whole "wrong size" thing I talked about, this was it. The pressure from the water heater blew out the fitting. Just blew it out. OK, readjust this, tighten that, tweak those. Leak test? All good. Yeah!

Shower with no problems, dishwashing with no problems, problems solved. Until about 10PM that night. Cheri was walking through and heard water spraying under the home. Joy Joy. Again the water goes off.

Monday morning bright and early I am at the plumbing supply store to get the right stuff, having the right stuff is so underrated. Back to the house, dryfit everything, looks good, here we go. Hook all of the new stuff up and it still leaks. You may think this is rocket science, but it really is not. All of this plumbing screws together. Problem is I only have my right hand and its super hard to tighten fittings with one hand. Long story short, on this morning, another 40 gallons was deposited into the crawlspace. Really?

You may have called a plumber at this point, heck, you may have called one yesterday, Sunday rates be damned! Not me. I'm the guy that circles the restaurant to get the prime parking spot on the street. I'm the guy that does not flinch in this situation.

We finally got to leak free status around 8ish on Monday morning. I took a shower and yes, you guessed it, leak city. Again the water goes off. We decide to reconvene the water stop loss program after work.

So, finally, all connections are tight, retight and re-retightened. Cheri turns the water on and we run it all over the house for 5 minutes. No leaks. Whats that? No leaks. Say again? No leaks. Thank you very much.

So, yes after 5 hours and $25 worth of parts, the problem is fixed. The people said yeah!

Oh, Sam was so cute. He sang to me through the floor when I was under there.

Craigslist Miracle

So, I guess everyone probably knows about Craigslist around here. If you don't, it is like a big yard sale online. You list your stuff, or what you want, or what you want to trade your 74 Dodge Dart for.

We were doing some house cleaning and had two of Sam's carseats in the garage and put them up on CL. Didn't get much action for a while, not even the standard "hey, I'll give you 20 bucks for both, pick them up now" e-mail. Until yesterday...

I get an e-mail from a woman who says she would love to by the seats because she is adopting a boy from Russia soon and they would be great. Ok, nothing weird so far. I write back and tell her that yes, we still have them, and guess what, we also have a son from Russia.

So she calls me and I ask her where they are adopting their son from...Moscow she says, wow, that's where Sam is from. What baby house is he at? Baby house #2, wow, that is where Sam is from. I don't know how many baby houses there are in Moscow, but these odds are crazy. So, we arrange to meet to exchange cash for seats.

In the meantime, she e-mails me with some questions about the orphanage and the process and tells me that they are using Adoptions from the Heart and Children World Adoption Agency. Now, this is going to sound weird, but yes, those are our agencies too. So I ask her if she knows Alla and Igor, you may remember, Alla is the facilitator in Moscow and Igor is the baddest driver in all of Moscow. Bang, next thing in my inbox is a picture of Alla and Igor in front of Baby house #2. Get the heck out of here!

So they came over tonight with their family and got the seats. We talked for a long time about the process and they were happy to see Sam in full "Sam" mode. They are preparing to head back to Moscow in two weeks for the court process. We figured that their son Ben was born about a week after we left Moscow.

Crazy.

You can meet them here

The moon

Tonight when I picked Sam up from school tonight the moon was bright in the sky. Sam saw it and told me that Grammy Re and Pop-Pop were looking at the same moon and stars.

Grammy Re told Sam when she was here on Thanksgiving that whenever he saw the moon, Grammy Re and Pop Pop could see the same moon and were thinking of him.

Too Cute

A big horse, a big house and baby Jesus

Sam was very restless on Christmas Eve. The last time I put him back in bed he said to me" Santa is going to bring me a big horse, a big house and baby Jesus". Santa did not deliver on the house or the horse, but baby Jesus was there. He loved seeing the Nativity scene at the beginning of our block and the living nativity at the church across the street. He still asks about it and gets mad when we don't go down the right block when coming home.

He did very well this Christmas and you can tell he is very loved by all of his family. Everyone sent the best gifts and Sam has played with them all. His favorite gift from Santa was a little puppy that has its own food, ball and brush. Running a close second is the Kung-Fu Panda DVD, followed by a large stuffed bear wearing a snappy little striped shirt. Sam was so good, he even helped Mommy pick out some toys he did not play with to give to other kids. He does however think that Santa is coming back every night and is still looking for that big house and horse.

We did get some sad news over the break. Sam's school that he has attended since October of last year is closing its doors. We always thought he would be at the school until he was 5, but it is not to be. So, we are school searching. I think it is gonna be hard on him to leave his friends and teachers that he loves so much.

Cute Overload

Try and tear yourself away!

Renovation Update

Just wanted to post a picture of the before and after of the living room. The cabinet we built is all finished, paint is all done, and it is in use. A friend is building doors for it and the glass is on order. Getting close!

Getting Chilly

We usually have a very mild fall and winter here in Virginia. The leaves are starting to fall and the air is crisp. Took Sam out on the porch for a few pictures this morning. He recently had his one year check-up and everything is good to go. He grew almost 7 inches and took on a little over 2 pounds. He is really starting to use his words well and is very independent. Today when he got dressed he pulled on a long sleeve t-shirt and then his pink polo paired with a fresh pair of Khaki pants, all on his own. His new favorite stuffed animal is Donkey, with tiny donkey running a close second. Our best friend Doggie has a new home in the toybox and is no longer invited to bed. TImes they are a changin.