IKEA, etc

So...IKEA.  We went, we saw, we conquered.  If you enjoy the concept of "personal space", I highly recommend that you do NOT shop the Atlanta IKEA the Sunday before school starts.  Just a little tip, there.  Having never been to an IKEA before, it took me a bit to adjust to the shopping style there.  I probably annoyed some folks at first, before I caught on to the follow-the-gray-concrete-road concept and blended into the wall of humans pressing through the showroom.  Interesting idea, painting arrows on a walkway and herding shoppers through in a single direction.  Not the way I like to shop, but given how crowded the store was, I guess it's a survival technique.

Did I love IKEA?  Yes and no.  I had some drooly moments in the kids' section, particularly over these things:

The Mammut collection is just so fun and Dr. Seuss-y that I found it hard to resist.  I did resist, though, even though I thought everything was pretty reasonably priced.  I just figured Tank would outgrow the toddler-sized bed in about 8.2 seconds, so I oohed and ahhed and walked away.

College Girl Niece found a double bed she luuurved, so we somehow strapped that on and in the Jeep, along with all four of us and made our way home.  Me?  I bought a vase.  Hey, I was walking out of there with SOMETHING, dammit!

Will I go back to IKEA?  I am sure I will.  While uber-streamlined, blonde wood DIY furniture isn't my style, I did really like some of their stuff and again, you can't beat the price.  As long as you buy it with an eye towards needing to replace it after a few years, I think IKEA purchases are great.


So, what else?
Well, the Tankster's birthday approaches.  I've been asking him what kind of party he wanted this year and I get a different response almost every time.  Egads--do they have a special training for kids on this?!  We've been through dinosaur party, Thomas the Tank Engine party, Cars party, baseball party, sea turtle party....and on and on and on.  Since he's said baseball the past several times and gone back to it after forays into other ideas, we're doing a baseball party.  Last night, I ordered cute mock baseball card party invitations.  Which virtually ensures he'll change his mind between now and his party and be all, "What's with the baseball shizzle?!"  Consistency, thy name is NOT toddler!

Oh, and there's another project soon to get underway at the Taj.  Shawn found a great deal on a fridge--we've been using Nice Neighbor's dorm fridge for a year now and we were just SO OVER THAT.  So, Shawn went to a new and used appliance place and found a fridge that had been in a model home.  We got it for a used price (1/3 the retail), but got a new warranty on it.  So...yay!  But wait...if you've read this blog before, you know better than to start celebrating just yet.

Turns out the new fridge fits juuuuust barely into its assigned spot.  So tight, in fact, that you can't open the left door.  Our options were to take it back and get a smaller one or to widen the offending doorway between the kitchen and dining room.  Since the kitchen is a notoriously dark room and that doorway was smaller than standard anyway, we opted to open the doorway 24 more inches.  We COULD have done it ourselves, but I advocated against that.  I know...can you believe it?!  I was afraid we'd wreck the old plaster walls and make a huge mess of it.  Plus, the trim on the dining room side has to be custom-made o match the other windows and doors (kitchen has different, more modern trim).  So, we made a call to the Sainted Singing Plumber/Contractor and he's going to handle it for us.  He's also going to get rid of the cheap, ugly wood paneling that is behind the fridge and up the stairway to the bonus room.  Hello, Drywall!  Where you been all my life?!

The good news is that the refrigerator and dishwasher work great and life at the Taj is about to get a LOT more convenient!

Is it just me? Wait...don't answer that!

Sometimes I don't post for a week or two because I really don't feel that the thoughts in my head ever need to be set down for other eyes to see.  This has been one of those weeks.

I started a post about it and realized that some things are just too messed up to communicate.

As I've mentioned in other posts, I have worked for several years in the adoption world.  It's a crazy, beautiful, heart-wrenching thing and I have felt lucky to be a part of it.

But sometimes it just sucks.

For the past six months, I have been working with an addicted birthmother.  Working with addicted people is never a walk in the park, even if they're currently exercising some sort of control over the addiction.  Combine addiction that is not under control with pregnancy and you get a hot mess.

In the last nine days, I have been on a non-stop rollercoaster of emotions, stretched between a birthmom whose demons are in the drivers seat in her life and a terrified family who are already in love with the baby that joins them all together.  Watching a once-pretty woman sink to the lowest point possible to a human brings out all the compassion within you; but then you walk a few steps to the nursery and watch an innocent baby in the throes of withdrawal.  Compassion goes out the window for me and I just want to pick up the mom and shake the snot out of her.  How could you DO that?!  Why don't you CARE?!  I honestly cannot fathom an addiction so strong that it takes away your humanity, that it can make you look without pity on a newborn who is struggling to survive because of your own actions. 

 The nurses in the NICU told me that a baby who's detoxing feels like she's falling all the time.  Pats and jiggling motions, comforting to most babies, only make the withdrawing baby more anxious and frantic.  Imagine feeling as if you are falling backward down a tunnel that has no end.  No touch is comforting, no voice can soothe.  That's what this mom's pharmaceutical adventures did to her child.

And the hospital released the birthmom with 30 Percocet two days later.  Less than 48 hours after she left the hospital, she returned as a patient in the ER.  Handcuffed to her bed because she'd gotten high on her pain medication and had slammed her truck into a daycare bus loaded with kids.  Everybody lived, which is a miracle.

What's not a miracle is that the SAME hospital released her home 20 hours after the accident with a prescription for 60 Percocet.

There's nothing cute or funny to say about all this.  Not right now.  Maybe not ever.

The only thing that I can hold on to is the fact that the baby who is now just a few days old is set on a course for an amazing, beautiful life.  After a gazillion stupid-ass choices, this birthmother made one good one.  She gave life to her child and then she gave a GOOD life to her.

That's enough for me.

In Which My Head Explodes

I've been a bit busy lately.

There's the slightest chance that Shawn will transfer jobs and that this will necessitate a move to that state just south of Georgia that has a lot of oranges.

Like any normal person (bwahahaha!), that means that I've been in a bit of a tizz lately, what with all the dramatic worryings over the what-ifs involved.  The main worry is all the To-Do items on the Gilligan's Island house.  Holy crap, people...it's like I LIVE with a freakin' paintbrush in my hand; how can it be that so much stuff needs to be painted?!

So, anyway.  That's been what's up recently.

While I tried to work on a few things and also do my two part-time jobs, I have let Tank watch more TV than usual.  As in, WAY more.  And my descent into TV-parenting has been quite the education, let me tell you.  For instance, I've begun to ponder some of life's biggest questions:

- why do the kid voice actors on Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go all sound like they're being squeezed?  I'm sure it's supposed to sound like ENERGY!  and ENTHUSIASM!  but it just comes off sounding like a boa constrictor got hold of them.  "And WE need YOUR HELP!"

- where are Dora and Diego's parents, anyhow?  She's always off tramping over mountains and rainbows and crap and Diego's swinging from vines over hostile terrain and rescuing God-knows-what kind of flea-bitten, diseased creature.  Is there no parental supervision in cartoons?

Hi, we're Dodo the Exploder and El Diablo.  We're here to shove Spanish down your ever-loving throat!




- when the HELL did Fred and Daphne and Velma and Shaggy hook up?  Was that really necessary to sell a friggin' CARTOON????

- I can't say anything bad about Kick Buttowski.  Kick actually kinda rocks.

- but Curious George.  Ohmysweetpantaloons, what the @*$&% is up with that damn monkey?!?!  He is the biggest f-up of all time and if I were that man in the yellow hat, I'd have tranq'ed his little monkey butt and sold him to an organ grinder.

- Super Hero Squad.  Easily the most annoying theme song of all time.  And with catchy lines like, "A Norse is a Norse, of course, of course", who could possibly resist?  ME, THAT'S WHO!

- which brings me to the point of all this which is that TV is bad, kids.  Bad, bad juju.  Leave that stuff alone.  Which is what Tank will be doing from now on, since he decided to jump me unexpectedly and rupture my spleen with a Hulk Smash.  I had only a split second after hearing him shriek, "HUK SASSSHHH!" to react.  I probably saved my large intestine, at least.

Here's hoping your spleen has a great weekend...

Give Up The Funk*

Oh, Lordy.  Where to start?

Since my last post, I've spent some time navel-gazing and coming to terms with the definitive end of my relationship with my father.  As long as we were both kicking around this old world, the possibility existed that one day we might come to some sort of cessation of hostilities.  With that option gone, there were some things I needed to work through.  So, I took a break from things for a while and dealt with all that stuff and now I'm feeling more like myself.  I'll leave you to decide whether that's a good thing or not.

Today was the annual training/meeting/get-together for the staff of the adoption agency where I work part-time.  The meeting was about 2.5 hours from Gilligan's Island and about 45 minutes from the Taj MaHell, so Tank and I drove up yesterday and spent the night.

But it wasn't quite as simple as that.  Oh, but no.

As soon as I got out of the car at the Taj, I smelled it.  That unmistakable smell of "somethin' dead."  Urgh.  The cloying scent of rotting animal flesh was everywhere.  Tank and I investigated and determined the general area of the crawlspace under the Taj where something had met its end.  I couldn't actually see anything and there was NO WAY I was going to crawl under there.  My unbelievably wonderful in-laws came over and helped try to locate the carcass, but we still couldn't see anything.  I went to bed last night in a stinky house and slept fitfully, waking up every hour or so to remember I once heard that your sense of smell is directly linked to your sense of taste...so that anything you smell has crossed your tastebuds for processing.  All night long, then, I was tasting something dead.  Yum.

This morning, I was up before the sun, getting ready to teach a couple of short sessions at our meeting ( and feeling really unprepared and anxious).  Just when I was about to wake Tank up to take him to Farm Maven's for the day, I realized I'd locked my keys in the Jeep.  OHMYFREAKINSTARS.

Frantic phone calls ensued:
To Shawn:  couldn't get him to answer
To the Farm Maven:  she sent Diamond Dave to come get Tank but didn't have a spare automobile for me to take to the training
To the City of Mayberry Police: whose non-emergency line was unmanned for another hour
To My Inlaws:  who brought me a car and who also discussed the issue with a local City of Mayberry police officer...and that officer later came to the house, unlocked the Jeep and stowed the keys away for me
To the Farm Maven: again and again, because I got lost on the way to the meeting and had to get her to Map Quest my sorry butt

By the end of the day, I'd managed to teach the sessions, had received several texts and photos from the Farm Maven documenting Tank's Excellent Farm Adventures, had an unlocked Jeep (at no charge!), and had returned Papa's car, with a full tank of gas and my undying devotion. 

In the meantime, Shawn had been working hard from Gilligan's Island.  He called a  Mayberry pest company who told him they did not do dead animal removals, but after hearing that I was here alone with a little one, the Very Nice Pest Dude came out, crawled under the extremely stinky house and emerged with one very large, very dead possum.  Well worth the $90 I had to pay him.

And now I'm just sitting in the den, with approximately 900 scented candles burning (now it smells like a flower pooped out a dead animal, but you take what you can get).  Tank is snoozing peacefully in his bed, worn out from a day of hard play with his cousins.  My Jeep key is safely in my pocket and I don't have to worry about power point presentations or flop sweat again for a while.

All in all, this day served as another reminder that life in Mayberry definitely has its advantages.

Yes, I have had some really bad times with some of the members of my original family.  But I am so lucky to have the family that I do have, and so grateful that my husband's family has been so welcoming, so kind and supportive...and so delightfully insane!

Wow.  What a rotten, smelly, wonderful day!


(*we don't call the Taj run-down and funky for nothing!)

Confession is Good for the Soul

A long time ago...a REALLY long time ago...I was a kid.  I grew up in a big old farmhouse out in the country, near a small town.  In the summer, it was Georgia-hot; my sister and I would turn our pillows to catch that blessed cool spot on the side we hadn't been lying on.  A hassock fan sat on the floor between our twin beds, doing little more than stirring the muggy air around and confusing the mosquitoes.  In the winter, the little electric and gas space heaters tried valiantly, but couldn't keep up with the drafty windows and high ceilings.  I remember running like the devil from one marginally heated room to another, my breath frosting in the air. 

It was wonderful.

My mother had the rare gift of being a phenomenal mother to little kids.  She was gentle and sweet and had this great, throaty chuckle when something struck her as funny.  She'd laugh and then say, "You won't do!"  Mama let my sister the Farm Maven and me trash the attic upstairs.  Our house was supposed to be a two-story, but the downstairs was so big that three generations of our family had not felt the need to finish the upper story, so it was one huge storage space.  In the attic, the Farm Maven and I acted out any fantasy that came to mind.  Sometimes, we ran an orphanage and lined our dolls' beds up in a quasi-institutional fashion.  Other days the same dolls were students in our school.  We were a huge family, she the mother, I the father and about 15 dolls our offspring.  We played church, Christmas, diner and headed west in a covered wagon.  Mama never made us clean up the attic, so we could play all day and then pick up where we left off the next morning.

I had room to roam on our large farm and animals to take the place of the neighborhood kids other children my age were playing with.  The Farm Maven read every book in the rather extensive family library, sitting in the cool living room in the summer, or enjoying a lazy swing on the front porch, one foot keeping the motion going while the bees hummed and the characters in her novel came alive.

I grew up (at least chronologically) and changes began creeping in.  My mother's hair, gray since she was a young woman, turned nearly white.  My sister went to college.  Our older brother married poorly, divorced and married poorly again.  Through all the ebbs and flows of our lives, my mother was the constant; I describe her as the sun that kept all our planets in their proper orbits.

Out of the three of us kids, I was the one who just couldn't stay put.  My sister joked that she had to stop writing my address in ink, since I had used up two pages in her last address book.  I once counted 22 moves in 15 years...a personal record.  I stayed within Georgia, but other than that, I liked to keep moving.  I kept my clothes, my CDs, favorite chairs and a bed with me, but my little treasures, things to save but not things you need every day, stayed at the old home place.  They were safe there, the old love letters and high school awards.  My first wedding dress, a plaster bust of Elvis that annoyed the crap out of Mama, a coin collection, letters from my decades-long pen pal in Australia...all of them were kept safe under the watchful eye of Mama.

And then she died.

She complained of pain, unusual for my normally stoic mother.  She went for tests that were negative, scans that didn't show anything.  More tests, more scans.  And then they told us that she had leukemia, an aggressive form.  The leukemia had no intention of letting her survive, but it had an ally in her:  Mama just quit.  Ten days after her diagnosis, she died.

To pick up again with the sun and planets analogy, we all spun out of our orbits.  Nothing made sense anymore.  Who were we, without her?  She was the rock, the safe place; she always knew the right hostess gift and the appropriate outfit for any occasion.

How do you navigate the world without a compass?

We tried, each in our own ways.  The Farm Maven and I took on much of Mama's work in the house and with Daddy.  We fed him, cleaned the now-unused rooms, washed his clothes and tried to cajole a smile from him.  I paid his bills, cut his grass and took his cars for oil changes and service.  My brother and sister in law for the most part laid low in their trailer behind the home place and lived their own lives.

Four and a half years later, my father had two heart surgeries.  We took turns sitting at the hospital in Atlanta, an hour and a half from the Farm Maven and my brother's homes and five hours from mine.  By this time, Tank was 3 months old; the Farm Maven was home-schooling a 15 year old, a 12 year old and a 4 year old.

He was in the hospital and two rehab facilities for five months.  Over that time, the veneer that we had known as our father stripped away.  He became a mean, selfish, nasty man who lashed out at everyone, except his new girlfriend (there had been one before, right after Mama's death, but she didn't last). 

He would glare at us, his children, and demand to know when his girlfriend would return.  "That's who I want to see!" he would growl.  For my part, I didn't want to be there any more than he wanted me there.  I had a baby that needed me and whose face lit up when I returned.  I had carefully planned my life so that I could stay home with my little one, only to find myself sitting in a hospital waiting room or listening to the insane rants of a sick and bitter old man.

It didn't help that his girlfriend was also his attorney.  It also didn't help that they had engaged in an affair when we were little kids.

I would sit, looking at my father's face, contorted in hatred for me and I would think, "Mother fucker...I ought to slap you out of that bed."  But I'd just sit, texting desperately to Shawn or anxiously awaiting the next photo of Tank that the Farm Maven would send while she babysat him.

When the scond rehab facility decided he could no longer stay there (purely coincidence that his insurance quit covering his stay), a decision had to be made.  Because he wouldn't eat, he had a feeding tube.  Because he refused physical therapy, he could still barely walk and couldn't manage basic self-care skills.  The Maven and I thought it was best for him to go to another rehab facility.  I believed that if he could improve at all, it would only happen if going home was the goal.  My brother advocated that he go directly home.  Knowing that we, with our children, Maven's home-schooling and my life 200 miles away, couldn't take care of him, we said he needed another rehab stint.  My brother said no and he and his wife stated that they would move in with him for one week and get him back on his feet. 

My father hated us all by that point, but he had always hated my brother and his wife most of all.  Both my brother, the redneck devil (Beelzebubba for short) and his wife, the Mighty Hermaphrodite were hoarders and had managed to completely trash their home, barn and numerous outbuildings.  My father did not want them in his family home and missed no opportunity to declare this, loudly.

So, I sighed and volunteered to move in with Daddy for two weeks.  To my surprise, he refused.  My brother's anti-rehab facility stance had made him a hero in Daddy's eyes and further vilified my sister and me.  So, in April 2009, Beelzebubba, the Mighty Hermaphrodite and Daddy limped into a big old house with no central heat and air, closed the door behind them and quickly pushed the Farm Maven and me out of their circle.

I sent photos and videos of Tank to my father.  I sent Christmas cards.  I received one envelope...it was a letter informing me I was no longer my father's power of attorney.

Last Wednesday, my father died.

He died at home, peacefully according to his hospice care coordinator, who called my sister a day later.  She said she had asked him if he wanted her to call us, so he could speak to us before he died.  He said no.

He died as he lived, angry and selfish. 

He missed the beautiful life he could have had, as a grandfather to four amazing children.  Four pure hearts stood ready to love him, but he wanted a 70-year-old, chain-smoking home wrecker instead.  He missed all the good things he could have enjoyed in his final years.

My Mama dated him for five years and they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary the week before she died.

She was not mentioned in his obituary.  The girlfriend was.

People don't know what to say to me.  "I'm sorry to hear about your father," they say.  Then there is an awkward pause.

I'm sorry, too.  I'm sorry he wasn't a good husband, a good father, a good man.  I'm sorry my mother was treated so poorly by a man who never--not even on his best day--deserved her.

I'm sorry that the things I inherited from him include his penchant for snide and cutting remarks.  Beelzebubba and Hermaphrodite will inherit everything else.  Including my wedding dress, my love letters and Elvis.

They say living well is the best revenge.  I plan to prove that.  Tonight, I tucked Tank into his bed and sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" the requisite four hundred million times.  I told him for about the bazillionth time today that I love him.  I marveled at his innocent love for me, the chubby arms around my neck, the slobbery kisses and the "Wuv oo". 

How rich I truly am.


How staggeringly, embarrassingly wealthy.

...and then we all drowned in snot

Ah, the holidays.  Twinkling lights, festive foods, songs of cheer...

...and wads of germs.

We left the Taj on December 28th, loaded down with thoughtful gifts and at least a billion microscopic disease-bearing stowaways.  Shawn and Tank had runny noses over Christmas, but nothing serious and I had managed to avoid the whole mess, so we were feeling pretty lucky.  Luck ran out, though, and I got sick by the 29th.  Figuring we were in for a pretty crappy New Year's Eve anyway, we loaded the car and drove BACK to the Taj, arriving late Friday evening.

In the wee hours Friday night, Tank awoke us with pitiful cries and when I picked him up, he was BLAZING with fever.  Welcome, Croup!  Won't you come in and render our lives a living hell for a few days?!  Oh, and throw in a cold+sinus infection+ear infection for me, while you're at it.

Sigh.

Next year, let's just mail the gifts and stay home with hand sanitizer and bleach.  Please.

Well, anyway, Tank appears to be on the mend and I am hopeful that tomorrow I will finally feel human again.

But here let me make a heartfelt plea to all of you who feel compelled to show up at work with the flu, or sneeze all over the Kroger shopping cart handle, or drag feverish kids all over creation because BYGAWDYOUDON'TWANTTOMISSYOURGOODTIME....

Keep your sick ayce at the house.

Seriously.

We'll get together for the 4th of July, or some other non-cold-and-flu-season holiday.

Sincerely,
She of the Sherbet Colored Snot

Joshua

Not that anybody deserves to be where my friends Al and Trish are right now, but I can't think of many people who LESS deserve it.

Al and Trish's son Joshua was just diagnosed with lymphoma...we don't know the type yet, so details are sketchy.  Josh is a real trouper and he's holding up very well...teenage boy and all that.  He's a bright (101.4 average at a tough private school), devout young man who has never known a day without the love and support of a truly amazing family. 

I sat next to Trish at choir tonight and she wept quietly while we sang songs of praise.  Every once in a while, I could hear her voice, always soft but now more faint than ever, breathing out words that were as much a prayer as a song.  Every time she is quiet and still, I am sure her mind goes to a place she would rather not visit.

She's taking her oldest child to a reproductive specialist tomorrow to have sperm frozen.  Just in case Josh's treatment prevents him from being able to conceive a child years from now.  Trish tries to laugh when she says, "We're savin' grandbabies."  She's not very convincing, not when you see that she cried her mascara off about 12 hours ago.

Please pray for Josh and for his family.  Pray a prayer that I'm sure they never imagined praying:  Please let this be the good kind of lymphoma.

Please let Josh kick this thing's butt.  And go on to live a beautiful life and give his mama lots of grandbabies!



JOSHUA:  Hebrew, "God rescues."

Traction is more fun than you think

Happy Tuesday.

I know...Tuesdays are not by nature very happy, but it's hardly their fault.  Anything that comes on the heels of Monday is doomed.

But, I digress. 

We're planning a big Taj MaHell road rally this weekend.  Shawn's got Friday and Monday off, so we're going to load up the Family Truckster and head to the Greater Mayberry Area.  We're debating (read: arguing about) renting a UHaul trailer to take the new loveseat and sofa to Mayberry.  We'd have to store them at Uncle Todd's Cabin until the Taj is closer to ready, so that's a bummer.  But, if they stay here, we'll have to stare at them because there's no door to the dining room and the room is literally vomiting random pieces of furniture into the hallway.  It is driving me CRAZAY and I am so ready to get things back to semi-normal that it's worth it to me to UHaul them thangs to the 'Berry.  Shawn, on the other hand, thinks UHaul exists only to extort money from him and wants to devote the next three months to finding some very complex system of moving furniture without having to rent a trailer or drive two vehicles to Mayberry.  Sigh.  I said, SIGH.

Light a couple of candles and say a prayer to Our Lady of Successful Demolition, because we're going to tackle the bonus room ceiling this trip.  Nephew Two Bears and I gave it a shot last time I was in town, but I swear, the hammers just BOUNCED off the ceiling.  Given the fact that it was approximately 9 million degrees up there, I didn't need too much convincing to give up on the project.  We'll see if Shawn's seething inner rage can triumph over drywall.

In other news, I have gone to two appointments for my back/neck/shoulder and, while I don't feel better yet, I am having some brief pain-free moments...mostly when I am in traction.  I never thought I'd be begging, "PLEASE!  For the LOVE OF GOD, people!  Put me in traction!"  But there you have it.  One of the exercises the PT made me do today was to lean my head over and hold a ball wrapped in a clean pillowcase against the wall.  BORING.  Especially after 15 reps to each side and another 15 to the back.  I learned that the PT had no sense of humor when he didn't think my calling the device "a severed head in a pillowcase" was funny in the least.  You'd think people who make their living torturing other folks would at least see the humor in it.  Oh, well.  I guess I'd better play nice or they'll take my traction away.

That's all for now.  I'm off to pour cereal in a bowl and call it a balanced supper.  Hope your menu choices are more tantalizing.

Dang.  Now my pants are too short.

Broadcasting Live from the Taj

It's getting surreal up in here.

Tank and I drove up to Mayberry yesterday and went to the Taj.  I barely noticed that there was a roof on the house, so focused was I on getting the bakery goodies to our neighbors who suffered through 14 1/2 hours of unrelenting hammering on Monday.

The neighbors were delighted with the treats and warmly welcomed us in.  And that's where the surreal started.  "You know," Nice Neighbor said, "That's not an architectural roof."  I looked across the driveway and...no, it wasn't.

Y'all.  It was the wrong roof.

The. WRONG. Roof.

And it was finished.  Done.  Over.

And Shawn was in a meeting 200 miles away, the roofer was due any second for the remainder of his pay and I did NOT know what to do.

I might have done the Home Alone face.

Fortunately, the roofer ran late and I was able to talk to Shawn, as well as Nice Neighbor about how best to handle this before we had to have a painful conversation.  Over the past 24 hours, we have determined that an honest mistake was made, but we have also determined that we did request IN WRITING architectural shingles.  Naturally, Roofer Madness doesn't want to take a hit on a job he's already done, but we also don't want to pay for a roof that is not what we wanted.

As of now, we're debating the possibility of either keeping the wrong roof and having the roofer refund a portion of the cost or having the right shingles laid on top of the ones he just put up.  It's silly, really, to put a new roof on top of a new roof, but I was so disappointed that we had plain, flat shingles when we'd specifically said we wanted the more dimensional, higher-end ones.  Sigh.  The roofer is a nice guy and a hard-working man and we certainly don't want to cause him any issues.  But at the end of the day, we're stuck with a 25-year roof that is just NOT what we contracted for.  I am hoping that each side can give a bit and in the end, we can either be at peace with the roof that's on there, or work out a deal that suits us to get the one we wanted.  I hate being taken advantage of by seedy workmen, but it's almost worse to have something like this happen, where you're not MAD at anyone, but the job is still not satisfactory.  We'll see how this shakes out.

In other news, I had a second electrician out to the Taj today and was really surprised at how much he seemed to NOT want the job.  He couldn't give me any numbers, other than to say we'd "start around $6,000" and it looked like it was going up from there.  He didn't offer to give me anything in writing and didn't seem enthusiastic at all about doing the job.  In fact, he acted like it was all just really a big bother to him and I figured he was just not the guy for us.

Shawn had met already with another electrician and I liked what he told me about him and also liked the fact that he was able to give us a ballpark estimate on the spot, after carefully checking the house.  I think we'll go with him, and hope to call him in the next few days to see when he could start.

I also met with a plumber, who was very nice and even told me a little about the house's history.  A man named Elliott lived there and the plumber said Mr. Elliott had a big lumber company back in the day and that he looked like Al Capone.  He said he always wore a white suit and a Panama hat.  He must have been quite an interesting man.  There's a very nice local historical society library here in the 'Berry, so I think I'll see if I can find a photo that we could copy and put somewhere in the house as a nod to its past.

Anyway, the plumber is going to price a few things for me and get back with an estimate in the next few days.  He was really creative and saw possibilities that I hadn't seen, when we talked about how to improve the poorly-laid-out master bath.  That's why we're needing a plumber, since we can remove and install bath fixtures, but this job is going to involve moving some things and also installing a tankless gas water heater.  I want to be sure that's done right, and I am willing to defer to a pro for it.

At the end of the day, the drywall man arrived to look at his part of the Taj rehab. While I have done drywall before, it is one of those things that really shows when you don't know what you're doing and I want the ceilings to be nice and smooth.  Again, I am willing to call in the pros for the right result.  I'll demo the existing ceilings and save money that way, so I don't feel too much like a cheater.

Well, it is pretty late and the Taj will have all new drama for me tomorrow, I'm sure.  Better rest up!