I had a dream...

but not one of those earth shattering ones filled with racial harmony and nuclear disarmament.  No my dream was bordering on a nightmare.  In my dream, my back washed away!  Not only did it wash away, but so did my bank account and all that was left was a really poor looking terraced yard with concrete blocks.  The crawl space under the house was flooded and several friends and bosses came over to survey the damage and offer their advice of getting out while the getting was good.  At that point in the dream I was sure there was no getting out.

Then I woke up. And boy was I glad that it was only my sunroom's roof that had sprung a leak, rather than my yard eroding away.  And I was also glad that I had procrastinated to the point that I still hadn't mudded and taped the ceiling in the sunroom yet.

I should back up a few hours to explain the leak though.  DaNae woke me up at some awful hour (honestly it was so early that her alarm clock had decided to quit telling the time and only flashed 2:32 repeatedly).  It was raining and thundering hard.  She told me that she had six or seven buckets set up in the sunroom to catch the large streams of water flowing down.

After hearing this, I lightly cursed and turned over and tried to fall back to sleep, since she clearly had everything under control.  Then after about five minutes of enjoying the sound of rolling thunder, I realized that I should go take a look out side to see where the water was coming in while it was still raining.  I walked out in my penguin boxers with a pair of flip flops and a fleece jacket after tracking down a flashlight.  I waded through several inches of water that had piled up around the back yard, and then I saw it.  Vast amounts of water were pouring from the top of the down spout, where it connected with the gutter, and nothing was coming out of the bottom.  It was plugged.

I went back to bed knowing that I couldn't fix it then and the rain stopped shortly after.  Then today I fixed it and pulled some of the sheet rock down to see the damage.  Only a little bit of the insulation was drenched and if it doesn't dry an a day or so I can pull it and replace it with some of the stuff I have left in the garage.

As I showered I was amazed at how much of house problems revolve around water, yet how very necessary water is for survival and it reminded me of when I was young and thought about how I imagined when I was a child that clouds were invading ships filled with suicide drop troops, attacking us for all the water people we destroyed as we swam, drank and bathed.  Maybe I should do a short story on that.

Anyways, my dream has stuck with me all day and left me slightly stressed, but has still left me filling better about the actual problems.  And it reminded my of childhood imagination, I guess the water isn't so bad...

Of Ants and toilets...

Work is crazy, and it seems to get crazier on friday's, especially when its a long weekend.

Recently, my office has been under attack by an invading army of ants.  Today they sent their largest wave of troops, but I easily squashed the 8 intruders under my index finger.  I'm sure they are just marching towards the big bag of sugar that a coworker happily stuck on my desk.  Some days I feel like putting a piece of tape on the floor around my desk and putting up a note to tell everyone to quit putting things on my desk!  I swear some people can't have a clean surface without putting something on it and it drives me nuts!  

I've been taking off early from work a lot the last week for doctor's appointments, being sick, needing a little off time and whatever else.  Each time I do that I have to ask my supervisor for permission, which he doesn't really care about, but at one point I email him and asked if it was okay if I worked a full eight hours.  He called me minutes later and asked me, "don't you normally work 8 hours."  I laughed and decided my joke wasn't so funny if I had to explain it too him. But once I explained it, he actually did laugh.

Then after training a guy to be my back up for the summer and finishing up my other duties I was checking email and my other coworker walked into the bathroom.  There is a direct line of view from my desk to the throne and after walking into the bathroom he started looking at the floor and walking funny.  At first I thought he had spotted more ant, keen on taking the throne from us and some of glorious power.  But no, there was water all over the floor.  The toilet's float thingy had malfunctioned and the overflow in the upper tank was too tall, so water was pouring out of the hole where the handle protrudes from.  

He started going nuts.  Grabbed a mop and started fiddling with things, and I think he made it worse.  It reminded me of the first time the toilet got stopped up on DaNae after we got married.  She freaked out and started wiggling the handle and doing something in the upper tank while screaming for my help.  I was asleep in bed and got up long enough to turn off the water to the toilet and then went back to bed, my husbandly duties done for the morning.  

Well, I wasn't asleep, but I hate doing things with toilets, especially public ones.  The valve on this one was funny and I didn't know how to turn off the water, so I just rigged the float on the toilet to shut off the water flow and told him to not use it until maintenance could fix it.  Well maintenance sent a student over to fix it and he just stared at it and said it seemed to work fine.  That wasn't good enough to me.  If the float malfunctioned once it would do it again.  I finally convinced him to talk to his supervisor who swore he would buy us a new tank rig.  

With ants slaughtered, and a promised fix for the toilet, and my eight hours of work completed, I went home and eagerly await the arrival of my sister and her family...I'm looking forward to the weekend despite having to work it.