Lead Balloon

1. Hiring "Starving Students" for your move.  Worked out well for my friend Mary, but not for me.

2. Adding up your Home Depot spending. It's just best not to know.

3. Taping before painting. Might seem like a good idea at first - but using a straight edge against the wall or object works out best. The tape ripped the fresh paint off our walls.

4. Removing a toilet. Just leave it where it is. It will never be the same afterwards.

5. Putting down new contact paper. This is a VERY frustrating thing to do if you have no patience.

6. Packing your panties and not setting that bag aside from the others. You need to be able to find these in a room full of 100 boxes.

That's it for now, just fresh on my mind this morning.

In the bathroom at my office, the toilet seat protectors are branded "Rest Assured".

Does this mean that people lie in bed at night, restless, not able to sleep, because they were forced to use a public restroom without a seat protector?

Or does it mean that as you're laying that thin, useless piece of paper on the toilet seat, sitting down onto it, taking care of your business, you're supposed to feel as if that 1-15 minutes spent there was very restful and relaxing?

I would rather put my fat cheeks on a sturdy, porcelain toilet seat than fear that my body might slide off of it by way of a slick plastic sheet of paper. For some reason, I'd rather have my skin on that seat than on the floor around it. I'd rather sit there and risk getting whatever it is people think they can get from a toilet seat than risk, when done with my business, pulling some of that seat cover up, and wedging it between my panties and rear end, for all the world to see.

Clearly, I'm not resting. Or assured.

Happy Friday.

In our cube farm, there is a table which has about 30 celebrity-focused magazines on it for anyone to read. You know, People, Us, Star…That trash that none of us can get enough of. I think I've mentioned on this blog before that I love looking at the pictures in those magazines…I love knowing all about Gwyneth drinking a beer during pregnancy, Britney's weight gain, and anything on Prince William is worthy of my attention. I'm just interested. "Celebrity" works on me. And that sucks.

This week, though, my obsessions with it are about the family lives of these celebrities. People are either getting pregnant, getting married, or getting a divorce. The pregnancies are fun to read about, but the marriages and divorces are really just the same stories over and over again. You never read about marriages in Hollywood that last forever. There's always some sort of infidelity, a divorce, a break up, an ugly court battle. Who are Hollywood's longest married couples?

And when you go just a little further than looking at the pictures in these magazines and read about the splits, perhaps in the picture description area, you find out that each person is "really trying to keep their focus on the children's well-being at this point…" These poor kids. Already, they have a not-so-normal life. I wonder if divorce affects them like it does other kids? Like, "Sure my parents are getting a divorce, but my parents are Heather Locklear and Richie Sambora. That totally overrides any depression I might feel. My dad is a rock star. My mom is…Heather Locklear." Or something.

I'm sure they feel it. But the kids might not even know that their parents are living a different life than before, given that the parents aren't likely at home at the same time anyway…As long as they don't get a new nanny, I'm sure it's business as usual from that perspective.

Okay, that was a bad generalization.

I have to hope that when these couples decide to marry, that they're genuinely thinking to themselves, "I love this person, we can make this work." I hope they're hoping for the best. I hope it's not more like, "This will be so good for my publicity. If I push out a baby, even better. I'll get a little chiuauha also, to fit into my purse."

I won't go into the "celebrities and their dogs" thing.

I don't like it. Why do I keep looking at the magazines? The good news is, if I mention a celebrity's name to Todd and ask him if he knows of a certain break up or that someone got arrested for throwing a phone at a hotel employee, he just asks, "Who is that? What are you talking about?" He's clueless. And I like that.

Baby was born a little after midnight. 7 pounds, 12 ounces. A beautiful, healthy baby boy!

Meg asked if I wanted to stay in the room during the birth, and of course, I did. It was an easy labor and delivery, all went very smoothly. I have to say, though, I still maintain that nothing compares to the anticipation of not knowing the sex of that baby, then the excitement of finding out when it's born. We all had a feeling (and hope) that it was a boy, but of course, we would have been excited either way.

If that subject line doesn't lure you in, I'm just not sure what will.

The hippies won The Amazing Race!  Todd and I have been cheering for them all along, and last night we were almost in tears when they ran to the finish line. 

I'm starting to realize that I have an obsession with some television shows. And that it just might be the reason for my recent, unexpected weight gain.

The line-up for Austin City Limits was released yesterday. Ben Harper, Damien Rice, Van Morrison, Iron and Wine, Ray Lamontagne, G. Love, Matisyahu, John Mayer. The list goes on, and it's a good list. Needless to say, we'll be there. Last year we bought tickets and didn't go because of the hurricanes and all the evacuations. Then it turned out to be beautiful weather. We're going this year, rain or shine.

In house news…our new refrigerator and dishwasher arrived yesterday.  Two hours late. When you get a couple of new appliances, suddenly your other remaining appliances look like fossils. Stove and microwave next. And floors. And countertops. And maybe some walls.

I'm not sure what's going on with the buffalo, though. Some days they're there. Some days, they're not. On Tuesday night we saw them, and there were two little babies in the group!

Speaking of babies, we are expecting the birth of our godchild to happen any minute now. Meg, the mother, is a week past her due date now. It's her fourth child, the previous three were all way past due as well. She was having some pretty good contractions last night, though, and it all looks promising for today. We've all got bets going on the sex of the baby, as well as the day/time of birth, weight, length, etc. Of course, I've got a chart tracking all the wagers. I'm not sure, but I think I read somewhere in the Book of Common Prayer that it's the godmother's role to encourage gambling in the family. A priest's family, nonetheless.

Happy day, everyone.

There was a period of time where I watched no TV. In college, I found my television to be a waste of space, and I put it in my closet. Now, there's DVR. And I am an addict. I'm certainly an addict to certain shows. Only, I have no idea what night my shows are on. Todd programs everything into the DVR and every night there's at least one show we like to watch and fast forward through the commercials. Again, the show could have aired three nights ago and I have no idea, nor do I care. But I get to fast forward through the commercials.

Last night was the finale of "Survivor". And I hated it. What a rip. Terry deserved to win. What's worse is, we had to watch it old-school style. Real time, with commercials. We were at a friend's house. The company was worth it, though. And we were soldiers, we plunged through.

But, the show I hate to love is "Grey's Anatomy". Tonight was the season finale, and man was it good. I cried. A few times. I cried. It. Was. Great. I want to start a Grey's Anatomy Blog, or a fan club, I love it so much. Yeah, maybe not. But it's a great show. It really is. And I'm not even a fan of the main character – I just like everyone else. Weird. It's a great show.

What started out as a sore throat and allergies, has turned into bronchitis and misery. I thought I was feeling better yesterday and felt I'd surely return to work today, until around 5:00 when my fever spiked and I felt worse. Todd took me to the doctor, I got some drugs and what not. And don't think I didn't ask him what symptoms of exposure to black mold look like.

The first estimate we got for the shower repair is $2,300. My sister has been a great resource through this, making contact with everyone she knows for information about resolution of a shotty inspection and non-disclosure from the seller. There really are tons of avenues you can pursue when you've been sold a lemon – if you're not stuck on the couch with raw, inflamed bronchial tubes. Are they tubes? I don't know. They just hurt.

I can't sleep, I can't hear, I can't see (I've been wearing my glasses for two days), and I can't really talk without coughing. Calgon, take me away.

This morning I woke up with a sore throat. Funny how you're never really aware that you have tonsils or that you can feel anything in your throat until it's extremely sore. I'm hoping it's just allergies and that it will be gone by later this afternoon. Otherwise, I haven't penciled in any time for being under the weather. I hope my throat is listening to that as I'm typing this.

This mold thing has turned into quite an extravaganza – an extravaganza that hasn't even fully been put into motion. We're getting an estimate for the repairs today. Clearly, we didn't cause the mold, we've never used the shower or the bathroom, it was obviously there before we moved in. But we've been told that our insurance will surely call it "pre-existing". We've been told that we can go back to the seller, but that he will surely claim that he didn't know it was there, regardless of the obvious crap patch job he did to the tile. So we're going to the inspector for some resolution – we've also been told by several that he did a crap job, too. The problem being that we didn't know he was a bad inspector at the time, we've just never done this before. We should have gotten a second opinion. If we only knew that then. Oh well.

We're bracing for the worst – that the cost of gutting of the shower will come out of our pockets. This means no new countertops in the kitchen, living with ugly linoleum. This makes me mad, but Todd just says, "We've got our own house!" with enthusiasm. He and the house are still BFF's, while the house and I are on a break right now. This is one of the many reasons I married him.

Todd took the day off yesterday and spent it at the house finishing up our wallpaper stripping project. I'm glad that he's very happy with his progress in understanding the fine art of wallpaper stripping, he's actually enjoying it a little bit, I think. And that's a good thing. Because I prefer putting things on the house, not ripping them off. Putting things on just feels a little easier and less frustrating. I don't know.

I called him a few times during the day to check on his progress, and every time he was ten times further along than I had imagined. By lunch time, he'd finished the second bathroom and was heading to the master bath to start on those walls. The excitement was overwhelming me – after our first weekend of stripping the first bathroom, I thought it would surely take us a year to finish all three.

Then he sent me a photo from his cell phone that said, "Look what I found behind the wallpaper in our bathroom." When I looked at it, my heart sank. Yours would, too, if you'd seen this:

Black mold.

This story goes back a little bit…The first house we made an offer on had some shady tile repair in the shower that concerned us so much we withdrew the offer. (That, and the house was out of our price range and still needed about $10,000 worth of work done to it.) When we found our house, we saw, again, some tile repair in the shower. It didn't look as bad as what we'd seen before, and we decided we'd take the chance on it.

During our negotiations with the owner, we asked if there had been a repair in the shower, and could he tell us what kind of damage was there before the repair. This seemed like a logical question, given that there was a box of tile in the attic that matched the shower exactly – he'd obviously made a repair. He said he wasn't sure, that he'd check on it. We never heard back on it.

On closing day, our realtor asked that the seller provide receipts for any and all repairs made to the house while he was living in it. They gave us these receipts, and there wasn't one for the shower tile, but there was a $2,200 receipt for a pipe leak in the living room that necessitated "jacking up" the foundation in order to repair it.

None of this was on the seller's disclosure. If we were litigious people, we'd take him to court for fraud. This is the normal and customary process, a very expensive process. But it's what you do when people don't disclose major repairs and faults in the home as they're trying to convince you to sign your life away for the most expensive purchase you'll make in your life.

The picture above is the wall above the bath tub, next to the shower. We ripped some of the shower tile out to see what kind of damage was in the shower itself – and the sheetrock and wood beneath it was rotted, some of it wet. There is definitely a leak. The entire shower has to be gutted, maybe even the tub.

I think I'm most upset because I spent most of my morning yesterday picking out tile and countertops for the kitchen…probably not going to happen now. The good news is, I'd put on The List (way down on the list) re-tiling the shower to look like this great picture I found in a decorating magazine. Maybe that wish will come true. Maybe I'll have the best shower on the block. Maybe you'll want to come by and use it. Maybe HGTV will show up tomorrow and offer to make everything alright. Maybe we'll just win the lottery.

As frustrated as I am, I'm still full of hopes and maybes.