October 27, 2009

11:50 a.m.

Back Home

Nice tour, lots of laughing, small audiences, hopefully enough money to pay the insurance.

Hear ye, hear ye. I�m changing my brother-in-law�s name. I�ve never been satisfied with calling him Marc � just doesn�t suit him � so I am going to call him Karl, as that is his name. From now on he shall be Karl, and when I mention Karl, you will know I am talking about my sibling�s fabulous, geeky, balding, brilliant, politically opinionated, creatively thrifty, stubborn, Yankee husband, without whom none of us would be here, doing this.

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We drove over 1,000 miles home yesterday. The trip began at 6:15 a.m., and I got back to House at 1:00 this morning. We tried a new strategy where we switched drivers every 100 miles. That worked much better than Chris driving until he drops and then somebody else having to take over.

Still, it was a long-ass day.

I unpacked what I could and finally turned out the lights around 2:00. At 7:30 I was up again, knowing how much there would be to do today.

I found the mudroom door wide open last night, and of course very cold. One of the roof guys had apparently left it gaping. Nothing like an invitation for anyone to come right in. Then this morning I realized the fridge wasn�t on.

I went downstairs and reset a circuit breaker that had tripped from Karl�s compressor, but that�s not the circuit that includes the fridge. Fridge still didn�t work. Puzzled, I called Karl, and during the conversation I discovered that what was plugged into the fridge outlet was not the fridge, but a sort of power strip that the workers had been using, tucked under the little table. So instead of unplugging the microwave, as Karl had instructed Builder Guy, they had just unplugged the refrigerator and left it that way for five days.

Yuck.

I�m guessing I�ve lost around $50 worth of groceries.

So I called Builder Guy and told him, and he�s livid. Somebody�s head is going to roll. And I�m going to get compensated for the groceries, of course. I had just gone out and gotten some of my favorite freezable foods, too. What a waste.

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There is still a good bit of priming to do on the house; Rose had said it was �almost done,� but it�s not quite almost done. It�s more than half done. And Karl busted his butt to do it with another day off of work. I gather the rest of the weekend he did projects at their house; when I talked to him this morning and asked him how his weekend had been, he said, �Um� okay. I don�t know. Full of work!� I had asked Rose if he�d use a massage certificate if I got him one, and she said no, he didn�t go in for that, but a couple of 12-packs of Newcastle Ale would be appreciated. So that�s on the list for today. I�m also juggling money to pay the insurance finally, now that I know how much and where to send it, and I have to pay the guy who kindly helped K. last week. I�m always wishing I had just one more thousand dollars�

Okay. Laundry, grocery replacement, banks, and I hear roof guys outside. Must run.