May was not as good as April, believe it or not. And it was awkwardly kinda creepy as well. I’m feeling a bit thumped on, to be honest, and I feel I’ve probably been taking it out on folks, either by being silent, or by snarking. Either way, I’m sorry – this weekend is meant to relax, and then back at it with a smile on Monday. So look at this beautiful girl and tell me she’s not the cutest grad you’ve seen this year:

Here’s the stuff:

The lawn mowers would not run*. Pretty self-explanatory.

One of Care’s molars cracked last week, and it needed to be pulled. It could have been root canaled and capped, but her wisdom teeth are coming in relatively fast, and with the positioning…yeah, they suggested letting it float forward instead. I know what I said before about mine floating forward, thing is – that was for three of the four. One of the molars was left in, so it’s been cracked and yadda yadda…

What kind of sick twisted puppy giggles when the dentist starts in with the needles and pliers? I’ll tell you – her name is Care.

And still (at that point)…

More line troubles, although these times I went to the BBB after being ran-around by MTS. They told me it was my phone, but why cut off precisely at 2 AM, when they’re running their system stuff? And if it was water (as was their next suggestion) why’d it wait for a dry day, instead of going on the extremely rainy days previous?

The guy that was here this last time informed me that the box on the outside of the house DID need to be replaced (he replaced it), the line DID need to be re-done (he did it), there is an issue on the pole itself (someone else’ll be fixing that eventually), and it hasn’t just been me complaining. He also changed the line box in the basement, added a main filter, changed some other lines, changed the dsl modem (fancy new thing!) and removed some stuff that wasn’t useful. Then he found a line that’d been chewed (and could only replace it with a short line for the jack to modem connection*), he suggested cats, but the teeth marks were far too small and closely spaced. I know exactly what it’s from… a flippin’ damn mouse, which we had in uber-abundance the first three years we were here. Not so much since we got the rats LOL.

Cats can only do so much when the mice live in the walls and cupboards. However, wild mice HATE HATE HATE the smell of domestic rodentia, particularly (for some reason) albino rodents. Tee hee. Living this close to the fields and scrub brush, I knew we were going to get mice in spring/fall, but this was almost as bad as the last house we lived in… I’m digressing…

If they send me a bill for all of this – which they shouldn’t, I’ve been paying their Wire-Watch insurance since it was implemented, only in the last few years, the terms have changed – I’m going to send them a bill for lost client fees, lost sales, and a refund request for the payments I made for services I couldn’t use. $135 a month for all three (phone, ‘net, TV) and I could only use the TV. In total, the lines have been down or buggered for at least 30 weeks of the five years I’ve lived here… for this May alone, we were only able to use the net properly 12 days out of 31.

And then…

Rhia’s been complaining about a foot pain for a couple of weeks. I told her it was probably just a strain or pulled muscle from her sandbagging trip. I was quite wrong.

She’s got a stress fracture of the second metatarsal bone in her left foot. Trust me, the CP/left foot jokes have been flying around here, because we’re a terrible bunch of tasteless, tactless twits that way. Anyway, that was one whole day at the ER, then another day and a half or so getting her used to being mobile with a cast (we’ve settled for crawling around the house, and a wheelchair* for school/extras). The cast is purple, btw. If they switch to a boot cast before grad, I want her to get black, so we can sparkly-it up…LOL

Tonight’s going to be the big issue – bath. Unfortunately, our tub faces the wrong way for her to just relax and hang the leg w/cast over the side. *sigh* It’s going to be quite the production…

BUT – her grad dress is gorgeous, and now we only have to worry about one shoe. *snicker*

And then…

Thursday, I decided I needed something up at the store, so Care and I took the truck and hit the post office first (fings crossed just in case our packages were there before the strike – of course not). Did our stuff, came back to the house and just as I was pulling up – the welds on the exhaust completely let loose. I carefully backed up the drive way onto the cement patch, and Care crawled under to tie it up temporarily*.

And then…

Care went to pull out a Freezie from the fridge’s freezer Thursday evening, and realized right away it was juicy. And kinda warm. You got it – the fridge had died. And at some point probably Wednesday or maybe even Tuesday. And ya know what? We’d gone grocery shopping on Saturday. Yeah. Guess where those are now? I was livid… not only at myself for being stupid enough to stock the fridge when I knew it was dying, but at the landlord for waiting until it was dead to do something about it, when I told him it was dying in February. I told him then it took longer to freeze things, and that it was making a horrible clunking noise when the compressor shut off.

Called the landlord, and eventually he called back. Today we’ve got a new(er) fridge, but there was no mention made of replacing the groceries (which I didn’t expect, but since I asked him to replace the fridge in February he knew this would happen eventually)… so now I’ve got zilch left in the already limited budget to replace groceries with. I think I can make arrangements with the store and hopefully we can limp along on what we managed to salvage.

By the by, the new fridge has a freezer on the bottom and a ton of shelving and drawers and stuff, and I may need to change the door direction, but… at least the landlord was quick about getting one here. Okay, quick after the other one had died and defrosted all over frostables.

* Wondering what all the asterisks are for?

The ex (the girls’ dad, not the other one) and I have been civil for going on a full month-ish now, although we actually spoke to each other (with snarling, etc.) for the first time in I’m not sure how long last Sunday.

He fixed the lawn mower; gave the girls a phone line for the jack-modem connection PLUS a router and some network cable to hook up the XBox Live stuff; rented a walker, returned it, came back with a wheelchair for Rhia and then helped Care fix the exhaust… all in the last week. Previous to that, he’d offered to help pay for Milo’s vet bill, and if I haven’t mentioned it before, he gave the kids money to take me out for Mother’s Day. AND he pitched in on the grad photo package.

See? I said awkward and kinda creepy.