Three is a magic number...

They say bad things happen in threes. Today certainly proved that.

I got B up and dressed for school, then woke and dressed the little ones. We dropped her off at school and came back home to eat breakfast. A little later I went upstairs to look something up on the computer. While I was up there the heat cycled on and off (it is chilly here in the morning). Then I started hearing a slow rhythmic noise, kinda like water dripping. I thought that perhaps one of us left the water dripping in the hall bathroom. I found a spot on the carpet in the hall that I thought might be from water. It was below the AC vent. I went to turn on the hall light and spotted water spots on the wall. Lovely. I pulled down the stairs to the attic and went up. I held my breath as I turned on the attic light, since there was a water stain around the switch plate. Luckily I wasn’t electrocuted, so I went up in the attic to take a look around. Indeed there was a water leak, coming from the pipe that brings water into the water heater. There was quite a bit of water in the drip pan under the heater. Now I needed to find a plumber and fast! How do you do that when you don’t know anyone? Fortunately, the builder left an information card listing the subcontractors who did construction work, including the plumbing. I checked online and the plumber listed was still listed in the phone book, so I called the company. They sent someone over right away. Seems a fitting was bad and was most likely leaking for a long time. When we had the house inspected, the inspector noted the rust on the top of the heater, but believed it was coming from rain entering through the vent, since the vent pipes weren’t properly capped. The good news was that we didn’t need to replace the heater, so we should have a few more years before the two of them go. The plumber did tell me that I’ll need to measure the height of the heaters when we want them replaced so that they can get us the same size. Otherwise all the roof venting will need to be replaced if the heater is shorter than what we currently have. I also learned today that we have really hard water here. Why is it that I can’t move anywhere with soft water?? Since DH and I got married we’ve lived in 3 towns, all with ridiculously hard water. This plumbing company doesn’t do water softeners, so I have to find a local company to do that work for us. The previous owner took her water softener with her when she moved. We need a new softener and I need to have the reverse osmosis system (located under the kitchen sink) hooked up to the fridge. The previous owner also took her fridge with her, and when Sears installed the new fridge they must not have known about the RO line. DH didn’t seem to know about it either until he discovered water on the kitchen floor, dripping from the sink cabinet. A hole for the RO line had been drilled in the bottom of the cabinet, and that’s where it was leaking. DH turned off the water at the cold water, so we haven’t yet had cold water in the kitchen. Makes for great fun when washing dishes, lemme tell ya. Our water heaters seem to be set at SCALDING.

My next highlight came when I was going through the stuff in our living room. I was removing the moving company’s stickers from the furniture and I moved a large decorative urn. I heard something rattle inside the urn, and since it used to be in the playroom in the basement of our previous house, I figured it was a toy. Over I turned the urn to see what was in it. To my great surprise and horror, it was a dead mouse. More like petrified. Lovely, just lovely. A little friend to remind me of the infestation we had at Easter. Since the little ones were around, I overturned the urn over my deceased rodent friend and decided to dispose of him later. Once S was napping and A was confined to his exersaucer, I did relocate the offending mouse to the trash can in the garage.

This afternoon we went to get B from school and I figured that since it was so nice, we’d go right to the playground when we got home. I got the girls out of the car, put A in the stroller and off we went. The girls headed to the climber while A and I got the mail (the bank of mailboxes is located next to the playground). While I was reading the mail the girls were climbing up to go down the slide. The next thing I knew, I heard S crying. She had fallen off the bottom step, right into the sand. She had sand in her eyes, nose and mouth. We hurried home while she blew her nose and coughed out the sand. A quick shower later and she was fine.

Oh, did I forget to mention A's back to back poopy diapers??!! These were two of the most offensive smelling poops EVER!! I'm not certain that I've ever smelled anything quite so foul.

Tomorrow has got to be better.