Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

I never thought I could use an icon with that poop emoji that people have a bizarre attachment to.

Friday night at about 1 AM, Bobby and I were rudely awakened by a screeching-blaring sound coming from the direction of our storage freezer and washer/dryer, which are tucked behind a curtain in the kitchen. We initially thought the sound was coming from the freezer, but after dragging the freezer out into the kitchen, we discovered it was the septic tank alarm. Uh oh! It was screaming its little head off and the warning light was lit up red.

I've lived in a home with a septic tank for all of my life except for the three years that I lived in an apartment in Ellicott City and had sewer like normal people. But we were both at a loss as to what the alarm means. Bobby got it shut off and we returned to bed, where he perused his iPad to discover the myriad things both silly and serious it could be, and first thing in the morning, he called the septic guy who did the inspection. He came out for an emergency call but couldn't tell us much on the spot except that we weren't in immediate danger of coming home to a bathtub full of poop.

The septic guy came back today, and we have a better idea of what is wrong without having a full notion yet of what it will cost to fix. The electrical box was foolishly placed in the tank itself--apparently a common practice when our house was built ... erm, delivered (since we live in a single-wide! *banjos!*)--and not surprisingly got wet and all the wires burned up. Which is scary but also kind of cool: We likely had an underground poop fire in our yard! If there was a way to make the concept of Silent Hill more horrifying, there it is. Anyway, since there is no wiring, then the pump is not working. What we're still not sure about is if and how damaged the pump is and what it will cost to fix/replace if it is. If the pump is fine, the repair will be a few hundred dollars. If the pump needs to be replaced, it will be a few thousand. Eep.

It stinks (DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE) but it could have been worse. It could have happened over Thanksgiving weekend when we had a house full of people. It could have happened in the middle of winter. The alarm might not have worked and we would have literally had poop coming out in our backyard, which is full of poop enough thanks to the Goldens. (More good news from Brian the Poop Guy: If our tank were to overflow, it would go into the backyard before it backed up into the house. Yay?) We can weather the cost, even if it means we'll be eating home a lot more in the weeks to come. Until everything is sorted, we have to be careful with our water usage. The septic guy is coming back tomorrow with the plumber and electrician: a whole poop-tank team! Now let's hope we don't get any crappy news ...

As seen at Oshun and Rhapsody ...

( A clean house is a sign of a wasted life ... )

In other words, the basement's back!

The painting and flooring were finished by the end of last week. Bobby started moving stuff back downstairs last weekend, and the storage pod in our driveway was picked up today, so everything's back in the house, although not everything's put together/away yet. However, while my parents and sis-in-law Erin were over last weekend, we did get all the furniture and TV carried back downstairs, so we have our living space back again! Huzzah!

Bobby had an art class last night, so we ate an early supper then, like Hobbits, a second supper later when he got home. Then we went downstairs, put on Ghosthunters, and I fell asleep on the couch with Bobby on one side, Alex on the other. It was bliss.

The contractor is still working on repairing the pump attached to the sink in the laundry room and finishing the stairs. We decided not to replace the carpet, so the lovely hardwood steps under the carpet have to be sanded and finished. Everything looks really good. Once it's all finished, I'll post pictures.

The flood was two months and 10 days ago today.

The Hell is, thankfully, at bay for the moment, but the high water is here with a vengeance.

As reported in my last post, our bedroom ceiling is leaking profusely--I just counted 11 pots and plastic tubs arranged to catch the leaks--so we planned to spend the night down in the basement. A little after midnight, I woke up because Bobby had turned on the lights in the basement hallway. I asked what was going on, and he said he thought he'd found another leak because the carpet was wet.

( Turns out it was worse. Much worse. )

For anyone who has missed my obsessive presence online for the past three months, be comforted that the DSL will be installed on Thursday. Of course, I'm leaving that night for Ocean City, but normalcy should return beginning next Monday.

( The Ballad of the Hardwood Floors )

( Sob Story )

Sob story aside, those of you have my email (or want my email) in your address book: please change it to DawnFelagund@gmail.com. The Comcast account will remain active for a week, and once it's deactivated, I'm going to ask my dad to create an account with the same name (DawnFelagund) and have it auto-forward to my Gmail account so that people who don't know to send to the new address won't be frozen out.

Stoopid Comcast.

For the record, Bart Simpson Road is what we call the house in Manchester. It's really not on a street called Bart Simpson Road, but the name is similar, and it makes for an easy nickname to remember it by.

( Bad News, Good News, Best News! )

I've wanted to write for days, but this is the first chance that I could grab. We got the house. Sunday evening, we were over my parents' house and Pat (my cousin's fiance and our real estate agent) called to say that the owners had made a counter-offer; it took Bobby and me about thirty seconds to decide that we could live with it. All of the final contract paperwork was finished today. So, pending inspection, it's ours!

This is all very exciting. We settle on 29 June (my sister's birthday!) and will move in that weekend.

Now that the place is definitely ours (pending inspection), every little detail about the apartment that annoyed me but I could live with suddenly seems one hundred times worse. Interesting psychology going on here. Coping mechanisms. ;) Today, I came off of Route-29 onto Route-40 and traffic was backed up at the light. I had to cross three lanes through this mess to turn onto my street, like I do every day. I deal with it; become proud of how good I've gotten at this task when it used to be ulcer-inducing to a bumpkin like me. Today, I thought a string of profanities and realized that I just didn't want to deal with this anymore. That I'm just not suited to this area. It's gorgeous and I adore the historic district to an unhealthy degree, but the rude, pretentious, self-absorbed people who live here; the constant press and hustle and endless congestion; the cost of Howard County just to boast, "I live in Howard County," with my nose in the air ... I'm sick of it. And every time that f***ing dog next door starts yapping or something falls from a bookshelf or the refrigerator or the washing machine and clunks me on the head because we have no room and have taken to storing dishes in the oven ... I think, Only a few weeks left, and am so relieved and happy just to be gone from here.

Because I don't want to feel this way. This was Bobby's and my first home together, and I want to remember it fondly.

In less important (but still big) news, the beta-test for the SWG archive is well underway. I had in mind all these very efficient plans. May, I was going to do the grunt work on the archive and start testing. June was going to be the first month of public use, which will likely be rocky. Inevitably. July, we were going to start looking for a house. But the two should not overlap. Riiiight.

As it was, we did the bulk of the house-acquisition at the same time as I finished building and started beta-testing the archive. Not the best setup, but I can't put off the first and don't want to put off the second. As it is, we're over the worst of both hurdles. We have inspection and settlement looming for the house, and that's it. All the financial stuff is done, and the contract is signed. And I've worked out the worst of the bugs in the archive; what is left is mostly aesthetic and could really be accomplished beyond the testing period as well. I'm looking forward to writing and watching movies and sleeping. All good things. :)

In less pleasing news, we've canceled all travel plans for the year, which include our trips to Toronto, Bermuda, and England. Bobby and I can travel on a shoestring, but the shoestring's been a bit frayed as of late and almost coming apart.

Alex decided to act like an asshat at the end of his walk tonight. We're changing headcollars because the one he has now pops into his mouth whenever he pulls back suddenly, at which time he happily gnaws through it. He's almost through this one, and it's his second in a month. While removing it from his mouth, as he happily jawed away, he punctured my hands in two places. Ouchie. Both ache relentlessly. He barely broke the skin, but they're swollen and sore. I can't wait to move. He'll have a yard; I'll have a place to train him again. A tiny apartment and 80-pound dog just don't work for training purposes anymore.

Did I mention that I can't wait to move?

(And I'll answer my comments very soon. Right now, it's off to bed to enjoy a bit of reading before dying for the night.)

It has begun. Bobby and I were pre-approved earlier this week for home loans with numerous banks. We got offered rates that were, without going into great and boring detail, quite good. It helps that it is now a "buyers' market"; we are doing this at the right time.

After much discussion and deliberation, we have decided on Carroll County. Howard County--however lovely--is simply too expensive. What we will pay for a single-family home on an acre of land in Carroll would get us a cookie-cutter townhome in Howard. Besides the fact that Bobby and I both wish to remove ourself from civilization as much as possible, and Howard County is growing too quickly to guarantee that. The little "experiment" that has been the last three years living in Howard Crossing has certainly taught me that I cannot live close to great numbers of people, if nothing else.

Today, we set out to look at a few houses that we had picked out of the listings. Neither of us are too familiar with Carroll County except to know that it is low-crime, within sight of the mountains, and overwhelmingly rural. I charted a course for us to see all that we were interested in, we packed Alex into the back of the Aerio, and set off exploring. We found two that we really liked: one rancher in Manchester and a farmhouse in Westminster that is, incidentally, zoned for horses. There was a third that couldn't be viewed from the road that sounds interesting; the only downside is that it is somewhat near to a big road, and I'd like to avoid that sort of noise, if possible.

We are simply out of room in our apartment; it has gotten so bad that we've begun storing things in the cars. Not to mention the fact that Alex would love a yard (and we would love for Alex to have a yard, as he sometimes becomes unbearably annoying in the apartment!) and that our mortgage would only be a few hundred dollars more than our rent (yes, for a single-family home versus a one-bedroom apartment ... sad). Add this to the fact that our community went through three different owners over the space of about seven months and the last set doesn't think that our outrageous rents entitle us to have our steps cleared of ice or our grass cut before it grows to our knees and, yes, we need to get out, and badly. (The Howard Crossing Debacle is an entry for another time, perhaps; I am simply weary of dealing with these people and detailing my travails.)

So we're looking to move as soon as we can. We found out that our lease runs out earlier than we realized, so we jumped the gun on this and are ready to pay a few months rent on top of house payments if we can get out of here sooner.

Meanwhile, house finches have again laid eggs in our hanging baskets, I'm sitting out on the balcony, and they are not happy with my presence here. I'm starting to feel guilty for keeping them off their eggs (they keep flying by and twittering at me), so it's time to sign off and go back inside.