Haus Frau Files

Last night, I was standing in front of the sink whilst I was preparing supper.  There is a window over the sink, which looks out into the backyard, and something rather odd caught my eye in the way back. 

It hadn't been there earlier in the day, or the day before.  Because of their abrupt appearance on the scene, I wondered if Number Six hadn't, somehow, snuck into the house in the course of one of his escape attempts. 

Since Number Six didn't appear to be in the vicinity, the husband and I figured it was safe to go out and investigate. 

This thing is the size of a socccer ball, as is the other one.  I'll be interested to see what the little one looks like later today. We had no clue as to what it could be, but the husband did a little research, and it turns out it's a mushroom with an apt classification: Calvatia gigantea or "giant puffball" mushroom.

{...}Most giant puffballs grow to be 10 to 70 centimetres (3.9 to 28 in) in diameter, although occasionally some can reach diameters up to 150 centimetres (59 in) and weights of 20 kilograms (44 lb). The inside of the mature Giant puffballs is greenish brown, whereas the interior of immature puffballs is white. The large white mushrooms are edible when young. To distinguish giant puffballs from other species, they must be cut open; edible puffballs will have a solid white interior. Some similar mushrooms have the white interior (or yellowish) but also have the silhouette of a cap-type mushroom on the interior when cut open. These are young cap-type mushrooms and may be poisonous.

The fruiting body of a puffball mushroom will develop within the period of a few weeks and soon begin to decompose and rot, at which point it is dangerous to eat. Unlike most mushrooms, all the spores of the giant puffball are created inside the fruiting body; large specimens can easily contain several trillion spores. Spores are yellowish, smooth, and 3 to 5 micrometres (0.00012 to 0.00020 in) in size. The dry spores can be used as a coagulant to help stop bleeding.{...}

Can you believe that?  It's actually edible. That's a shedload of mushroom!  And, yes, the husband reverted to his eight-year-old self and poked it, repeatedly, with a stick, and found that the inside is, indeed, white.  We could, technically speaking, eat the thing.  But we won't, because I'm entirely too much of a chicken to eat fungi from the backyard. 

Interesting what can spring up in your backyard overnight, no?  I find it somewhat comical that we've spent all summer laboring to get grass to grow, but giant puffball mushrooms spring up instantly. Weird. 

*Verily, praise will be heavily heaped on those who can spot the source material.

Aside from a quick downpour on the 4th of July, we haven't had much rain for the past two weeks.  Normally, that wouldn't bother me.  One thing has changed though, and it's that we're spending our summer in our "new" residence. 

And it seems just to get unbearably muggy in here.  All the time. 

I have, I will admit, not been shy about turning on the AC.  This is odd for me.  I'm what you'd call "weird" when it comes to air conditioning. I am not one of those people who constantly keep their house closed up, and the air conditioning always on, like I would normally run the furnace in the winter.  I was raised not to run the cooling machinery unless you really needed it, i.e. you were sweating, uncomfortable and logy, and it was ninety degrees outside.  My mother had two constant refrains during summer when I was a kid: "Open it up!"  or "Close it up!"  Yes, these were demands.  This meant, depending upon which order we received, we were all to get up from what we were doing and were to run around the house (and this was in a three-floor, five-bedroom, colonial that looked an awful lot like the Amityville Horror house, with at least three windows in every room) closing or opening windows on Mom's demand.  It was so common a chore that I never really was bothered by it...except for the bit abouthaving to go up to the third-floor, which was my brothers' room at the time, and close the windows up there.  I had three reasons for this objection: first, it stank, because, being adolescent males, well, there really was no option for it not to stink---particularly when they both had jobs at an Italian restaurant as bussers, and every pair of Addidas tennis shoes they owned filled the air with the odd mixture of sweat, foot funk, and spaghetti sauce, which, of course, says nothing of my brother Mike's perpetually stinky soccer gear ; second, because it was yet another flight of stairs to climb; and third because it was freakin' hot up there.  When you came back down after closing the third-floor windows, you were noticeably logy.  I don't know how my brothers actually managed to sleep up there without the AC.  It would have driven me nuts.  

Never mind that the "cat's eyes" windows in their bedroom didn't have screens on them, and bees liked to place their hives in the eaves right next to the windows, and there was always the chance of being stung.  I don't know that anyone actually did get stung, but it was always a risk, as you could see the bees floating around outside the windows if you stuck your head out.  And I really didn't like bees at that particular point in time. 

I have, of course, turned into my mother in this regard, and the husband generally doesn't mind, when I say, "Open it up," after having gone outside to gauge the atmosphere for myself, and to see whether it's compatible with having the windows open.  It's rare when he overrules me in this regard. Ever since the husband came back from Kuwait---and this was almost ten years ago, people---he has a profound dislike of air conditioning.  When he worked there, he had the misfortune of being there for part of Kuwait's brutal summer---and, lest you think it's just like being in Arizona, know that it's not: Kuwait's heat is of the wet variety, having their back to the desert notwithstanding, because they're right on the Arabian Sea.  At this time, he wanted to come home.  Badly.  Things were not going well with the project he was working on, and he felt trapped, which no one likes to feel, but something the husband dreads more than most. Not only at work was he trapped, but in his cheapskate hotel room, as well, where he'd been relegated to spending most of his time. His per diem had magically dried up, and he was forced to eat a neverending string of room service club sandwiches while watching CNN International or MTV Asia, because that was the only thing the hotel kitchen produced well, and because the only bill these people were paying was for his hotel room. (And, even then, after he left, the husband got emails from his business partner's friends wondering why he'd run up the bill, insisting with his actions that he'd brought shame to said business partner.  The nerve of these people never ceases to astonish me.)  To my knowledge, he hasn't eaten a club sandwich since.  The only time the husband could get out of the room was at night, when he would be the sole sweaty person roaming around downtown Kuwait City, because everyone with means had gotten the heck out of there, and everyone without, and who were stuck there, was asleep. The husband needed some fresh air.  Often. Even then, it the dead of night, it was still ninety-some degrees outside, and it never got much better.  He would call me from his cell during his wanderings, and would detail the misery for me.  I felt utterly helpless.  Ever since then, it's been my guess, that air conditioning makes him, on some subconscious level, relive the feeling of being trapped, like he was during that summer.  He claims it's just because he doesn't like to listen to the fan, or have it blow on him, but his dislike is too profound for me to exclude my guesses.  So, I'm generally hesitant to turn the AC on, even in menopausal hot-flash hell---which, if you think about it, means I should never go near the thermostat, because I run hotter than most people---and am apologetic every time I do, because I know he doesn't like it. 

But there are times when I can't push past my annoyance and discomfort and just have to turn the freakin' thing on.  Like now.  It's seventy-six outside, and, at a little before eleven am, I'm toying with the notion of turning it on, despite the cool breeze that occasionally wafts in from the north-facing window next to my desk.  Not because it's too hot, but because it's muggy and my skin is starting to stick to my nightgown (which, yes, I'm still in, because I'm at home.  And you all are jealous, because I'm still in my jammies and you wish were in yours.), and to other bits of skin. I don't like this.

Humidity is uncomfortable in this new house.  I can't figure out why, because it's not like we moved cross country, but rather moved four blocks away, and the weather obviously isn't different. Sure it bothered me in the past, but then again, the toilet tank in the old place never dripped with condensation like it does here when it gets too muggy. I think, partially, it must have something to do with our proximity to the ground, and that makes it more humid.  The old Cake Eater pad was on the second-floor of a duplex, and while heat rose, we didn't get the same amount of humidity that we do here.  Or at least that's what it seems like. Maybe we had more cross-breeze at the other house. I don't know. During the day, I spend the majority of my time in our home office, on the second floor, with only two windows to bring in air----on the north and south sides, respectively, because the people who converted the second floor to useful space simply walled-over the windows in the middle, rather than work around them.   (So, yeah, you can see these same windows from the outside of the house, but you know they don't go anywhere.)  This means the air flow up here in the office, despite the fact I have fans running, is not so good and the humidity lingers.  It reminds me way too much of having to go up to the third-floor when I was a kid, suffering the incessant Nebraska summer heat coming off the roof, just to shut the windows that looked like a pair of cat's eyes.  The only difference now being that there is no Addidas foot-funk/spaghetti sauce aroma coming off my brother's shoes to annoy and disgust me, and that I generally can't escape it because I, ahem, work from up here.  

I just wish it would rain already and would clear things out, even for a short while.  We're gagging for rain here.  I read in the paper yesterday that we're two inches down from normal this summer, despite the humidity. Which is weird, but is just how it works around here.  We even had a fog roll in on the 4th, during the fireworks show, because it was so muggy.  That's not something that happens every day around here. Every day this week, in the morning and evening, the skies have turned threatening, but haven't produced anything in the rain department.  If it rained and cleared out the humidity, I wouldn't have to turn on the AC, and make all sorts of apologies to the husband, and it will be comfortable without it.

Sigh.

You see the little problems that occupy my mind?  Very silly, I know.  Believe me, I can't believe you've read this far down into this post, because I know I probably wouldn't have.

...three cavities!

Woohoo! 

Well, actually not. 

They're three "on the verge" root cavities due to gum erosion, or whatever they call it.  They're simply being proactive.

Should only take about forty minutes or so to fill them. 

I'll believe it when I see it. 

The husband shocked me yesterday. 

I was sitting in the hammock, taking advantage of the shade in the backyard to get some fresh, non-air-conditioned air, reading and having my evening cocktail while I waited for the husband to come home.  He had a busy day yesterday, and on top of all his work stuff, he had a few late appointments which put off his arrival at home about an hour or so.  When he finally rolled up the driveway, I had to do a doubletake while I watched him drive into the garage.  Something about his profile was...off. 

When I figured it out a moment later, my jaw dropped open.  And it stayed like that for quite some time. 

You see, the last appointment the husband had yesterday was for a haircut.  I was expecting him to get a trim of his shoulder-length locks, per usual.  But he had different plans, apparently. 

He parked the car, grabbed his briefcase, and walked across the backyard to where I was sitting, jaw still open wide, and...handed me his ponytail. He'd had it cut off, and had kept the hair as a souvenir.  

He went from this...

To this.

Sorry about the crap quality of the picture.  I had to take it on the fly with my phone, but it nonetheless gets the point across. 

I think it looks terrific.   I've missed the back of his neck like you wouldn't believe.  Yes, he has very pretty hair, and I loved playing with it when I was bald, but...it looks better short.  It frames his face nicely, and, as the salon staff pointed out to him, he looks younger with shorter hair.

The Cake Eater In-laws arrive on Wednesday and I'm afraid he's going to give his mother a heart attack when she finally lays eyes upon him.  

Granted, if she died from said metaphorical heart attack, she'd die happy because he's finally done what she's wanted---and has been very vocal about expressing---for years. 

The "South of the Mason-Dixon Line Tour '09" has officially come to an end. Ticket sales were good, and while it was an absolute and positive success in terms of helping rid me of the neuropathies (I can type!  I can open jars!  I can eat with my right hand! I can get my wedding ring on! But, most importantly, THE PAIN IS GONE!), I am hoping I don't have to go back on the road anytime soon.  Keep your fingers crossed that nothing untoward happens between now and when spring actually hits because this business of flying all over hell and gone is a heck of a lot more expensive as a form of pain relief than is an insurance co-pay.  I am currently back in Cake Eater Land, and happy to finally be reunited with the husband, who, rather inconveniently for the romance situation, has a head cold.  No mind.   I am happy to be here. 

The weather here in Cake Eater Land is suprisingly nice.  It's warm, almost fifty degrees as I write this, and just about all of the snow has melted over the past four days or so says the husband.  He said there was eight inches of snow on our lawn last week, and now it's pretty much all gone.  I like that kind of development, but I suspect we'll get nailed again at least once before all is said and done. We always do. Personally, I think we deserve a nice long spring, after the appalling winter we've  they've gone through. (Although, I was here for the first three months of it, so I should have some say.)  Question is, though, will we get it?  Only time will tell. 

It was kind of crappy leaving Austin yesterday.  Full-on spring finally arrived just as I had to leave.  They're in a very bad drought in the Hill Country.  Just about everywhere in the region has a burn ban going on, and not too long ago there were some significant fires east of Austin, in Bastrop, where something like 15,000 acres burned---along with homes and businesses.  It was noticeable how dry everything was, and even if I hadn't been particularly observant, my sister and brother-in-law's running commentary about the lack of rain would have driven the point home.  Lakeway, where they live and work, northwest of Austin and situated on Lake Travis, is, partially, a vacation community, and they manage vacation properties.  When Lake Travis is down twenty feet, cancellations aplenty occur.  They want the lake level back up, and they want it back in a bad way.  So, last Wednesday, when it started raining, they were practically jumping up and down for joy.  And when it kept on raining, through Sunday morning, they were positively ecstatic.  Overall, there hadn't been enough rain to raise the level of the lake significantly, but it's a good start, and if nothing else, it allowed spring to really get going. 

Everything bloomed when the sun came out on Sunday.  The grass, the trees, bushes, you name it, greened up, and spring was in full swing. It was gorgeous, and that glorious cedar smell that pervades the area finally came out to play; all it needed to be coaxed out of hiding was some rain.  It finally hit me, about a week after I'd arrived, that something was missing in the dryness.  It was something important, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it---until it rained for about a half an hour one day and the smell I'd been missing wafted through the air.   It's a fragrant mixture comprised mostly of cedar, but there's also pine, watery, lake fragrances that waft in from the lake, blooming flowers, etc.  It's different depending upon what season it is, but the cedar is predominant, particularly in summer.  I love it.  The entire place smells like a cedar closet, but lighter and more natural---you know, except in the burning heat and humidity of summer, when it smells like the humidity has doused itself in a bottle of perfume.  

So, after all that, it was something of a shock to come back here.  Now, the weather is nice, particularly for mid-March, don't get me wrong, but after watching everything get a good wash over the past week in Austin, and to be rewarded with the glories of spring, it was kind of a bummer to have to leave it so soon, and to come face-to-face with large puddles, still-frozen lakes, and brown everything.

As far as the timing of my return is concerned, I had to get back for a check-up at Dr. Academic's place.  When I told them of my impending departure back in January, I had already scheduled my three-month-checkup.  I asked how long I could put it off, and they said, in a rather firm tone, that two weeks was fine, but a month would be bad.  Hence, I am back.  I go in for a CA-125 blood draw later today, and then because it takes three days to get the results back, I have my actual check-up on Friday.

Despite the inevitable doctor's office crap, it's good to be back.  And if this weather keeps on keeping on, it'll be even better. 

The husband's coming to town!  The husband's coming to town!

Again, I will make you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, aware of a very cool tool: Flight Aware.  This is a live flight tracker, and it's the same deal that you get when you have tee vee on your flight and come across a map with your flightpath on it.  It's hooked into air traffic control, so you get the latest information---and you get it from the source, rather than through the airlines, who always seem to be behind the time with the handing out of information.  In case you were wondering, the husband is currently over Iowa, and is about to hit middling Illinois on his way down here.  This might be fun, I would think, for the kiddies, as well as being handy for adults. 

Anyway...the husband's coming to town.  The husband's coming to town.  The husband's going to get a shock of humidity when he walks out the door of the terminal.  The husband's coming to town.  His whiteness is going to get fried today at the beach unless I slather him in 50SPF.  The husband's coming to town.  The husband is bringing my camera with him, so I can finally post that bidet picture devoted Cake Eater commenter, Bob, wants to see.  The husband's coming to town.  He's really looking forward to sitting in the hot tub and smoking a cigar. 

This is one of the very few times when I can say conclusively that today is going to be a FABULOUS day.

No, my devoted Cake Eater readers, I'm not talking about the imminent return of pitchers and catchers.  I'm talking about scouting real estate.

Now that I've got some spare time on my hands, and the weather is warm enough down here in Austin, I reverted to one of my favorite hobbies while I'm down here: looking at lake houses that I will never be able to afford unless I win the Powerball.  I'm currently staying with my sister and her husband in this suburb of Austin.  Lakeway wasn't a suburb when I started visiting down here, lo those many years ago; it was a vacation community on the shores of Lake Travis, that was home to a lot of retirees who drove around the place in golf carts.  But, now, with Austin's phenomenal growth of the past twenty years or so, it has become a suburb.  Where there was only vacant scrub land, there is now a Home Depot, and a Le Boutique de la Target.  Oh, and there's a HUGE mall now, where before there was only an old fashioned trading post.  The entire landscape has changed, and it keeps changing.  Every time I come down here, there's something new in a spot that was previously empty.  It's somewhat discombobulating, to say the least, because, as I drive around, all the familiar landmarks are either gone, or have changed beyond recognition.  I expect I will get lost more than once while I'm down here, even if it hasn't happened yet.

One of the things that has changed is Rough Hollow.  When I was seventeen, I nannied for my nephews for a summer, and we would always go out on the boat and head down to Rough Hollow because there was a rope swing there.  I don't know who put up the rope swing, but bless them for it, because it provided quite a lot of entertainment over the years.  Lake Travis is an interesting lake.  Even though it looks incredibly natural, like it's been there for thousands of years, it's only been in existence for a little more than sixty years.  It was created after they dammed off the eastern branch of the Colorado river for electricity purposes.  Due to the fact that this is the Texas Hill Country, the water rushed into huge valleys and trenches and, on this side of the lake anyway, there is no such thing as a beach.  You jump in, off a limestone cliff, and it's instantly sixty-five-feet deep.  So, you can perhaps see, how Rough Hollow would be one of the safest places on earth for a rope swing that dumped you directly into a lake.  No worries about breaking a neck here.

But the Rough Hollow I knew is no longer.  It has now been developed, and there are McMansions set up cheek and jowl over the available landscape.  Now, normally I would think this was a bad thing, because I'm not really fond of McMansions, but because the available lake front land in Lakeway is not what you'd consider de rigeur for a place named "Lakeway," it's actually a good development.  Sure, there are plenty of houses in Lakeway that have a lake view, and some which actually have lake access (which usually means they have an elevator or a tram, or a very steep set of limestone stairs built in so they can get down to the water from their cliff-top houses), but the geography of the place dictates that actual lake front houses are limited in supply.  Usually you have to wait for someone to cack before you can get your hands on one, and even then that's not a given because the family might swoop in a keep the place, just because the lot is valuable, even if the house that rests upon it isn't.  Rough Hollow has trebled the amount of lake front/lake view real estate in Lakeway---and that's a good thing. 

The only problem with this scenario is that very few of the houses in Rough Hollow that I've been able to take a peek at actually have lake access. 

Why does this matter to me?  Well, because I have a dream, and it's a dream I've had since I first got a ride on my aunt and uncle's boat when I was six or seven.  Like most people, I've ditched most of the dreams I had when I was a child.  I never wanted a pony, but I did want to live in a lifesized Barbie Townhouse, and to shop at a real life Barbie Fashion Plaza, among other things.  But, again, like most people, I ditched those dreams when I got older, because they didn't hold up to real life expectations.  But the one thing I swore to myself, that I promised myself, I would have when I got older, was a ski boat.  I've never lost the desire to be able to race across large expanses of water at a high rate of speed.  I love this.  It's fun.  It's exhilarating.  It's liberating.  It engenders in me the sense of freedom you first felt when you were a kid and you were finally able to explore your neighborhood on your first set of wheels, without your parents knowing what you were up to and where you were going.  Hence the promise to myself.  However, I noticed what a freakin' hassle boating can be.  Schlepping all your crap to the marina, loading up the boat, stowing everything away, working your way through the no wake zone to finally get out on the water---and that's if your boat is in a marina in the first place, and not in some storage unit or your driveway, where you have to tow it to the lake in the first place.  All that crap just takes forever.  Now, I'm sure some people enjoy all that stuff.  They like having another thing to care for and maintain to help fill the hours. They like scrubbing the bottom of the boat with Tidy Bowl, because someone in the Ozarks told them it worked great to keep things clean.  I don't.  I want a boat that I can walk up to, throw off the lines, put in reverse, and then race off with.  Hence, when I was here in Lakeway for my seventeenth summer, I started to hatch a plan that would make it easier for me to take up boating as a hobby.  My plan entailed a lake front house, with water access, here on Lake Travis, because there is no other lake, in my estimation, that is as great for boating as Lake Travis.  It's big, which means there is a lot of space to speed, and even if there is a lot of traffic on the main portions, there is always some nook or cranny where you can drop anchor, and laze about for the rest of the day.  It's perfect.  You couldn't ask for anything more.  But, if I want a boat, I want it to be easy.  I realize there will always be some maintenence issues, but if I've got enough money to buy a lake front house, I'll have enough money to hire someone from a local marina to look after my boat.  See how this all works out?  It's perfect.  I am a canny chick. 

The only problem with this scenario as of right now is, of course, money.  Lake houses are expensive, particularly where I want to live, which is here in Lakeway, because it's not off the beaten path, on a dirt road, in the middle of nowhere, as so many of the lake houses are outside of Lakeway.  I need some civilization in my life, unlike my brother, who has a lake house on Travis, but whose goal in life is to live "off the grid" and whose house is, naturally, somewhat out of the way, and who paid much, much less for his little slice of heaven because he was willing to be out in the middle of nowhere.  But it's all relative.  I'm accustomed to living in a major metropolitan area, in a nice neighborhood, where the type of house I grew up in, a five bedroom colonial, would cost you, roughly, a mil five or up.  These lake houses may cost two or three mil, but when you're used to that kind of inflation for a house in a regular, normal neighborhood without lake access or anything really special in that sense, what's a few more mil in your imaginary world, anyway?  All of this is pure speculation on my part.  But, one day, when we're ready, all the speculating will pay off, because I will know what I want, where I want it, and how I want it to be.  So, given that we know lake access realty is rare and pricey in Lakeway, finding out last summer that they'd developed Rough Hollow, was something of a boon to my fantasies: more places to choose from.  Yet, of course, there's is another downer besides the McMansion aspect: and that's that most of the houses in Rough Hollow, as I discovered yesterday when I was out walking around the developments, don't have lake access from the houses.  There is, of course, a marina and it's my guess that they developed it as such to pimp boat owners on the marina.  One of the things that I really want is lake access: it's a dealbreaker.  Again, I just want to be able to walk up to my boat, turn the engine on, throw off the lines and the bumpers, throw it into reverse and then, after I change gears, of course, to be able to speed away.  It doesn't look as if that's an option in Rough Hollow, and that's a serious downer in my little fantasy world.   

Sigh. 

Ah, well.  I still have some area in Rough Hollow to discover, and maybe I'll see what I want in the meantime.    

Well, my devoted Cake Eater readers, I am no longer in Minneapolis. I am currently dictating this post from the comfort of my sister's dining room table in her home outside of Austin, Texas.  

The weather in Minneapolis, currently, is 6° and sunny. They might get some snow later in the day.  The weather here in Austin, currently, is 59° and sunny, so it is fairly comfortable here. And hopefully it will help my hands to recover.

Basically, I had to go south for the winter. I am a snowbird---at age thirty-eight.  Sigh.  

Since the problem cropped up over Christmas, I've been in touch with Dr. Academic, who had never heard of neuropathies causing anyone's hands to swell and joints to ache before; he sent me to a neurologist, who thought I had Raynaud's Phenomenon, but who was wrong.  The guy who judged him to be in the wrong was a rheumatologist to whom the neurologist had referred me.  The rheumatologist couldn't find anything wrong with me other than a slight vitamin D deficiency---as in I was three points below normal---hence he said to take more vitamin D, to call him in six weeks to see if it solved the problem, and then bounced me back to Dr. Academic. Sigh.   I've been trying a drug called neurontin since the beginning of the year, and while it actually does help with the nerve pain, it also causes me to go cross-eyed.  Which sucks. I tried the same drug last year, with the same results, but Doctor Academic wanted to give it another try and hence we did but with the same results.  Completely out of options, he wished me a happy winter south of the Mason Dixon line, and told me to call in case I needed anything.

This was the husband's idea. He's tired of watching me be in pain, and since the only time the neuropathies have completely gone away was last summer, it seemed logical to give warm weather another shot to see if the warmth would send them back into stasis.  They really sucks when you don't have any options left, and this trip down south is our version of a Hail Mary pass.  One can only hope it works, because, quite frankly, I'm sick of this. I'm not expecting overnight relief, but hopefully with time, I can start living pain- free---you know, at least in my hands.

I don't have to be back in the Twin Cities until the middle of March, because that's when I have my three month checkup with Dr. Academic. I put it off as long as I could, but that's the deadline.  Fortunately,  I can work from anywhere and hopefully this will help me become more productive, and healthier. We'll just have to see.  Right now, I'm just happy I can go outside without a coat, hat, scarf and gloves.  How novel.   I will bounce over to Florida for a couple of weeks to see my parents, who are currently living the high life in Bonita Springs for the month of February and who have graciously offered me one of the four bedrooms the house in which they're currently residing has.  After that, who knows what the plan will be.  I might come back to Austin.  I might go home.  It all just depends on how this plan works. 

As far as this "treatment" is concerned, well, you could do a lot worse than sitting outside in the sun on the second day in February in a polar fleece and jeans. 

Do any of you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, have Geico car insurance?

I thought we were getting soaked by current car insurance company, and since we're up for renewal of the end of the month I thought I'd check out the competition, to see if we could do better.  Turns out I was right about getting soaked, because at the rate my current insurance company is charging, I've just been drowned by the Pacific Ocean.  Geico had the best quote by far, but because I'm suspicious of really good prices---the rate I was quoted was less than half of what we're paying now, for even better coverage than we have now---I'm assuming that there has to be a catch.  So, if anyone out there is a current or former Geico customer and would like to throw them either a bouquet or a brickbat, feel free to have at it.

Thanks in advance. 

Bless the Minneapolis Sewer and Water guys. 

Within three hours yesterday afternoon, they managed to locate the leak in the water intake pipe, fix it, and then backfill the hole in the yard they made to accomplish said tasks. 

Bless them. 

They did not have to jackhammer the slab in the basement, as I'd been told.  They found the leak, which was near the stopbox in the sidewalk, and did their work from there.  Dave, the landlord's fix-it-guy told me that they'd be showing up around noon.  I was dreading arriving at home, wondering what sort of shape the house and yard would be in.  But, by the time I was home from the hospital, around two-thirty or so, they were shoveling the dirt back into the hole, and when I walked up the hill to my front door, they announced, with no small amount of glee, that we had our water back.  Shocked, I asked, "Are you serious?  Really?  That was fast!"  He grinned.  "We got it quickly.  You'll want to go through the house and turn on all the faucets to get the air bubbles out."  "Ok," I replied, still stunned.  "Thank you!"   I went inside and did as he asked, and then watched from the front window as four guys shoveled dirt back into the hole they'd made at the base of the hill to fix the problem and put an orange cone over the spot where the new sidewalk had been jackhammered.  Dressed in the typical brown winter coveralls and hooded jackets of the average contractor, they made short work of the problem while snow fell upon them at a decent clip, and within good time had packed up their gear and drove away.  

I'm amazed.  Seriously.  I have nothing but admiration for the guys who tough it out and work during the winter.  Many outdoors contractors up here in frozen tundra land work like crazy during the summer so they have the financial werewithal to avoid having to take jobs during the winter.  These are the guys who become snowbirds in their early thirties, and play golf all winter long in a warm climate.  Or, if they have to work in the winter, they solely take indoor jobs---and if they have to take outdoor jobs, they usually bitch and moan about the cold and then get the job done as quickly as they can, which means that it's a temporary fix, only meant to last until the snow melts, so you have to pay them twice to get one fix.   I can't say that I blame them for any of it, because there's nothing worse than having to work outside all day long when it's five below and snow is falling, but it does become annoying when you've got a problem and this is the attitude you run up against.  You have to live and work in the cold, why aren't they set up for it?  Why don't they just accept the conditions and get on with it?  It gets a bit old, and you have a tendency to find another contractor. 

Yet, of course, there are jobs that require outside work, even in winter, and these hardy souls just seem to man up and do the work, because they, ahem, can make good money while the snow is falling.  These are the guys who climb up on icy, snowy roofs to clear them of said meteorological goodies so ice dams don't form when it warms up a bit.  This is considered regular household maintenence here during the winter, and there are plenty of people willing to do the work. Same goes for the trash collectors, cable and satellite installers, cops, and the snow plow guys, who clear parking lots and driveways in the wee hours of the morning---and, of course, the water and sewer guys who were out here yesterday.  They just put their heads down and got to work---and, while of course they were undoubtedly happy that they could get out of the weather at the end of the job, they put in a permanent fix, because it obviously didn't occur to them to do otherwise.  Life goes on, even in winter, and things must be maintained and fixed, otherwise worse things will happen.  These are the guys who understand that things should be done right the first time and bad, cold weather is no excuse.  They have my eternal admiration for having to deal with the snow and the cold.  I couldn't do it.  I admire them because they think it's just part of the working conditions.  Bless them. 

I'm now going to take a shower, and not worry for the first time in days that my next door neighbors are staring at their meter, watching the little blue star turn round and round as I use their water to wash, whilst wondering how much the city is going to ding them for our usage, even though we told them we would take care of the overage.  {insert windy, happy sigh here}  It's going to be lovely.