the week (month?) in review

It's been a rough month, so I figured it's time for a "week in review" post.

First, the good stuff:

I have FINALLY gone clothes shopping and discovered my pant size is a 16!!  I don't even remember the last time I was a 16.  Shirt size now ranges from 14/16 to 18/20, depending on the store.  I was going to shop online like usual, but then I figured I should try things on in the store because I might be wrong on my new size.  Boy, was I wrong!  So glad I went to the store. I'm happy to say I now own my very first pair of REAL skinny jeans.  And I look good...

I had an interview for a new job and it went well.  I am hoping I get an offer next week.  I'm so ready to move on from the current job.  It's really tough getting up at 6 am and driving 45 minutes for a job that is, at best, an "easy" paycheck.  An easy paycheck might sound great, but not when the work is boring and not very challenging.  Seems like a lot of my time is spent on admin-type stuff and I feel like I'm way underutilized.

I got to see my former coworkers from my old job.  It was so nice to have everyone together again.  It made me realize how much I miss working with them and getting to talk to them everyday.

I got to hang out with the ladies from the Stratford Cat Project.  We hung out with the kitties and had some great food and conversation.

The not-so-good stuff:

My mother-in-law had to have emergency exploratory surgery the other day and she's in ICU.  She seems to be doing well, though, so I'm happy about that.  It's a good thing she got to the hospital when she did, otherwise she might not be alive right now.

My white Persian, Riley, was admitted to the animal hospital last night.  Earlier in the week he had to go to the vet twice because he was bleeding from the mouth.  He had to wear a cone all week to stop him from excessively grooming (they thought it was a cut in the mouth or a loose tooth).  Then yesterday it started up again.  He was bleeding quite a bit.  Later on Bob got a call that he's anemic from the blood loss and they can't sedate him for a checkup until his red blood cell count is up.  Then we got a call at 4 am this morning that he had started bleeding again and lost a lot of blood, so they have to do a blood transfusion.  $800 for that!  But we want him around for long time and he needed it.  We'll figure out the money later.  Now we're waiting to hear what they find.

Something good and not-so-good:

We have an OLD house.  We're on well water.  We haven't been able to locate our well due to the age of the house.  We tried the town records, calling around to well drillers and plumbers to see if they've ever worked on the well, and the town even came out to try and trace the water lines.  Nothing.  One day a few weeks ago Bob was walking around in the family room and said that an area of the floor felt different, like there was a cutout or something.  We said we would pull back the carpet and check it out, but we never got to it.

Well, we lost our water again last week.  And then the power in the bedroom shut off at 4 am that same morning.  And then mysteriously went back on 20 minutes later.  Bob stayed home from work to deal with the water issue.  He decided to cut into the carpet in the family room to see if the well was under there.  Guess what?  It was!  It's a hand-dug well that's original to the house (see below).  Pretty cool.  The modern well head is there also...but it's about 8 feet under the surface of the well opening.  That means, in order to service it, it would have to be several people working on it so one could be lowered into the old well and the others can take care of the safety measures.  Plus, we would have to raise the well head.  And that means it will cost about $4,000 when the time comes to replace the pump, provided there are any plumbers or well people willing to do it.

The plumber came out that day for the water issue and it turned out the problem was a loose breaker in the electrical panel.  It was the one that controls the well pump and that's why we had no water.  Luckily that didn't cost us much.

Bob later went down to replace the breaker and discovered six breakers that were corroded or melted so he replaced them.  That explains why the power in the bedroom went out.

So, the good things in all this are that we found the well (nothing worse than the unknown) and we discovered a very dangerous electrical problem that Bob can fix.

Here's our well.  I had to buy a big area rug to cover the cutout in the floor.