Why yes, we had a fantastic time on vacation

We had a fantastic time on vacation. I absorbed it through my pores. We now know that we were all suffering with bronchitis while we were down there, but being ill did little to diminish our enthusiasm for this tropical paradise. Some people come back from vacation & just 48 hours say "wow, it feels like I never went on vacation." I am not those people.

My skin is partially tan, which is a rarity to me. We are awash in lovely photos of our journey, including some taken by many family members. We can see the experience through a variety of perspectives, which is extra special.

Do I want to plan our next vacation? Hells yeah. (I didn't used to say that until I watched an episode of  Common Law, and now I am using it all the time. Go figure.) Do I feel pretty damned rested & content? Yup. I am looking forward to my health being at 100%, but in the meantime, I'll take a wonderful week with family in a place that is not only special to my heart, but just breathtakingly beautiful to boot.

Aaahhh.

Vacation, courtesy of Dad

Back from a delightful vacation, courtesy of my fantastic dad, who you see above. Dad has some major problems with his eyes, which means he spends a large portion of the day with his eyes patched, and he wears dark glasses very frequently as well. He had a heart attack last July and "coded," which I think, in part, prompted him to want us to all get together at one of our favorite vacation spots in the world, down in the US Virgin Islands. He had hernia surgery in May, but was a real trooper & healed up well enough to go. His idea started with 9 of us -- the 5 you see above, plus my brother's family of 4. It expanded to include many extended family & our group ballooned to 25 people!

As many of you know, my daughter is a water baby, so she was delighted to experience the ocean. My dad has, because of his eye issues, been cautioned against getting pool or ocean water splashed into his eyes, so he's never been in the water with her, just watched from the sidelines. Add in the fact that his eyesight is poor & his core muscles are weak from surgery ... and enjoy the photo below. I sure do.

I need me some vacation.

Ups and downs. But mostly ups.

Alexandra's been teething all day. That means she's been clingy & subdued, easily brought to tears. Still, on a scale of 1-100, with 1 being totally chill and 100 being freaked out to the max, she's at about a 20. So, there's that.

Hot water heater has been replaced. Carpet downstairs was steam-cleaned while my sweetie was off work because of his cough (sent home because his cough was annoying, not because he's infectious ... which I think is crazy). The spot the tree punched through has been thoroughly fixed, and our walls are now Tide Pools pale-blue-green, which is very calming and satisfying.

I am still horrendously behind, but at least I can sleep a little bit better. Yay for improvements. I am going to read a chapter in my book & then hopefully slip into blissful unconsciousness. Yay for unconsciousness.

Jane, get me off this crazy thing

In the latest installment of drama, I have post-infection lung inflammation & our hot water heater has stopped working.

Are you freakin' kidding me?

I want a do-over of the whole summer. It feels like since Mother's Day it's been weeks of being sick (I've counted them -- I was sick for 8 of them, out of 10) combined with random disruptive nonsense.

And don't get me started about the funny clank/screech/grind noise the car seems to make when braking while turning. The car was brand new in March of 2010 ... it's only 2 1/2 years old! I am afraid to event take it in.

And in the style of J.K. Rowling, The News That Cannot Be Spoken Aloud should have my sweetie scrambling to look through job postings, but instead he is playing Skyrim. I am using just about every stress management skill in the book & they're wearing a bit thin. *sigh*

The good news, though, is that my dad is fantastic & he's covering the costs for a delightful family reunion, so I have that to look forward to. I have little doubt I'll return from the experience rejuvenated and rested. And Alexandra is a delight each and every day. Even today, which began wonderfully & rapidly spiraled out of control. She tolerated a 2+ hour delay in both lunch and naptime. I count myself impressed. She understands the concept of "wait," and knows that we do all we can to meet her needs. I love her.

Overdue Walt Disney World pictures

So with the tree falling through our house (repairs still not yet complete, by the way, but at least siding & gutters are up so no rain falls INTO the house), things have been in upheaval. I'm still recovering from yet another virus (sleep deprivation leaves me wide open for these things), but I am determined to beat it in the next week.

On to happier thoughts, like our trip to Walt Disney World this past May. We didn't take as many pictures as we often do - some trips topped 4,000 pictures - but we did take a lot (about 2,000). I have selected some of my favorites for your viewing pleasure here:

(by way of explanation, the above photo was when Tigger copied Alexandra by tapping his paws on the table, and she copied him back, and it was a great game. Lots of blur, because they were in constant motion!)

(Alexandra's first haircut was done at Disney ... and right afterwards, she went to see Mickey Mouse in her new hat. Did I mention she took her first independent step on the 19th of May, then toddled all by herself to Mickey on the 21st? Brilliant timing little girl!)

We live in interesting times.

Monday morning at 10:55 am, our house shook with a loud boom and the attic fan started making a horrendous screeching noise. I was home at the time with Alexandra and our close friend who had come to do yoga with me & then to take Alexandra for the afternoon (our usual routine when hubs and I are both at work - isn't she a gem??). Something had fallen on the house, but what??



Half of a huge oak tree on our neighbor's property. The base of the trunk is almost 3 feet in diameter, and about 10 feet up, it branched into 2 large sections, both about 15-20 inches across. One of those "branches" (essentially a half of a tree trunk) had fallen on the west side of our house. A quick check of the attic showed a few spots of light leaking through, but no gaping holes. (Did I mention the roof was replaced in March of 2011? And that the weather Monday morning was clear skies, calm winds, and we'd had no storms in over a week?) Another check into the study on the northwest corner of the house revealed no damage. A check into our master bedroom on the southwest corner ... well ... it looked like this:



The tree punched a hole through the side of our bedroom wall, amazingly, between 2 studs. So, really we are lucky for the following reasons:
(1) no one was hurt
(2) it could've happened at any time, so during a week in the high 80's with no precipitation is a damned sight better than 105 degree heat, pouring rain, or bitter cold.
(3) we rent, so most of the decision-making and leg-work is for our landlord to puzzle out

Once the uninvolved branches were removed, it looked like this:



Here's the parts that suck.

Because of lots of storms the weekend before July 4th, tree removal crews were backed up. We weren't too concerned, though, because hey -- ComEd (after initially saying they'd send out a crew) decided it wasn't their problem and we had power to the house. The hole was jury-rigged/patched with plastic bags, a sheet of plastic, a tarp on the outside and lots and lots of tape. Not the most weatherproof solution, and kind of freaky, but we could vacuum up the debris and resume our lives.

Until ComEd decided abruptly at 5 am to cut our power. I still fail to understand how it went from being an emergency, to being not their problem, to them physically detaching the power lines. They had the same facts from 11 am on Monday to 5 am Tuesday .... no clue why they made this choice.

With no power, and the internal temperatures on the house getting up to 95 degrees by 4 pm, we started doing some research & it turned out our renters insurance allows us to go to a hotel if there's physical damage to the property. We have to meet a $500 deductible, but at least there's a way to keep costs somewhat contained. So, after a run around with the insurance company about where we are 'authorized' to stay, we bed down about 4 miles from home for Tuesday night. We stayed there until Thursday morning. A tree removal crew got the offending limb removed by 11 am, so I called ComEd. Their representative, in response to my question "So we will definitely have power restored sometime today?" said "yes," so I saved us $120 and checked us out of the hotel in a mad dash. Go me.

Except ComEd is staffed by a bunch of irresponsible, incompetent f'ers ... so by 7:15 pm, we are sitting in our air-conditioned car, in our driveway, after many phone calls to ComEd, still with no power, and on the line waiting for an answer about what the hell their automated message delivered at 7:08 pm means: "Your service will be restored this afternoon." WTF??? It's well into evening, people. Do you mean tomorrow afternoon? We drive around looking for a hotel while on the phone with them. After finding many places full up, we find one at 7:30. I'm still on the line with ComEd, so I ask them if they have any idea when a crew will be out to fix it. Their rep says no ETA. We check in.

Poor Alexandra's so disrupted, but she's such a trooper - that being said, she cannot manage to fall asleep until 9:30, over 2 hours past her regular bedtime. At this point, I have developed a hacking cough & sore throat, probably because I've gotten about 15 hours sleep in 4 days. I just want my bed & power. That's all.

We get decent rest, but I feel like crap. We go home to drop off our gear (no availability at the hotel for Friday night, so we'll just have to punt if ComEd can't figure out a solution by the end of the day on Friday, probably heading to my parents' place downstate for the weekend), and voila -- there is power! I turn the a/c on & it fires up after a while. I try to get some more rest & Alexandra takes a whopping 3 hour nap (smart girl!). I am so brain fogged that it takes me a while to do some math about the alarm clock blinking. I realize that power must have been restored at 7:30. Weird. We were home at 7:35. Must have just missed them.

Nope. As I turn on the TV & DVR (just making sure everything in the house actually works after so many days off ... my printer is still not functional, sadly), I see that a show I'd set to record a while back did record.  Thursday night. At 8 pm. In its entirety. So, power was restored Thursday night at 7:30 PM. Yup. When we were on the phone WITH ComEd, checking into a hotel, to spend another $150 of our money. If I wasn't feeling like crap, I would be so angry. As it is, I have the energy to just finally do a load of much needed laundry, upload photos, and get around to posting this on my blog. I figure at some point I'll cut and paste it as a start to that letter to ComEd.

We ran out of cold medicine this morning, so we bought more a few hours ago. The Benadryl is making me a little drowsy. Hubs is asleep, Alexandra is content in her crib and may fall asleep, so I am going to try to take a nap. Those of you who know me well know that napping is something I do only when I am horribly ill, so there ya go. I am convinced if I can just get enough sleep, I will get the resources to fight this cold. And thus we spent our only open weekend since the beginning of May. Sick & in bed. But at least we have power & air-conditioning. Good night.