Fears

Stefen is out of town and I am wide awake. I thought I would blog my feelings out tonight about fears. I have some pretty irrational fears: like bugs. I hate ALL crawling, flying, scooting, gross nasty creatures. All of them. I run faster than Forrest Gump. Seriously ask anyone that knows me it is horrible. But another irrational fear that I did not have to deal with much in Utah and Arizona are bridges and overpasses. I drive on them or Stefen drives on them and I get white knuckled and sick to my stomach and then when we are off I am fine. I fear that I will get stuck on one and it will fall or a natural disaster will  happen and I will die. But living in the fine city of Eugene where the McKenzie river flows so beautifully, there are A LOT of bridges. I am coming to terms with them and learning that I can get over it however the thing I have been avoiding is something  similar to the picture below. A freeway interchange. I HATE them. They are usually one way, narrow, and curvey and make you feel like you are going to fall off. Seriously the speed limits are 45-55 MPH and I go 10 so I wont die. Usually people are honking and probably swearing and flipping me off. But I dont care. To get to Costco going on the freeway you  have to take one of these lovelies. Today I went to get a friend and her son so we could make a Costco trip. She got in the car and I said "okay tell me how to get to Costco without the freeway." She looked at me like I am crazy and told me that it would take longer. I said I didnt care but to get me there. And she did. Maybe one day I will come to terms with interchanges... 

Do you have any irrational fears that you avoid things so you dont have to deal with the fear? Tell me about them! I dont want to be the only crazy out there!

The last of the toilet..

Well it was a very busy weekend and thats why this has taken me so long to write this up. Our non speaking maintenance man came of Friday with a big grin on his face and a toilet tank in his hands. "Senorita" he said "This third time I come." I said "Yes, this is the third time you have came but the 5th time as a crew of fixing people to come." So he got to work on replacing the tank of the toilet. It did not take him very long and now we can sleep in peace. The only problem now is getting used to the new tank. You see the handle is on the side of the toilet instead of the front and that toilet seats dont stay up. But its an economy toilet and it works as a toilet and not a monster!

Toilet update..

Well folks I wish I could say this will be the last post about my poor toilet but its not..
The non English speaking maintenance man came again with his handy dandy friend who changed our light bulb. When Stefen talked to them on the phone this morning he told them that it was still emptying and filling up and they said that they would come replace the whole toilet. So as these 2 men entered my home I got a very important phone call. I put the lady on hold so I could hear what was going on. The jist is he replaced everything AGAIN and possibly the flapper valve. But remember this guy can speak like 4 words of English. I tried to insist that they have already done that and it would not fix a dang thing. So Stefen and I looked in the toiled when they left and some piece was leaking. I said "I hope till the cows fly that the thing dripping water is suppose to do that." He blankly stared at me and said its not. But listen to the toilet and see if it empties." So before I left for work it did not. But guess what I heard!? You guessed right folks! It emptied and refilled. I think its getting less and less frequent but by golly jeeze guys I just want my toilet to be a toilet not some scary thing in the dark bathroom. I will update you on the status of this monster!

The toilet..

My frustrations with the our master toilet as of late are to high. Such a simple device such as a toilet should not cause so much stress. Now people don't go thinking that I am talking about now frustrations that people have with a toilet. I am talking about the fact that the stupid thing feels like it should not be a toilet any longer. 

For several months out toilet was dripping and leaking on the inside in the bowl. At first it was a soft quiet non harmful sort of leak. But then it just got worse and worse. So Stefen broke done and called the maintenance man. I love the fact that we live in an apartment complex that will pay and do just about anything we ask. So this nice although non English speaking man who kept calling me seniora came to fix our wonderful toilet the first time. In not so many words because I can understand about 4 words in Spanish and he could speak about 6 words in English, I was informed that a flappy would be fixed. Yes folks this is all I could understand of this man. So he left to get the flappy and I went to work. Later to find out he meant the flapper valve. I came home from work hoping to hear nothing but the peace of a quiet house. But woe is me I did not. I heard the annoying kerplunking sound of the leak inside the toilet. Stefen said we should wait a couple days and see if it will fix itself. (Don't you wish that inanimate objects would fix themselves? I sure do :)) So I waited 3 days until I finally insisted that he call the maintenance man and tell them that they better get it fixed this time or I would be sleeping on their office floor till it got done. 

He called on a Sunday and by Monday afternoon they were here to fix it. Now I was not here this time when they came but they left a note saying the replaced the whole insides of the toilet. I was happy, No joyous, No ecstatic! There was no longer dripping or kerplunking just peace and quiet. Until I heard it. Something I think is slightly more aggravating and more annoying then the first noise. Folks my toilet at this point would empty itself and fill itself back up. Which does not sound as bad as the dripping noise but it was worse much much worse. Sometimes you would go 4 or 5 hours without hearing it fill itself. Other times it would do it 10 time in a 20 min period. Thats right you read those numbers right last night every 2 minutes it would empty and refill itself. Stefen being the mechanic he is thought he could fix it. So he attempted 4 times because he didn't think that the maintenance man needed to come for something so petty. Well he time he touched that dang toilet it seemed to become more and more frequent. So he broke down and called them yesterday. They came first thing this morning and I explained to the guy as this was a different man what all they had done and he opened and said "I see that it has all been replaced. Are you more worried about the water usage or the noise?" I looked at him in the most odd way as he knows that our water bill is split between every single tenant. We dont pay much for water as it is. So I looked at him and said "Mr. I dont really care about how much water that toilet is using. I would just like to know what it feels like to not be woken up by the stupid toilet every hour." So he informed me that he would replace the flapper valve...

Once he was done he came to me and said if it is still doing it in a couple days we will replace the whole toilet and he left. So 10 minutes after he left as I am folding laundry guess what my toilet does? Yep you guessed it! It emptied and refilled itself. As I sit here typing this story it has done it 3 times. So tomorrow I am insisting that Stefen calls them and have them come again. As much as I dont want or need my bathroom torn apart I guess if we want peace and quiet it will happen.

I will let you know what happens to my toilet that seems to hate us....

The Journey of the Sea Turtle

I have been pretty into documentaries on Netflix as of late. Don't ask me why because I cant tell you. But I have been into watching ones about animals. So I watched one the other night about the life of a Sea turtle. And let me tell you people I was stressing out more about the sea turtle living then who the Bachelor is going to pick this season. Yep I was screaming at the crab that was about to eat my sweet baby turtle. Thats right 5 minutes into this thing I was screaming and crying. Now I only even bring this up because I think it is odd what we as a human species find interesting and what stresses us out... Stefen and my father both think that it is outlandish that I should get so attached to a sea turtle on a movie! But thats me.
 

The Story of the Paintchips

So we all know how much I love Pinterest, right? Well there have been a few ideas of things to do with the free paintchip cards you can get at Lowes and Home Depot. So I thought well we need some sort of leaves for our tree, OOOO paintchips would work. So thats was started this adventure. Stefen and I went to Lowes! I didnt know if there was a limit on how many you could take and we needed a bunch and I was slightly embarrassed to be seen with 40 chips of the same color. So we came up with a plan. We would grab 4 or 6 of one color and stuff them in my purse. If someone walked by Stefen would grab a random color (which usually was blue) and say wouldn't this be great in the living room? The person would walk away and we would crack up laughing. Now this happened like 5 times. I am sure that the people on the security cameras were laughing too. At one point in this mission we were laughing to hard and couldnt get the pirse open. I had like 10 in my hand at that point. I knew that we were going to be in trouble. Just as somebody waalked by the magically slipped into the purse. We were done after that. This was becoming a very stressful process. We ended up walking away with 40 some odd paintchips.

There are some on the bottom too

The leaves they have become

A close up shot

Another close up

There are more pictures of our thanksgiving decorations here. This story is one that had to be told.