Different Water Woes ~ Thursday/Friday July 19-20, 2018

Thursday 7/19/18



If I was hoping that not drinking one drop of caffeine yesterday would help my sleep, I was sorely mistaken! If anything, I woke up more often: every hour!  I don't think I have a UTI but I had to pee non-stop.  I didn't even drink as much decaf and water as I used to drink coffee and decaf!



I watched the rest of the first episode of "Sacred Games" last night, the Indian series that's on Netflix right now. People on Reddit Television News were hyping it up and it has a 9.4 rating on IMDB, but even though I was intrigued at the beginning, I didn't see anything that justified such high ratings at all!  I don't think I'll keep watching, it just didn't grip me.  I do like "Intelligence", the Canadian series that I've been watching, so I'll keep watching that but I'm not bingeing in, like I tend to do.  There's a lot that goes on in the show and I'm a little confused, even though it's in English, hahaha.



I got up at 6:45 a.m., fed the cats, cooked Greg's breakfast and put his lunch box together (he'd put the leftovers away last night as I'd forgotten to do it, oops!) and decided to go back to bed since it always seems that I sleep a little better that way and I drag less during the day (not that it worked yesterday!). Only, I couldn't really get back to sleep. I put on "Forensic Files" on my Kindle but was wide awake. I did fall asleep during the 2nd episode but only for about 30 minutes.



I got up at 8:30 a.m., checked the city's website to see if the boil water order had been rescinded but didn't see anything. So I decided to hold off on taking a shower (I know it's supposed to be OK to shower even if there is a boil water order but I'd prefer not taking any chances!) and went downstairs in my nightgown.



I had set a big pork roast (with bone) to defrost yesterday, so I threw it in the crockpot with the necessary ingredients to make Chinese Pork Roast.  I'll serve the rest of the rice with it (YS barely ate any last night) and some Brussels sprouts.

I brewed a pot of decaf and ate a bowl of cereal with fresh blueberries.



I caught up on emails, the news and earned the daily rewards.  I was able to redeem Microsoft Rewards points and get a $5 Amazon gift card, woohoo!

At 9:20 or so, I called the Utilities department to see if the boil water order had been rescinded and they said that they'd just heard that it was.  Yay!



I removed all the notes that I had taped everywhere and will need to take the jugs of rainwater, that I was planning on using to flush the toilets back when we had NO water, back outside.



Youngest Son came home from his class and started working on his AP Psychology Summer Project.



Our water bill had been emailed to me so I set about scheduling a payment via my bank (it's free for my bank to mail them a check, whereas the city would charge me a "convenience fee" if I tried to put that bill on autopay) but when I looked at the amount due, it was about $25 more than the previous month... and 3,000 more gallons of water had been consumed!  Whaaaat?  Greg and I were gone for a week, it rained every day, we don't irrigate or have an irrigation system, there aren't any leaks, I don't even shower every day!  They print the last 12 months of usage on the bill and this was by far the month with the highest consumption!

I checked with Greg and YS if they remembered something that would have caused us to use more water than usual and they said no.  I put some leather gloves and removed the ground cover over the counter (ants nest in there sometimes) and took a picture of the display and watched it for a bit: it wasn't moving, although I guess we could have a slow leak somewhere?

The reading was 10 days ago and we've already used almost 3,000 gallons according to the meter!

So I drove to City Hall to talk to the Utility clerks. It wasn't clear to me whether perhaps they estimate the consumption and then bring it back up to its actual level once a year, or what. They said, no, they actually read the meters.  Hmmm.  So they're sending someone over today to check the meter for any leaks but if the meter isn't leaking, then we're shit out of luck and will have to figure it out ourselves and, in the meantime, pay the bill.  It's not a huge amount of money but I hate having to pay more than we should, you know? And if we do have a leak, then we need to find it. I don't like wasting water.



When I got home, I checked the outside faucets and did find one that Greg had left turned on, but just over the past weekend so it wouldn't have affected the previous month's bill.  It's connected to a hose with a spray handle, but the connector does leak a bit when the water is on. So I'm glad I realized that, at least, since we never use that particular hose usually so who knows when we'd realized it otherwise.  The other faucets were turned off and Youngest Son would have noticed if someone was using our hoses while Greg and I were gone. So we'll see what happens.



In the meantime, I went ahead and scheduled the payment anyway because I didn't want to forget about it and then get a ding on my credit for something like $25 that we can afford to pay.



I noticed a bunch of weeds in the mulch around the oak tree in front of the house, so I got my hat and my gloves, a bucket, and started pulling weeds.  I got 2 buckets of weeds but I'm not done. I didn't pull them where the sun was already hitting because it was hot and very humid. I'll need to finish that over the weekend. Hopefully I'll get up early and remember to do it before the sun hits that spot.

It's the time of year when the decorative grasses are flowering!

Our oldest aloe plant is flowering as well!  I checked the other ones but they aren't. This one sits by itself on the west side of the house, pretty much completely in the shade. 

Back indoors, I decided to go ahead and switch my bed for Greg's, as he's offered for me to take the old mattress that I much prefer.  Only his bedding is queen-size and mine is full-size. 



I first tried to take Greg's bed apart, but one side board cracked (!) when I removed one bolt, so then I decided to leave it in place since I didn't want the queen headboard and footboard anyway.



I struggled to put the queen mattress on its side (that monster is SO heavy and there aren't any handles to grasp!), and then I removed the box springs. Thankfully it's actually two smaller box springs since our staircase is so narrow that a regular box spring wouldn't fit and we had to have those custom made. So they're light. Then I removed the bed frame and folded it and staged it in the bathroom so it'd be out of the way.



I took advantage of this situation to vacuum all the dust bunnies from under Greg's bed and also passed a microcloth broom under my bed and came back with a bunch of Nathalie-hair bunnies!  I might be bald before soon judging from all the freaking hair I'm losing!



Then I had to drag both mattresses from one room to the other (the new mattress is much easier to move because it's sturdier so it stays on its side and there are handles sewn on the sides!) and then ditto with the spring boxes from Greg's room, and then I took apart and reinstalled my bed base in Greg's room and put together the queen bed frame in my room. I badly banged my shins against the metallic frame, ouch! No bruises but it hurts.



I took a break to reorganize the power cords near my bed, it was a mess and I never had enough outlets to plug everything that I wanted to plug in. It's still a mess, but now I have everything plugged in!



Once that was done, I had to haul the mattresses on top of the box springs/bed base in each room.  Again, the full mattress was pretty easy to set up, although the mattress is much smaller than the queen bed itself so it looks a bit odd, but if Greg wants to remove the bed (i.e headboard and footboard) completely, he can do that on his own. lol. 



Hauling the queen size mattress on top of the box springs, all by myself, wasn't easy!  Yes, I could have asked YS to help and I had told him I might need his help, but in the heat of the moment I figured I could do it on my own. And I did!  But I think I'll be in pain tonight, lol!

I made my bed with the new sheet that I bought from Amazon. It promises to be "hotel luxury soft" and indeed it feels very soft. I only put on the bottom sheet, I didn't bother with the pillow cases and I never use a top sheet anyway.

Yes, it looks weird with the full-size headboard, but the headboard didn't fit the full-size bed frame

 anyway and I like it, so I kept it :)

So in the end, it doesn't take nearly as much room as I thought it would!  And the mattress feels much more comfortable to me. I sure hope it makes a difference in my quality of sleep otherwise this will have been for naught and I'll still have to go find a new mattress!



Middle Son texted me that he felt much better about taking one of the pills that I had told him to buy from Dollar Tree yesterday. Hooray!

It rained while I was doing all of that. It's now 1:20 p.m. and I need to get lunch but Explorer just arrived and is busy making himself comfortable on my shoulder and sniffing my ear, lol.



Never mind, I really needed to eat, so I shrugged him off and went to brew a 2nd pot of decaf with the same grounds + 1 fresh scoop and figure out lunch.



I made a sandwich with a pita that is now crunchy (it's like eating pita chips!), guacamole, turkey and spinach, and a large tomato salad with mozzarella pearls and fresh basil harvested from my garden.

I'm very annoyed at my apathy because I had to compost almost 2 lbs of strawberries that went bad. I should have frozen them!



I caught up on more blogs and then decided to drive to Publix to get YS and myself some snacks.  I spent $9 there.



Upromise emailed me that we had earned some money back on our breakfast at Cheeser's Palace over the weekend! I'd completely forgotten about Upromise!

It started raining again at 4 p.m., really pouring.  I've been watching an episode of "Intelligence" on Netflix, but I'm also perusing the internet so I keep losing track of the plot and rewinding the scenes!

It's now 5 p.m.  No one from the Utilities department came to look at the meter. Grrr.



Dinner was the chinese pork roast (there are a lot of leftovers, I'm thinking about freezing them), Brussels sprouts for Greg, and I ended up cooking some frozen fries in the air fryer for YS and myself.



Youngest Son said he had a sore throat so I gave him some ibuprofen and looked up side effects of his acne medicine.  It does say to stop taking it and call his doctor if he has difficulty or pain swallowing. He said it hurt a little bit when he swallowed so we'll mention that to the dermatologist today.



After dinner I piddled around on the computer because my neck and shoulders were hurting from moving the beds around so washing the dishes wasn't going to happen.  I went to bed at 10 p.m.



For some reason Amazon had lined up a different show on my Kindle than "Forensic Files" and I pressed "play" by mistake. It's a show called "The Prosecutors" and it describes real crimes and the efforts of the prosecution teams to bring them to justice. The episodes are twice as long as "Forensic Files" and mostly use actors.  The narrator is definitely not as good as the narrator from "Forensic Files" and I don't think I'll be watching any more episodes as it did NOT help me fall asleep, lol.



The bed felt like a block of cement, so much firmer than anything I've slept on in 2 years! My shoulders and neck hurt but I was definitely cooler than on the Amazon mattress. I still got my hot flashes though, and woke up a lot of use the bathroom, although I did make it to a 3-hour stretch for once!



So not a complete victory yet, perhaps once I'm no longer sore... but an improvement.



Friday 7/20/18



I got up at 6:45 a.m., fed the cats (Youngest Son doesn't have classes on Fridays so he gets to sleep in), cooked Greg's breakfast and packed his lunch and... went back to bed, of course :)



I only slept until 8 a.m. because I had a date with my BFF this morning.  I got dressed, brewed some decaf by reusing last night's grounds + 1 scoop, and had a bowl of cereal with fresh blueberries because I was hungry.



I decided to drive the Focus since it was available and the gas mileage is much better. I usually try to run errands after I go meet my BFF all the way down in "South Clermont" but today I didn't really feel like going anywhere else, especially since I have to go back to Clermont with Youngest Son in the afternoon for his dermatologist appointment.



I took the back roads to get to my friend's, forgetting that there was road construction going on, so I got stuck in one-way traffic for a while. Since we were at a standstill, waiting for the flagman to tell us it was our turn to go, I earned the Mobile Microsoft Rewards on my phone :)



I was a bit late getting to my BFF's and then she decided we should take both cars to Wawa since she wanted to go shopping afterwards.  So we drove to Wawa separately.  I bought myself a breakfast sandwich there and drank the decaf from home, that I had brought in my travel mug.

I actually had a veggie egg white omelet on whole wheat bread with some bacon but for some reason there isn't a picture of that on their website. The hoagies look better I might have that next time!

It was hot and muggy outside but we got used to it and chatted for 90 minutes about our kids and our respective vacations.  A storm started and soon it was pouring with lighting and thunder so we moved tables to be a little more protected and, as soon as it lightening up a bit, we bid each other goodbye and went on our way.

I decided to take the main highway back home to avoid the road construction. It rained so much that it had puddled all over the road. I doesn't bother me when I drive the large SUV but I always feel more vulnerable in the tiny Focus, lol.  I had thought to stop by Aldi, since I was passing it, and get some of the cherries on sale at $1.49/lb but by the time I got there, the lightning and rain had redoubled, so I just drove on home.



There, I earned the daily rewards, and a free large soda and popcorn at AMC, with MyCokeRewards. The voucher is good through 9/30 so I'll ask Middle Son if he wants it, since there is an AMC theater down at Disney.

My Daughter called to say she wouldn't be able to come down this weekend after all, since she has a Calculus exam on Monday and she needs to study all weekend. I'm disappointed that she won't be there, but she said she'd come next weekend instead. That might be good to keep me from getting anxious, if I find out on Friday night that I definitely need to show up for Jury Duty the following week :)



Youngest Son got up at 12:30 p.m.!  Ahhh, to be young and not have sleeping issues :)



We drove the Focus to the dermatologist's office.  We didn't have to wait long, and then the nurse practitioner, after running down all the questions about side effects and examining Youngest Son, said that we didn't have to come back next month nor does he have to go back to the lab since he's doing fine. She said she didn't like to waste people's money if they could save it. Woohoo! This makes up for all the snafus that happened with this practice.  YS and I decided not to tell her about last night's sore throat since YS's throat was feeling fine this morning.  Our co-pay was $20 and I paid with the Health FSA debit card.  I also asked her to make sure that she reauthorized YS's prescription in the IPledge system since she'd forgotten to do that last month and that had caused problems, so she went to do it right away and indeed, the pharmacy called me shortly after to tell me that the prescription was ready to be picked up. I told them I'd pick it up on Wednesday, when I run my errands.



In the car, I cancelled next month's lab appointment via their website.



We went to Panera's to pick up a late lunch to go, and I also got a salad for Greg's dinner.   I used 2 coupons that I had in my app ($1 off pasta and $2 off a dinner order) and paid for the OOP with a gift card for which I had redeemed my Ibotta rewards.  I drove home while Youngest Son ate in the car.



Back home, I watched some episodes of "The Antiques Roadshow" on PBS thanks to the Passport subscription, while I ate my lunch and up until about 6 p.m.  Panera forgot to include the dressing for my salad, grrr.



Greg left work a bit early, at 5:30 p.m. and drove home in the rain.   Once again, the water utility people didn't show up to check the meter (they're supposed to leave a hanging tag on the door telling us what the results of the inspection was, and there was no hanging tag). I'll need to call City Hall on Monday.



I finally dragged myself to do the darn dishes, LOL!  I was just finishing up when Greg came home, and YS finished his last summertime Videogame Programming class at the same time.  He liked it better than he thought he would when he first started, although he did say it's very complicated and couldn't dedicate too much extra time to work on his project in view of his other classwork, but he can continue to work on it even though the class has ended since the software he downloaded was free to start with. I wonder if he will...



I sat with Greg while he ate his Panera salad and we chatted for a bit.  Then we moved to the living room and watched more episodes of "The Antiques Roadshow".  I went up to bed at 9:45 p.m. and fell asleep while listening to "Forensic Files".