A Contest, A Package, And A Bunch Of E Coli

KT is having a contest for her 333rd post. She has the stash, she has the ideas, now all she needs is your suggestion for a pattern to make. Go see her, and tell her I sent you (which will earn me another entry!). And check out the rest of her great blog while you're there!


I would like to thank Darla, who was my swap partner in the Fall Into Autumn dishcloth swap. Here is the package I received:

Here's what was under the bubble wrap...

Criquette had to give it the "sniff test", of course.

I unpacked the basket to find:

... not 1 but 4 little dishcloths and a little bag (a soap holder, perhaps?)...

... a cute candleholder and candle, an exotic necklace, something called rooibus in the tin and some fun GIANT Texas Hot Stuff jelly beans. I tried one and it was definitely hot! They're so big, I can only eat one at a time...

... some pretty fuschia and purple yarn, some mysterious little pink rocks that smell good (are they edible?), a Texas keychain, a little massager (very welcome after the day I have had), some circular needles and a cute basket.

There was also a green ceramic mug that, alas, was broken on the way here, so did not make it into the photo shoot.

Thank you, Darla! I really appreciate the time and effort you put into this and I hope you receive your own package soon.


Now if anyone asks me how my day went today, I think I'll have to stuff them into a bin full of Red Heart. In very ugly colors. And not let them out for a long time.

I took the day off today, so I could knit, clean house, knit, go pick out my new glasses, knit, run errands, and knit. Oh, and sleep in a bit as I feel like I've been fighting a little bug of some sort this week.

(Disgusting content warning! If you have contamination-type OCD or a weak stomach, stop reading now!)

It was not to be. My day started off ruined and quickly went downhill from there. Mr. C woke me obscenely early to tell me there had been a "problem" down in the guestroom bath (which is in the guestroom), that I couldn't run water or flush any commodes, and that under no circumstances should I go into the guest room.

Okay, so you can see the obvious problems here... no washing, no flushing, no peeking. What he wasn't paying attention to was that I had a scarf and a cowl being blocked in there (thank God they were up on the bed) and my OCD would not let me leave knitted goods in there for a second longer than necessary.

So, even before I fortified myself with coffee, I hurried down to the guest room, opened the door and eeeeuuuuuwwwwww!!! The smell almost knocked me out. Fortunately the guestroom itself looked okay. But then I peeked around the corner into the bathroom and EEEEUUUUWWWWW!!! EEUUUWWWWWW!!! EEEEUUUUWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!

I like all of my visitors to this blog, so I will spare you the details. Let's just say that vast quantities of "stuff" had been trapped by a design flaw in the drainage pipes and had nowhere to go but up and out. This is especially vexing because we have brought this to the builder's attention numerous times. They would call a plumber to look at it, run a snake down the line, lecture us, and tell us it was fixed. We were told to go in there once a week and use the commode and run water in the tub to keep the line from drying out. In the past, it has never been anywhere near this bad. We're talking nuclear bad. Full body protection gear bad.

To his credit, at least our builder responded, although it took them 5 1/2 hours to show up. 5 1/2 hours without being able to do any of the necessary hygenic things in life we totally take for granted. I was about to shove Bitsy and Criquette aside and climb into their litter box! Thank God for hand sanitizer. And I went through a lot of it today, every time I thought about the mess downstairs.

So now, the boys in the biohazard suits from American Catastrophic Cleaners have left (that's really the name of the clean-up business) and my home reeks of antibacterial cleaner (I asked them to spray a triple-strength solution), which smells a million times better than, well, you know.

The builder will be back on Monday to start tearing up the carpet in the basement to expose the place where they think the mistake lies. Then the real fun starts later in the week because they are bringing in jackhammers (the plural is deliberate) to pulverize the concrete to get to the problem spot that never should have happened if the effin' SOB had paid attention to the problem in the first place! And there will be all kinds of digging in the ground and cutting open nasty drainage pipes and all the other yucky stuff they have to do before replacing all of the carpet that was ruined in today's little explosion.

The worst part of all is that we have to cancel the trip we were planning on taking down to the lake for my b-day. (You can't see me, but I am wearing my pouting face right now.) So I am having to make a few adjustments to my wish list....case of wine, large bottle of valium (for me and the fur balls), large gift certificate to yarn shop, so I can spend all of jackhammer day soothing myself with wool, all day gift certificate to the spa to recover from jackhammer day, and finally, a case of wine.

But, one of my most valuable life lessons has been to remember that things could always be so much worse. As I pondered that thought today, I realized just how bad things could have been - the closet adjacent to Ground Zero was where I used to keep my stash, until I moved it upstairs where it could be closer to me. And I realized, things could not only have been worse - they could have been catastrophic!

Please excuse me while I go wash my hands one more time.