WHO TOOK MY CHOCOLATE?!?

 Me: *DONCHA WANNA TAKE ME ON-A...SEA CRUISE!*

Jason: Sure.

I'll be back in February. Goin' to Mexico on a boat! 

Today is our third wedding anniversary! I'm totally excited because this is the first year we're actually doing something special for it: we got some friends to watch Bekah for awhile and we're going to eat out at a (supposedly?) fancy restaurant: the Stockpot Broiler in Beaverton. I'm excited! Eeee!

Ahh, I'm back from the abyss, otherwise known as North Dakota. Haha, I kid! ND is great...if you love freezing the snot in your nose when you try to breathe. We missed the awesome winter weather here in Oregon to experience the extreme winter weather of the Northern Plains. We did leave our snow shovel outside our door for our neighbors to use, which they did. :) 

Our trip was great...or should I say trips? Bekah and I went to Tucson in early December to visit my family. It was a fun visit, and we went to the zoo and I got to see my cousin whom I haven't seen in five years. Bekah loved hanging out with the family and playing with the dogs. Plus, it was WARM. A little over a week after we came back from Arizona we left for North Dakota, this time with Jason.

The day after we flew in, we drove down to the Cities. (That would be the "Twin Cities" or Minneapolis/St. Paul for those of you out of the know.) We got to see Jason's extended family down there. I haven't seen the new Reese Witherspoon/Vince Vaughn movie Four Christmases, but judging from the previews, our experience (at least <i>my</i> experience) was of a similar comedy. 

The rest of our time in Bismarck was spent with family, trips to Wal-Mart (ugh) and COOKIES. Oh, and drunken bowling.

We actually got back right before the New Year, but I always feel the need to lay low for awhile after doing something out of my comfort level. I won't be here for too long, as we are taking a week-long cruise at the end of the month to Western Mexico! The thought warms my bones...hey, it's snowing outside! Darn.

And so now begins the Winter Slog. I hate the winter here, from January to mid-March. It's just awful and dead. I think I'm just going to concentrate on manifesting spring for now.

Bekah's been so cute lately. She turns in circles now, and she does this weird thing with her eyes where she looks in one direction as far as she can while she's turning. It's HILARIOUS. We also bought her a potty. We're not actually trying to potty train her or anything; right now it's just a glorified toy, and she loves it because it means she can run around naked while she's playing with it. So far she hasn't landed anything IN the potty but plenty on the floor beside it. *rolleyes*

Going to Tucson today. Won't be back until Tuesday. Behave!

I think I'm getting uncursed, finally. There were no catastrophies today. Although, I think Bekah may have tried to eat a slug on our walk today. I wasn't paying attention to what she was doing and then she threw up a little, and on the sidewalk in (or under?) her puke was a motionless slug. It might have been a coincidence that it was already there, but eh, you never know. 

I think what helped is finally getting a good night's sleep. Bekah didn't put up any fights last night when we put her back in bed after she'd get up.

I even felt inspired enough to work in the kitchen. Having my dining room table on it's side in order to block the dining room off is messing with my energy, and I haven't really cooked much since that all went down. But today Jason was having a crappy day at work, so I wanted to have something special waiting for him when he got home. I made spicy chicken soup, bread and rolls, and a loaf of banana bread. Yum. It was lots of work, and my legs hurt now, but it was nice. 

The dudes responsible for fixing the Wall of Death Mold came yesterday morning. They fixed the pipe, so we can use our bathroom sink now. (Hurray!) Then another dude responsible for mold remediation came out and "remediated" it. Everything that I saw online said that in order to do a proper remediation, you need to take out and replace all the things with mold on it, use HEPA vacuums so the spores don't fly everywhere, etc. He basically just sprayed the shit out of it with bleach and scraped it out. Lame. I want it done properly so we don't have more issues, but at the same time this isn't my condo, and we won't be living her more than another year or two, so whatever. But I've lost all faith in contractors. If you want something done properly, do it yourself. Even if it takes me five times as long to do something because I've never done it before, I'd rather do it myself because I know that I won't cut corners. Of course, there are always exceptions like foundation laying and electrical wiring...ahh, I'm off on another tangent. Nevermind...

Anyway, the dudes are coming back tomorrow morning to patch up the wall, as long as everything in there is dry enough. I hope it is.

Still cursed.

I'd been nursing Bekah during the night since she's gotten ill, because I thought the extra milk would do her tummy good and help to stave off dehydration. It was all fine and well, until last night when I figured she was good as new. I decided to "re-nightwean" her. Hell hath no fury like a toddler being nightweaned for the second time. Hours of fitful sleep interrupted with screams and cries, and nothing would help. She pushed me out of her bed, saying "No! No! No! WAHHHHH!" Singing didn't help. Back massages didn't help. Finally we brought her into bed with us, endured more loud protesting, and fell asleep, exhausted, Bekah in between Jason and me. 

At a quarter to seven this morning, I awoke to the sound of vomiting next to my head. Bekah had puked flat on her back, facing the ceiling, and there was curdled milk in her hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, and nose. (I had probably nursed her not too long before that, as it is our custom to nurse after Jason gets out of bed.) I whisked her to the bathroom, where Jason was just finishing up in the shower. "I need to use the shower!" I said. 

"What?! Why?" Jason was beyond confused, because there is no way I would ever willingly wake that early, let alone want to shower that bad.

"Take a look for yourself," I said as I held out our befuddled and sleepy daughter, her head and face covered in breastmilk vomit.

Soooo, long story long, I didn't get SQUAT for sleep last night (and I am going to bed as soon as I post this), I had more vomit laundry to do today, I took Bekah to the doctor (who basically said it was nothing serious), and IT RAINED. The last part wouldn't be so bad, but it makes all my jeans soaking wet on the bottoms and I go through like three pairs of pants a day because they all get wet. 

Anyway, one good thing is that I called our property management company and politely chewed them a new one, who (I'm assuming) called the builder and chewed THEM a new one, who then called me and apologized and let me know he was SO ON TOP OF IT!! They're coming tomorrow morning to look at the damage, and they should be back the next day to do the repairs. So if everything goes smoothy from here on out with that, I should have my dining room back by Thursday night. Woohoo!

Jason just woke up from a seemingly-endless four hour nap and promptly spilled an entire glass of Sprite on my Macbook powercord, my knitting, some new sewing patterns, my Bible-study workbook, and some homeschooling stuff I just bought. 
I've now locked myself in the bedroom and I'm not talking to him.
(But at least I never got the stomach flu.)

<sarcasm>
Yay! Jason has the stomach flu now! When can it be my turn?!? I can't wait!
</sarcasm>
Hey, at least he can land it in a receptacle.

Well, I think God is punishing me for something, because this week has been really horrible. First there was the wet carpet/mold thing.

Later that night our shelf/coat rack combo thing fell off the wall, so I had to fix that and clean it up.

On Tuesday I was struck with a sucky cold/allergy thing. I was thinking it was allergies, because it hit fast and hard not too long after Mr. Mullet Man opened up the Wall of Death Mold, but now it's going away, so maybe just a coincidental cold?

Then I almost chopped my thumb off with my new knife. (The reason why I have a new knife is because I dropped the old one on the floor and it broke in half.) Ok, maybe "chopped off" is a bit melodramatic, but it's a nasty cut. 

My post earlier in the week about plane tickets? Yeah, I had to rebook them, then I found out that the new time wouldn't work either, so I had to RE-rebook them. I wanted to punch my calendar in the face.

Last night Bekah puked on TWO FULL LOADS of towels, blankets, pajamas, sheets, pillowcases, etc. It was a late night, and I didn't get to sleep until a quarter to three, and then she puked off and on all day long. Then, right before bedtime tonight, she had a complete diaper blowout and got poop on the carpet, kitchen floor, and, oh, just about everywhere. We literally put her in the tub and threw water on her with a bucket. 

I had to call Jason at work today and ask him to go to Fred Meyer to buy applesauce and bananas for her to eat, since she was puking up everything else. He dropped it off and went back to work. Later I opened up the applesauce and it was completely moldy. Yuck. And she wouldn't eat any banana (typical, but I thought I'd try). So the only real food she ate was one cracker and maybe a fourth of a cup of apple juice for the whole day, but she didn't seem to mind. The breastmilk bar was open all day long ;) Oh wait, I forgot about the blackberry yogurt I gave her for breakfast (before I found out you shouldn't give dairy to pukers). She puked that up on my bedroom carpet. Colorful.

This afternoon a guy from the builder called me about scheduling an appointment for them to have a look see at the Wall of Death Mold. He said that he had to talk to this other guy and call me back with a time, but he never did. :S Gah. Fix my wall!

Ugh. UUUUUGGGGGGHHHHH.

Ok. So on Monday, I decided to be productive and clean out the dining room. It wasn't really that bad, but I wanted to do it properly, so I cleaned off the table and pulled out my Rubbermaid totes from underneath so I could vacuum. That's when I discovered a large, soaking-wet spot. Hmm.

I pulled everything away from the wall. There was some mold that I could see. (This is the same spot that there was mold about a year ago, but I had cleaned it up and our property management company never sent anyone out.) So I called them. The next day their awesomely-mulleted maintenance guy came out and pulled the carpet back and cut a hole in my wall. There is black-colored mold on the bathroom-side sheetrock (the bathroom is on the other side of the wall). There is also a slimey wetness dripping down the side of the stud that was in the middle of the mold. He took the faceplate off of the electrical outlet which is directly above and adjacent to the hole, and discovered that when they built the place two years ago, the dude who installed the electrical socket screwed the electrical box into the bathroom sink drain pipe. I mean, not directly, but the screw was at an angle, so that it went through the stud and into the pipe. You know, the GIANT BLACK PIPE that was in the MIDDLE of the freakin' HOLE that he cut to put the box in.

This is the point in the post wherein I would normally go on a rant about how crappy this place was built and various other tangents, but I think I will just let it go today.

Anyway, at this point Mr. Mullet Man tells me that now it's a home warranty issue, and that the property management company has to get in contact with the builder and the builder will then contact me. And that's all I know. It's Thursday night now and nobody has called me back. Meanwhile, this mold is making me sick (I think I am allergic or something), there is a gaping hole in my dining room wall, and my dining room table is sitting on its side to prevent my toddler from spelunking said hole, nevermind the fact that there is nowhere else to keep the table anyway because the carpet has to be kept pulled back so that the carpet pad can dry out. Oh, and we also can't use our (one and only) bathroom sink, or else it floods the dining room some more.

I'm so mad! I called the property management company back on Wednesday and told them that it's making me sick (voicemail; I never get a live person there), but they just emailed Jason back telling them that they already contacted the builder, who probably doesn't give a hoot about his homeowners (or their tenants) (I can tell this by how crappily- and hastily-made this building is). Plus this same builder is busy building an identical condominium complex not even a mile up the road; I'm sure nobody has time to come over here and fix it anyway. Whoops, I forgot I was "letting go" of the rant. Ah well, it slipped past.

I tried to look up renter's rights in Oregon pertaining to mold, and there really isn't much to say about it, so I've got nothing there. Nada either on any kind of department of health in Oregon or Washington county.

Wahhhhh, I wish this never happened.