Trails & Tears

We lost two tenants in February. 

It's never great when someone moves out - it means time and money.  Even if the place looks good, there is always update maintenance that needs to be done. And since we're weekenders, it takes us longer because our time is so limited.

So two empty houses at one time really sucks.

One of the tenants had only been with us a little over a year. Her new husband got a job out of town so they're off to start their new life.  She was great - always paid on time and her house was in great shape. That was just some touch up paint and a little cleaning. We got it ready and rented before the end of the month. Sweet!

The other house is a completely different story. The family lived there for about 6 years and were spotty with their rent. It was always kinda shady - the husband would act surprised when we called asking for rent and claim the wife had told him it was paid. Not sure if that was part of the tactic or if it was the truth. We began to suspect the wife had some kind of..."issue" because every time we went over the kids (one still in diapers) would be outside playing unsupervised and she would be asleep. Every time. A few years ago she won $20,000 from the casino (we felt lucky too because they paid several months in advance) so we know she gambled.  Not sure if she gambled all night and slept all day or was into drugs. Somethin.

So we knew that house was going to be a beast but we never imagined what we found. This was the nastiest house I have ever seen.  Kinda surprising too because they appeared to be clean. The husband was in the military so I thought he would be a little rigid about housekeeping.  Apparently he was not.

The floors:
These are real hardwood, not laminate. They used to be really pretty.


In this picture, we had ALREADY scraped off layers of gum! LAYERS!  

The kitchen:
I have never seen a kitchen SO gross. This is where your food is made...shouldn't that warrant maybe cleaning every once in a while?

The grout was originally off-white, see the spot I cleaned?

 

The back door, off the kitchen.
 

But none of that filth was anything compared to the worst...

The roaches:

Roaches! We haven't seen any roaches. Alive,anyway - we've found a ton of dead ones. The house has a distinct chemical smell too so we can only assume in a misguided effort to "clean" they sprayed the house. What we have found was roach poop. Everywhere. 

And I really mean that. 

Trails of it EVERYWHERE.

 

This is a KITCHEN cabinet! Disgusting!

 

You know those wall stickers that are really popular now? Apparently, they're even popular with roaches...

Family. A family of roach poop.

I'll spare you the other roach poo pictures. 

 

We've spent the last two weekends just cleaning this crap up. It really stinks too because usually when we work on houses we bring the kids and let them play outside but this house was too gross. No way I was gonna let my babies in there!  

 

Next we've got to get it fumigated and painted. We're looking at another 3 weekends of work, at least. I'll also make sure to post updated photos after we're done. Which cannot be done soon enough!

Laptops & Lent

My laptop crashed. Totally died. I went to boot up a few weeks ago and nothin. That partly explains why I haven't blogged in a while.

It also explains why my house has been cleaner the last few weeks than it usually is...interesting how that works.

I've been crazy busy at work. Not just busy but CRAZY busy. That's were you don't get to pee for about two hours because you literally have so much to do that you don't want to step away. I should seriously consider putting bodily functions as a priority on my list...

Bathroom breaks aren't the only challenges I've been experiencing. I gave up soda for Lent.  Way harder than I thought it would be.  I am so struggling. And it doesn't help that the other day, in a particular moment of weakness, hubby encouraged me to go ahead and have one. In response to my resistance, he grabbed a coke from the fridge and slowly popped it open. Right in front of me. The cruelty!

And I swear, that boy has been drinking soda now than he ever has.  I think just because he knows I can't have any...or maybe it's just my heightened awareness. I promise you, I can hear him open the can from across the house. Yep, this addiction is no joke. Can you say highly addictive personality?  Thank goodness I never got into smoking or anything worse - there would be no hope for me.

So it's been hard.

And that's the entire point.  I really do believe it's meant to be tough. On Fat Tuesday I was explaining Lenten season to the girls and I stressed that you have to give up something difficult or something meaningful. And when it gets tough, you think about how God sacrificed his only son, how Jesus sacrificed his life. Giving up a soda, well, suddenly it doesn't seem like so much.

I was really touched because M asked me what I was giving up and when I told her she said she would give up soda too. Well, we don't really let her drink soda.

Isn't that so hypocritical? I've always sucking down a pop but I rarely let them drink it.

So then M thought for a minute, realizing it wasn't much of a sacrifice, and decided that she would also give up candy.  She doesn't get that too often either but she loves candy, so that was a big deal. And I really didn't expect her to participate, I was just trying to educate them. Her heart is amazing.

Both their hearts, really but M2 is still a little too young to understand. After watching big sister, she volunteered to give up her beloved blanket. This has been her nightly companion since she was brought home from the hospital. It is her most cherished possession.

Within two seconds of offering it up, she realized what that would mean and quickly changed her mind. She was, however, willing to sacrificed her pillow. She has a multitude of pillows on her bed - a Stuffie, a Pillow Pet, a mini Pillow Pet and a ginormous Hello Kitty body pillow.  I ran through each pillow - nope, nope, nope. The girl was adamant that she give up her regular pillow...which she has slept on every night since Fat Tuesday.

So M are in this together, keeping each other in check. And counting down the days until Easter!

Patience, Parties & Pretty Teeth

I learned a valuable lesson this weekend. Kids need to be pilot tested before they are allowed to sleep over! 

I let M have a friend sleep over and it didn't end well.  Everything was fine until bed time and then it just fell apart. I had a crying kid and no response from the parent.

Even though I had sent a text earlier explaining she seemed kind of nervous about spending the night. But let me pause here to explain she only seemed nervous after she asked me to move a tv into M's room so she could watch tv until she fell asleep and I said no. After that little warning, I reached out to the responsible party and asked for directions on how they wanted it handled if she got upset.

Then when it happened I called and got nothin.

The kid cried for almost two hours. I was like, look I would love to take you home but I can't get a hold of anyone and I can't just drop you off at the doorstep, so we're both kinda stuck.

Deep breath.

I really was trying to muster all the patience that I had and I was trying to be sympathetic to the girl. I know she was upset, I understand it's a new place and it can be scary.  In the meantime, I've got my kid whining and carrying on because she's tired and just wants to sleep, another kid crying and I'm going crazy because it all seems to be out of my control.

After multiple calls to two different people, I finally got a call back.  It was close to midnight when I drug her out and delivered her to Mom.

So no more slumber parties for me!

At least no more slumber parties with kiddos. Because I went to a grown-up slumber party the other day and that was awesome. I had so much fun -  I can't remember the last time I laughed so much.

 

The girls

 

The lady of the hour

My "cup" buddy!
 

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What? It's not suppose to fit this way?

All good games have fun accessories, right?





And the slumber party isn't the only good thing that's happened lately!

 Last week I spent the morning looking like this:

 

 

And by the afternoon, I looked like this:

I'm done with the braces!!! Can't tell you how ready I was or how happy I am to get that metal off my teeth! 

Although I have to admit, it took me a minute to adjust. Immediately after I was really, really upset because it seemed like I had a huge overbite.  All I could think was that I seriously jacked up my teeth.  Now that I've settled into it I don't see the overbite.

As much.

And in case you don't remember, here's what caused me to get braces in the first place:

Yeah, think I would rather have a slight overbite...