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Trouble-right here in River City

Actually the trouble is in Laguna Hills.


So far, this has been “one of those months”. While driving with my husband my cell phone rang-it was my main editor who was calling me to say she was going back to writing fulltime.



Great. She assured me the new editor was a huge fan of my work-but that on the flip side, the paper might well remove the freelance budget for the section.



Terrific. Then this actually came to fruition. The new editor did ask if I’d consider lower pay in exchange for doing the “new” advertorial blog the section was getting.



Lower pay? I wasn’t even aware there could be such a thing. I’m laughing on the inside. Really.



I told her yes and pled my case on letting me know if anyone else around the now very naked building needed a freelancer.



Then we had the fun of waking up to a very sick dog. Poor Sunshine, our l4 year old lab mix, had some kind of severe stomach thing going on. It was humiliating to her, frightening to us and messy-really messy.



Thankfully, she’s better now-just in time for my husband to go let her out the laundry room door. Where he said-“hey, come look at this, I don’t remember seeing this before.”



So I did. I also looked up. Seems we had water damage. It looked less “puffy” than when we had the incident 5 years ago by the skylight above our master bedroom closets, but there it was-stretched out, water filled paint bubbles, soft and squishy dry wall and a door that was having trouble in the opening and closing department.


Then after we both looked up-we looked down.




Wrong move. We also had a wet floor. We moved back into the great room and went to the wall that forms the opposite side. Guess what? Yes, we had “puffy, squishy drywall” there too.




Oh-and we also had wet wood flooring.



Have I ever mentioned that 80% of our home is wood flooring?




Our handy-dandy insurance agent sent out a “rescue” squad. They arrived the same day as our discovery and set up those lovely loud fans and a humidifier. The next day the leak detection crew came, found the problem, fixed it and before they left, the rescue crew met with them and ripped out a good portion of the laundry room drywall and some of the great room as well.



The leader told me that my husband was going to have to move the entertainment unit (with yes the TV and all of the equipment) over two feet. It seems he was going to have to remove the drywall there as well.



This is also the week that I had my colonoscopy. Let’s just say I had it and move on, I don’t want to discus it any further. I’m sure those of you who’ve had one know it wasn’t fun. But for some reason the doctor sent me home with some exquisite color pictures of the event.



So pretty much the only thing I can add further on this whole thing-the laundry room and the great room were in need of a coat of paint.