Good News and Bad News...

A few weeks ago I was draining the bath tub when I heard what sounded like the toilet bubbling.  I blew it off until it happened again about a week later.  Charlie snaked out that toilet (gag) and put some Rid-X in all the toilets in the house and for several days there were no bubbling toilets to be heard.  


Until last Friday when I was sitting here in the living room feeding my addiction  blogging when I heard bulurp...bulurp...bulurp coming from the hall bathroom. And since I was the only person here the hairs kinda stood up on the back of my neck... 


What.in.the.h.e.double.hockey.sticks.was.that?!  I popped my head in there and sure enough, that toilet was bubbling again and then it hit me...the washer is running.  Okay, wait. I'm no plumber but that washer is nowhere near that toilet. So this? Cannot be good.  I wasted no time calling Houston to inform them we have a problem emailing Charlie at work with the subject line "toilet" and what I had to tell him got his full on attention.  


We've been living in this house, that was built in 1997, for almost 18 months now and had no idea when, if ever, the septic tank had been pumped.  I know, just the thought of it makes your stomach turn doesn't it?  Well, the thought of having it back up into my house was almost enough to make me want to run screaming for the hills.  


So Saturday morning Charlie suited and gloved up and went to open up the cleanout drain (or whatever) outside.  He concluded that while there was no visible poop in the pipe, Houston did indeed have a problem because water was seriously backing up after running the sink for several minutes.    


We are only the second owners of this fine establishment and the nice lady we bought it from and her husband (who had passed away about a year and a half before) actually built the house...or had it built.  I thought it a bit odd when we were told the septic tank was in the front yard but okay, whatever.


The septic tank guy shows up at the house Monday morning. And thank God Charlie stayed here to meet him because they could not locate the septic tank ANYWHERE.  "How does this even happen?" I wanted to know, and "Is this a common thing?  To not be able to find the flippin' septic tank?!"  The answer Charlie was given from Mr. Septic Tank was that it does happen and he has seen people do some crazy sheit, like pour sidewalks or build decks over them.  


Then he left (probably because he didn't really feel up to pumping out a stinkin' septic tank today anyway) and Charlie set out on a quest to locate our missing septic tank. When I returned from pilates he had requested and received the original permit from the county which told us it was under the freakin' sticker bushes.  Super.  


He also informed me that he had poked around there with his long  rod until he hit something hard. And no, I could not keep a straight face and neither could he after he realized what had just come out of his mouth.  


So...yesterday afternoon the friendly septic tank guy showed back up and I left Charlie to handle the situation because I don't deal well with anything involving poop  I had to pick up kids from school and get groceries.  When I returned he was gone, along with our light pole and a giant shrub which was not actually gone because it was lying in the front yard.  And there stood Charlie watering down the sidewalk and pointing to the huge red dirt spot where the light pole and the shrub used to be.


Turns out the tank was not put exactly where the permit said it was and that hard thing Charlie hit with his rod was only the pipe because the septic tank that had never been pumped before?  Was directly underneath the light pole which is now lying on the front porch...


But at least the toilet's not bubbling.  

Around the House

I decided to tackle the trimming of the five hundred and thirty two shrubs around my house on Friday.  When it was a humid 90 degrees outside.  Why do I do these things?    


Okay, so it's probably really more like 32 instead of five hundred and 32 but still, that is an awful lot of dang bushes, wouldn't you agree?  And most of them have stickers on them.  Or angry wasps and yellow jackets living in them which is why I didn't completely finish the ones in the front.  


Overgrown scraggly shrubs? or Several painful stings to the flesh?  I'll go with door number one, thank you very much.  


And I still haven't cleaned up all the mess I clipped off because I was slap tuckered out so I mosied out there in the boiling heat and humidity on Saturday, loaded up my little yard wagon, broke into a full on sticky sweat, put down my gloves and came back inside with my laptop and sweet tea.  


The verdict is still out as to whether I will attempt to venture out there today.  Or ever again.  But I have been known to surprise myself on occasion so we shall see.  


My current obsession is my master bedroom that I finally painted a week ago.  I'm working my way through painting every room in this house and so far all that's left are the boys' rooms, the bonus room/bedroom upstairs and my master bath which is waiting for a complete remodel because the people who built the house didn't feel a tub was necessary in there.  


They didn't have two male offspring running amok either.  


I tried to show y'all a pic of my new bedroom wall color, Aqua Smoke, on the one little post I managed to muster up all of last week but Blogger was being a pain in the sticker bush and would not, in any way, shape, form, or fashion, allow me to do so.  So here it is...

I am in no way done in there so I can't show you the whole room just yet but I scored the most adorable little peacock lamp at Stein Mart one day last week and was just tickled pink aqua smoke over it! 


Never saw myself with a peacock lamp but this little number just kept calling to me from across the store,  "Me! Me!  Pick Me!"  


Or maybe it was the heat going to my head.  


Either way, I am now the proud owner of this glorious peacock lamp...

 Happy Monday, Y'all!  

Soaking Up The Sunroom

I just realized that I started my last two posts with "I was sitting in the sunroom when..."  and well here I go again...sitting in the sunroom trying to come up with a good  letter S post for Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday when...

Ta da!  My answer was right in front of my nose.

We moved into this house last Spring and I fell in love with the sunroom right from the start and knew without a doubt that I would be spending a big majority of my time out here.  

The walls in here, along with the walls in the foyer, hallway and living room, were all a pale yellow.  Now, not that I have anything against the color yellow.  It was, after all, my favorite color when I was little and I even had a yellow bedroom up until I was 15...

But, it was a whole lotta yellow and it wasn't my yellow...  

I had to make my mark on this place so I had the walls of the sunroom painted a soothing, serene pale turquoise a.k.a Veridian Green.   Charlie hung my old oak mantel I had used for a headboard at the old house on the wall and after months of waiting, I finally got my wicker rattan furniture I had been pining away for.  

Woods surround our backyard so there are always birds and squirrels like that little wily one I wrote about yesterday  to entertain the wieners and their favorite place to nap is out here on the ottoman or on the tile floor soaking up the bright rays of sunshine that are so abundant out here in the mornings. 

It's the perfect place to drink morning coffee, blog, read and just unwind and soak in the beauty and splendor of the changing seasons...

I've been slowly gathering items at antique and bargain stores over the past several months and just about have this room exactly the way I want it.   

I found this oil painting at an antiques mall a couple of weeks ago for 11 dollars.  It just seems so happy to me and I fell immediately in love with it though I didn't have a good idea where in my house I would put it.  I read somewhere recently that if you choose and purchase only things that you really, really love then they will fall into place and it will all work out. And I am finding that there is much truth in that...

I can keep just about any kind of animal or fish alive for extended periods of time but I am not known for my green thumb.  This ponytail palm, however, is an exception.  I guess it has a strong desire to live because my first/late husband, Darin, had it when I met him in 1994 and here it still stands today.  It has probably tripled or quadrupled in size since then and I have re-potted it at least 3 times.  I'm quite proud of it...

We were sitting out here (you see, there I go again with that) over the summer when we decided a water feature of some kind would be nice out here so I searched the stores and surfed the web high and low until I found this sweet little fountain that takes up residence under the mantel..

This bronze statue of two boys playing leapfrog was a gift from my mother-in-law, Pat, several years ago and it is one of my most prized treasures...

This Tiffany style lamp is another favorite treasure and was a birthday gift from my mother last year..

And this vintage photo just makes me smile.  It's my mother in the 1940s.  She said she had been in a Tom Thumb wedding in her small hometown of Lindale, Ga that day...

I found this hummingbird picture several months ago at an antiques store and up until a couple of weeks ago, it hung in my living room but every time I looked at it, I thought it belonged over the windows in the sunroom. 

The star sconce I've had for years, the angels came from the same antiques mall I bought that happy oil portrait from, the little reading monkey fella came from HomeGoods, and the tin jug thing?? I found that little treasure in the basement of my old house...something Darin had found someplace and I've not an inkling as to what it is.  If anyone has any clue, please feel free to enlighten me...

The following pictures were taken on Christmas Day during the snowfall that brought my very first white Christmas ever!  I was over the moon...

And that, my friends, concludes your tour for today.  What about you?  Do you have a favorite spot?