YUCK! My wonderful buddy Chad is out scavenging around the garage looking for the source of the stench that now fills our house. EWW! It all started when we noticed the pitter-patter of little feet (not the kind that makes grandmothers, mind you) in our garage and in the attic. It seems our rodent friends wanted to keep us up all night whilst they danced above our heads in the cool moonlight. Well we set up traps and they got into some rat poison, and dear me, the little pitter-patter ceased. HOORAY! But wait there is a catch. A dead-animal-smell kind of catch and our traps are empty. So now I am writing our weekly report so I stop gagging in the garage. I am what you call “a real helper.”

Earlier this week I came home to a similar smell I was sure was a gas leak. We can all be sure I was out of my noggin because Chad got off early from work and sat messing with the furnace and the water heater until we were sure they were fine. I guess I know a new trick to get him to come home when I want to see him. “I think we have a gas leak, honey.”

Chad took his chances following the scent trail under the house and found the smelly little monster. HALLELUJAH! The aftermath is we have other little invaders. Stupid big fat flies. The whole situation reminds me of a place we helped clean out while I was on my mission in California. It makes my sick and sends shivers down my spine just thinking about it. Elisa started to get sick this week from the sawdust and stench and stress. It has been really hard to keep the house clean. It doesn’t help that we can’t take a shower at home.

Back to our more exciting news… Our bathrooms are SO almost finished!!! That calls for some celebration. YEE-HAW! We got the shower and tub all put back together. The floors are all in. No more holes in the floor. We are waiting until tonight for the caulk to cure, and then we will be able to use the tub again! There’s finishing work to do but I don’t care as much about that as I do about getting the plumbing working again. It is a very good thing. The pictures we took are at http://chadandelisa.parry.org/album/index.php?folder=/Bathrooms2006/.

That is ALL we have done this week. According to my calendar Halloween has been canceled. This is because we haven’t been able to go and get our pumpkins or dress up or be all creative and come up with our super-hero themed party we wanted to do. It is so depressing. BOO-HOO! Anyway, I am all psyched for Christmas and it starts right now as far as I’m concerned. I am not going to let this holiday get away from me. Elisa has already started us on Christmas shopping because she is crazy prepared. There is no time to prepare for both Thanksgiving and Christmas so the latter wins!

We are having a dirty, crazy, smelly week. We finally had a date today after a long while. We glamorously began it by stopping by Microsoft to borrow their shower facilities since we are nasty and don’t have a working shower. There’s a dating hint for all you guys out there. I couldn’t imagine having more fun doing this grungy work with anyone else. Chad is the best!

Elisa and I have started adding some blog entries that are only meant for friends and family. If you are not logged in then these protected entries simply will not appear. To get a password just email Elisa or me. If you already have access to the Jack Parry Family website then the passwords are posted there at FullOfItLink.

This week we finally faced head on the water damage in our bathrooms. The repairs have begun! The problem was a little more limited than we thought. And a little more extensive… look at me being the grumpy pessimist. It’s kind of a scary job though.

First we had to rip up the floor in the master bathroom. After that we had to take out some of the wall next to the tub. Then we had to saw apart the plastic plumbing connected to the bathtub. Daniel and I moved the tub out of the way into our bedroom. (Thanks to Daniel for pointing out that the tub could be pushed through a hidden service door. Before that I had been unsuccessfully trying to lift it out of the bathroom over a toilet and sink.) Then we had to cut up the flooring and then the subflooring in the guest bathroom. By Saturday afternoon all the decayed wood was cut away. You could stand in the center of a 4′ x 6′ hole that connected both bathrooms and went down to the dirt underneath the house. As far as we know we are not being invaded by too many bugs and critters, though we do have a bathtub sitting smack dab in the center of our bedroom. It really quite romantic, and we may suggest it to contractors in the future.

We finished the day Saturday by putting some boards down for subflooring. It is super-strong, thankfully. The house was built really solidly everywhere else and we didn’t want to make it any weaker in our patches. There’s still a lot of work to do this week before we can use our shower again! It’s our only shower, unfortunately. We have borrowed the showers at Jeff and Lauren’s and at Tara and Larry’s already this weekend. I especially needed it after climbing out of the crawl space with dirt and sawdust and fiberglass insulation all over my clothes and body. Family has been super helpful this project, from the showers to truck errands, to my Gramma Sophie buying Chad a yard stick, it has been really nice.

I was so proud of Elisa on our last hardware store run. We needed to find plywood subflooring that was exactly 15/16″ thick. Nobody sold the right size. Then Elisa figured out that the previous owners must have stacked two pieces that were 15/32″ thick.

We’ve had a really busy week. Elisa and I took a nap this afternoon and we were out cold for several hours.